The excitement was palpable from the moment that Tamron first introduced the idea of their newest lens, a lens that busts genres and gives Tamron another “world’s first”. That lens is the Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8 Di III VXD (internally called A058, as we’ll refer to it for brevity in this review). Let’s give you a little help with what all of those letter mean in the name in case you don’t speak “Tamron”. Di III is the designation that Tamron uses for mirrorless mounts (in this case Sony FE). VXD refers to the focus motor employed here (Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive), which is currently Tamron’s most premium autofocus system. Traditionally the two major professional full frame zooms are the 24-70mm and 70-200mm F2.8 lenses, a pairing that Tamron has long had on other platforms. I’ve shot plenty of weddings and events with a 24-70 on one camera and a 70-200 on the other. The new 35-150mm is a genre-buster first in that it combines the heart of both of those zooms into one, going from 35mm:
…to 150mm:
There’s no question that this is an incredibly versatile range, and, while it doesn’t go quite as wide as a 24-70 or quite as long on the telephoto end of a 70-200, it does enough of both to be a majorly useful wedding, event, and portrait lens. Add to this that it is the first zoom lens beginning at a maximum aperture of F2 on Sony and you have a lens that has a lot of photographers licking their chops and thinking about how they could combine multiple lenses into one professional “do-it-all” lens. Tamron first developed this unique focal range in 2019 for Canon and Nikon DSLRs in the form of 35-150mm F2.8-4 VC OSD lens (my review here), and that lens really exceeded my expectations optically while being held back by a subpar autofocus system. It also had the misfortune of coming out about the time that interest in DSLRs was waning in favor of mirrorless systems, where almost all of Tamron’s more recent development has been. The A058 is a completely different animal, however, as it is professional grade to the hilt and, at $1899 USD, is (to my knowledge) easily Tamron’s most expensive lens on the market at the moment.
The Tamron 35-150mm F2-2,8 VXD isn’t a small or cheap lens, but after spending some time with it, I remain very interested in this lens. It does have a few flaws (as we’ll see), but I’m not convinced that it has any fatal flaws. You can check out my thoughts as to whether or not the A058 should be on your radar in either my text or video reviews…or just enjoy the photos below!
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a retail loaner copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the new Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).
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Keywords: Tamron 35-150, Tamron 35-150mm, Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8, Tamron 35-150mm Review, Review, VXD, withmytamron, A058, F2-2.8, 18-300mm, Di-III, Sony, E-mount, Tamron 35-150 Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RIV, Sony a6600, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Travel, Astrophotography, Let the Light In, Autumn, Canada
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The mirrorless revolution largely started with APS-C (and smaller) sensors, but over the past four years the primary focus in the industry has largely shifted to full frame. The majority of camera and lens development has been in that space for many brands, with Fujifilm as a large exception to that rule. Fuji has chosen to not develop for full frame and has instead focused on smaller (APS-C) and larger (Medium Format) sensors and lenses. On Sony, Canon, and Nikon, however, new lens development for their APS-C systems have been few and far between…until 2021. 2021 has been a year that has brought us a lot of excellent options for APS-C, including the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC lens, (my review here), Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 (my review here), Samyang AF 12mm F2 (my review here), and, more recently, a new Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN zoom lens (my review coming soon). All of these are slightly more premium than usual, with wide maximum apertures, some degree of weather sealing, and quality optics. And now we have a new superzoom option: a stabilized nearly 17x zoom ratio zoom lens that is sure to become a favorite for those who travel or who prefer to never change lenses. The Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 Di III-A VX VXD is another “world’s first” from Tamron for this platform, and, like the Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 RXD, this lens has exceeded my expectations optically. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle of the B061 (Tamron’s internal code for this lens, which we will use in this review for brevity) have been done with the Sony a6400 and a6600 cameras.
I was recently asked if people were supposed to know what all those letters in a lens name meant. I know from experience on my channel and this website that many people don’t, so let’s quickly help you with “Tamron speak”. Di III is the designation that Tamron uses for mirrorless mounts, and, in this case, Di III-A refers to a lens designed for APS-C mirrorless cameras. VC refers to “Vibration Compensation”, which is Tamron’s term for an optical image stabilizer. VXD refers to the focus motor employed here (Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive), which is currently Tamron’s most premium autofocus system (which makes it surprising to me that it was employed here). So, the B061 is a lens designed for APS-C mirrorless cameras only, has optical stabilization, and has a high powered linear focus motor driving autofocus.
This all has important meaning for you as a potential buyer, however. First of all, this is the first Tamron Di III-A lens that is not just designed for Sony E-mount (the version I’m testing), but is also available for Fuji X-mount. This is hugely important, as it not only gives Fuji shooters a very nice new lens option, but is also the first Tamron development for the XF mount since Fuji opened up their mount to third party development. In my opinion this is extremely important to the long time survival and competitiveness of the Fujifilm XF system. Both Sony E-mount and Fuji X-mount cameras share a 1.5x crop factor, which means that the effective focal length of this lens is a full frame equivalent of 27-450mm, going from reasonably wide to extreme telephoto. You can go from this at 18mm:
…to this at 300mm:
That’s obviously going to be useful!
Optical stabilization is arguably even more important on APS-C than it is on full frame, as where all Sony full frame mirrorless cameras released in the past 4-5 years include IBIS (In-Body-Image-Stabilization), the same isn’t true of APS-C cameras. The a6400 (a current camera) that I used for most of this review doesn’t have stabilization, so being able to utilize the lens stabilization made a real world difference for me. I haven’t seen a CIPA rating on the stabilization, but this real world shot was taken at 1/25th second, 300mm, which means that it is getting about four stops of stabilization.
It’s not perfectly sharp, but definitely stable enough to use. Having stabilization on a lens that reaches so far is going to be useful, and Tamron also touts that AI technology helps to provide superior stabilization for video at shorter focal lengths (70mm or less).
Finally, having a premium autofocus system in the B061 shows that Tamron is not treating this like a second-tier lens but is giving it some serious technology. You can focus with speed and precision using the B061, which makes a tangible difference in its usability and flexibility.
The Tamron 18-300mm isn’t a small lens. It’s actually larger and heavier than the full frame 28-200mm RXD lens (my review here), which surprised me, but the B061 also has more than twice the zoom ratio (16.7x vs 7.1x). Tamron elected to make this lens good rather than just small, but this does define its audience. You can check out my thoughts as to whether or not the B061 should be on your radar in either the long format definitive or standard video review below…or just keep reading.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a retail loaner copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own.
B061 Build, Handling, and Features
Like the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8, the B061 is really more like a full frame lens in terms of size and weight. It is a little on the large side for the a6400 body that I primarily used, but was a little better on the a6600 due to that camera’s larger grip. It will probably feel most at home on a bigger APS-C body like the Fujifilm X-T3 or X-T4. Like all other Tamron mirrorless lenses developed since 2018 (save the much bigger 150-500mm), the B061 has a 67mm front filter thread, and so you can easily share filters across multiple lenses. The B061 is 75.5mm (3″) in diameter (not huge), but it is quite a long lens for an APS-C lens at 125.6mm (nearly 5″). The closest competitor in length is the Tamron 17-70mm, which is 119.3mm (4.7″). But perhaps a better point of reference is the Sony 70-350mm F4.5-6.3 G OSS that has more shared focal length, which is longer still at 142mm and weighs 625g to the B061’s 620g. Here’s a look at how the specs break down:
Clearly Tamron’s priority here was not compact size and weight (though clearly the size and weight relative to the smaller zoom ratio 70-350mm holds up well). The size and weight may put off some potential buyers who really want to travel light, but Tamron’s engineering priority here was clearly to produce an optically excellent lens rather than a small one. I suspect that the basic physical realities of the B061 will produce a natural sorting effect on potential buyers. Here is is compared to the recent Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN, for example:
As has been Tamron’s design philosophy thus far, the design language is clean, modern, and without distractions. That’s the nice way of putting it. The glass half empty approach is to note that there are no features on the outside of the lens. No AF/MF switch, no switch for the VC, and definitely nothing like an aperture ring or focus hold button. The only physical feature outside of the focus and zoom rings is a zoom lock to prevent “zoom creep” during transport. Tamron has kept the prices on these lenses reasonable by focusing on excellent internals while adopting a fairly bare bones approach on the outside. It seems to be working, however, as Tamron’s sales on Sony have been brisk, and I suspect that this lens is highly anticipated in the Fuji community as well.
What you will find on the outside is two rings. The closer (and narrower) of the two is the manual focus ring. This (like all mirrorless lenses) is focus-by-wire, meaning that focus input on the focus ring is routed through the focus motor to move the elements. Manual focus emulation is okay though unexceptional. The focus ring moves easily but without a lot of feel; you won’t mistake this for a true manual focus lens. Fortunately you probably won’t need the MF ring often because autofocus is fantastic.
The second ring (wider and deeper ribbed) is the zoom ring. Twisting it will extend a double barreled zoom extension that reaches a maximum of about 8 cm. There’s no wobble to these inner barrels, but I could lightly feel a little extra tension as you transition from first one barrel extending to the second also extending. It’s not as smooth as zoom action with only one barrel, but neither did it feel rough or sticky. Tamron has done a good job with the challenging engineering feat of a lens that covers wide angle to extreme telephoto.
Tamron has included a nicely made (howbeit plain) petal-shaped lens hood that is rather shallow to avoid causing vignette at wide focal lengths. Telephoto focal lengths will probably depend more on internal coatings than on the lens hood for shading. The hood reverses in a nicely flush position to take up minimal extra width for storage.. It has deep ribs inside that disrupt stray light bouncing around. It’s plastic and lightweight, but the quality of the plastics is apparent by feel. It doesn’t feel as cheap as some hoods that I see and feels like it could take a few bumps without cracking.
The lens’ housing is a nice grade of engineered plastics with a satin finish. There’s a platinum-colored accept ring right near the lens mount. Nothing fancy on the outside, but the lens “look” is clean and it looks nice mounted on the camera.
As noted, however, the good stuff is inside. There’s a rubber gasket at the lens mount that suggests at the weather sealing inside, and Tamron also shows a total of 8 other internal seal points along with a fluorine coating on the front element to give further protection. A fluorine coating not only helps protect the front element from scratches but also makes it water and fingerprint resistant and thus easier to clean.
Tamron’s recent trends regarding MFD (minimum focus distance) hold true here, as the lens sports two different MFDs for wide (0.15m/5.9″) and telephoto (0.99m/39″). You can get to about 0.50x magnification on the wide end (1:2 macro) and 0.25x on the telephoto end. As is often the case with these arrangements, I don’t find the figure on the wide end particularly useful, however, as you have to get to within 5mm (0.2″) of your subject to achieve that magnification, which is near impossible even with macro lights because the lens is almost touching the subject. Distortion and field curvature is also exaggerated that close, leaving only a small “sweet spot” where focus is achieved. Here’s how close you get to your subject at that focus distance along with the resulting image:
That’s using bright lights close by to help. So, while the telephoto magnification figure is lower, achieving the result will be much simpler in the field and probably much more satisfying in the process. The end result at 300mm is quite good:
Minimum focus distance will scale between these two extremes as you go throughout the zoom range.
One useful application for that very close focus distance at 18mm will be for video, however, as it means that you basically will never hit a point in your shot where the lens can’t autofocus.
Tamron has seven rounded blades in the aperture iris, and they claim that the aperture iris will stay circular for two stops down from maximum aperture. I find there are fewer opportunities to put this to the test when you have a maximum aperture of 6.3 on the telephoto end of things, but here’s a look at an aperture series at F3.5, F5.6, and F8:
You can see a couple of things. First, the geometry isn’t too bad. There is some deformation near the edge of the frame, but is still reasonably round. A circular shape is maintained okay through F5.6, though you can definitely start to see the aperture blades by F8. Bokeh highlights are fairly clean for this type of lens, which helps contribute to fairly decent performance for defocused areas.
So, while the B061 does lack some bells and whistles, it is a nicely made lens that has some good things where it matters. The lens handles well, and, while I would like to have the AF/MF switch and On/Off for the VC, I won’t complain too much because A) I’ve come to expect this level of features from Tamron and B) what is here is nicely executed.
B061 Focus and Video Performance
As noted in my introduction, I was actually surprised to see Tamron give this lens what I consider to be their premier focus motor, the Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive (VXD), which is a high end linear focus motor.
I’ve seen this focus motor only on a couple of more premium lenses (the 70-180mm F2.8 VXD and the 150-500mm VXD). Both of these were telephoto lenses that benefited from increase torque in the more demanding telephoto range. It makes sense, though, as a frequent issue with superzoom lenses is that they focus fairly quickly on the wide end but slow down noticeably at the telephoto end. Tamron has avoided that by giving the lens a high-torque focus motor, but in doing so also showed that they were serious about the performance of this lens…serious enough to put expensive parts in it!
I didn’t notice any focus speed difference whether I was focusing at 18mm or 300mm.
While I wouldn’t recommend any lens like this as a dedicated sports lens, I think the focus speed will certainly be fast enough for those who “dabble” in a little wildlife or birding action, and it is probably fine for your kid’s soccer game.
I didn’t do portraits with the lens, but Eye AF worked fine and detected my subjects accurately for this shot.
I did a video test where I moved towards at the camera, in and out, at various speeds, and the focus system did a good job of tracking my eye. Likewise in my video focus pull tests, focus pulls were smooth and silent. On a further positive note I saw essentially no focus breathing (at least on the wider end), which adds even more value to the lens.
Real world focus results were excellent, and I have nothing negative to report on this front. The choice to use the VXD linear motor was a sound one.
Tamron 18-300mm VC Image Quality Breakdown
The Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 RXD really surprised me optically, mostly because my expectations were so low. I’ve tested a number of Tamron “superzoom” lenses, including multiple 18-200mm lenses, an 18-270mm, an 18-400mm, a 16-300mm, and a 28-300mm full frame zoom. The typical rule of thumb is that the larger the zoom range the lower the optical performance. There’s a lot of inherit compromises involved in making a lens that goes from very wide to very telephoto, and those typically come at the cost of optical flaws. The Tamron 28-200mm RXD was the first superzoom lens that I felt was optically good, period, without qualifying that statement by the modifier “for a superzoom lens”. The B061 might just be the second. You can tell even by looking at the MTF charts that this is far above average superzoom lens optically, and its optical formula of 19 elements in 15 groups really works.
That’s just a good MTF chart, period, but there’s more to the B061 than just sharpness. Somehow Tamron has managed to overcome a lot of the typical optical defects that I see on lenses like this.
*These tests are done on a 24MP Sony a6400 body.
First, let’s take a look at vignette and distortion, two areas that are often weaknesses for zoom lenses. The B061 does not escape unscathed here. There is some strong barrel distortion at 18mm.
On screen this was a tight framing of my chart, but the RAW file shows a very loose framing, showing that in camera I was seeing a corrected JPEG result but that Tamron is actually allowing space for the lens to be corrected and still be 18mm in framing. It took a +23 to correct for the distortion manually (no RAW profile exists as I am reviewing the lens before public release). There is only a faint “mustache” pattern that remains; the distortion is reasonably linear in nature. Vignette is surprisingly low (a trend on this lens), requiring a +28 to correct, which is only around a stop of so. That’s low enough that you probably won’t notice it much.
Moving on to 50mm eliminated the barrel distortion and actually shows a bit of an inversion to the pincushion distortion that we will see mild shades of throughout the remainder of the zoom range.
I only had to use a -7 to correct the distortion here, and a +40 corrected the vignette.
At 100mm the pincushion distortion actually diminishes (-4 to correct) while the vignette almost vanishes (+13 to correct). At 200mm the pincushion distortion stays the same (-4 to correct) while the vignette almost vanishes (+13 to correct). And, even more shocking is 300mm, where distortion dropped to needing only a -3 to correct and vignette remains extremely mild (+18).
Anywhere past 18mm is pretty much shocking in the distortion and vignette department. The distortion and vignette is just so mild that while I’m operating without a RAW profile at this stage, there just really isn’t much to correct. That is wholly unexpected for this type of lens. I’ve seen many of these type lenses where the lens was entirely dependent on software corrections to produce any semblance of proper optical performance, but that couldn’t be further from the truth here.
I did not see a problem with lateral chromatic aberrations in either my chart tests or real world images.
I also see only very, very minor longitudinal chromatic aberrations in this high contrast shot of light through water droplets on a spider’s web:
So, outside of the distortion at 18mm, the basic optical flaws are extremely well controlled here. That’s very impressive for a lens with such a big range. I owned a Tamron 18-270mm over a decade ago, and suffice it to say that it was nowhere near the class of performance we see here.
So how about sharpness and contrast? Here’s a look at the test chart we will be referencing for these tests, with the crops to be shown around the 200% magnification level. I had to use my smaller telephoto chart as I didn’t have room at 300mm to test with my bigger chart.
So let’s take a look at crops from the center, mid-frame, and bottom right corner at 18mm, F3.5:
That’s just impressive. Exceptional sharpness in the center of the frame, very good performance mid-frame, and even the corners have a fair amount of detail.
Stopping down does not result in any improvement in the center of the frame, but I do see some improvement in the midframe and corners. The corner performance now looks quite good at F5.6:
Real world results look excellent at landscape apertures like F5.6, with excellent detail and contrast across the frame.
If we check back in at 50mm, we find that maximum aperture has closed to F4.5. Here are the F4.5 crops from across the frame:
The center looks excellent, the mid-frame fairly good, but the corners are fairly soft. Stopping down to F8 will radically improve that corner performance, however.
By 100mm the maximum aperture has closed to F5.6, but image quality is still very strong. Here’s a look at a real-world, handheld image, and you still see from the crops that the detail is crisp…and the bokeh looks quite good, too.
By 200mm we are at the smallest maximum aperture of F6.3. Center performance remains excellent, though the mid-frame and corners aren’t quite as impressive. Here’s the crops:
Stopping to F8 improves detail and contrast, and again I found real world images perfectly useful at the more typical 100% magnification I would use (as opposed to the 200% crops I show for my tests).
At 300mm the sharpness and contrast is roughly the same, which is to say not as sharp as sub-200mm, but still very usable in the real world. This wide open 300mm image shows both beautiful detail and lovely bokeh.
I don’t think the B061 is as sharp at 300mm as, say, the Sony 70-350mm G, but that lens has a significantly reduced zoom ratio, so that result is expected. The MTF results show about a 10% difference, though, which isn’t too bad considering the Tamron is a superzoom. In the real world I was able to get a lot of results that I was perfectly happy with, like this.
I would say that my real world results were very similar to what I got with the Sony 18-135mm, which is impressive considering how much bigger the zoom range is on the Tamron.
A lens like this is not going to have the bokeh quality of, say, a 70-200mm F2.8 lens and its bright maximum aperture, but I actually thought the bokeh looked pretty good in a variety of situations, and, of course, the high degree of magnification does mean that you can really blow out backgrounds at the telephoto end.
The B061 has a fairly shallow lens hood, but it also has Tamron’s excellent BBAR G2 coatings, and those help to deal with flare reasonably well. In my typical sun tests, I thought the lens held up very well, but I did see a little more ghosting if I got close to one of my studio lights.
This is a fairly strong performance, though, and I saw very little ghosting and veiling when I panned across the sun in video mode.
All told, I really feel like Tamron has been able to mitigate a lot of the typical weaknesses of superzoom lenses, and I was definitely happier with the real-world images I got than what I have been with most lenses with very big zoom ratios in the past.
I got a lot of great looking images out of my time with the lens. I would definitely encourage you to check out the lens image gallery to see more. I had the good fortune to be shooting for this review in the Ontario, Canada autumn, which is my favorite season for photography!
Conclusion
The Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 Di III-A VX VXD is a very important lens for several reasons. Perhaps most important is that the B061 is Tamron’s first foray into the Fujifilm X-mount space. This ought to delight Fujifilm shooters, as finally the promise of the much-needed third party development for the platform is being realized. The slightly larger size of the B061 makes it a nice pairing on a more robust camera like the X-T3 or X-T4, and the VC (optical stabilizer) means that X-T3 shooters (or other similar cameras) have a stabilized lens to attach to their non-stabilized camera body. But I think the B061 is also an important addition to the Sony E-mount platform, as it gives Sony shooters access to a kind of lens that they have been lacking before – a true all-in-one lens that is actually competent. I like the Sony E 18-135mm OSS quite a lot and gave it a positive review, but the reality is that the Tamron 18-300mm gives you a 16.7x zoom ratio compared to a 7.5x zoom ratio for only $50 more, and with essentially identical image quality over the shared focal range. The only compelling reason to choose the Sony lens is if having a very compact lens is a priority for you.
The B061 offers a good build quality with excellent attention to detail in the weather sealing. It doesn’t have much in terms of bells and whistles on the lens barrel, but, frankly, neither does the competition. It also adds the potential for more close-ups than competitors, which is certainly a useful addition. And, above all, it really hard to argue against a lens that gives you this kind of zoom range:
The close focus abilities will help it to be a good lens to mount on a gimbal or slider for video work, as on the wide end you essentially can’t exceed the focus limit. But probably most important is that Tamron has managed to “out-engineer” many of the typical shortcomings of all-in-one lenses and ensure that the lens is perfectly usable at all focal lengths. Yes, there are spots in the zoom range that are sharper than others, but I was able to get good quality images throughout the zoom range in a variety of situations, and that is, arguably, the most important factor of all. You aren’t sacrificing much in terms of image quality compared to alternative lenses while adding many layers of flexibility, and that makes the B061 a winner. If you are looking for a great travel option or just don’t like to change lenses – and you don’t mind a little more size and weight – then the Tamron 18-300mm VC VXD should jump to the top of your list of potential new lenses.
Pros:
Stunning zoom range covers wide to extreme telephoto
Advanced weather sealing with 9 seal points
Fluorine coating
Powerful VXD focus motor
Included VC (image stabilizer)
Good build and action of rings
Quick and quiet autofocus
Very little focus breathing
Fairly strong optical performance throughout zoom range
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Keywords: Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3, VC, VXD, withmytamron, B061, Tamron 18-300 VC, VXD, F2.8, 18-300mm, Di-IIIa, Sony, E-mount, Tamron 18-300mm Review, Tamron 18-300 review, Review, Sony a6400, Sony a6600, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Travel, Astrophotography Let the Light In, Autumn, Canada
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Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD Image Gallery
Dustin Abbott
October 21st, 2021
The mirrorless revolution largely started with APS-C (and smaller) sensors, but over the past four years the primary focus in the industry has largely shifted to full frame. The majority of camera and lens development has been in that space for many brands, with Fujifilm as a large exception to that rule. Fuji has chosen to not develop for full frame and has instead focused on smaller (APS-C) and larger (Medium Format) sensors and lenses. On Sony, Canon, and Nikon, however, new lens development for their APS-C systems have been few and far between…until 2021. 2021 has been a year that has brought us a lot of excellent options for APS-C, including the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC lens, (my review here), Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 (my review here), Samyang AF 12mm F2 (my review here), and, more recently, a new Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN zoom lens (my review coming soon). All of these are slightly more premium than usual, with wide maximum apertures, some degree of weather sealing, and quality optics. And now we have a new superzoom option: a stabilized nearly 17x zoom ratio zoom lens that is sure to become a favorite for those who travel or who prefer to never change lenses. The Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 Di III-A VX VXD is another “world’s first” from Tamron for this platform, and, like the Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 RXD, this lens has exceeded my expectations optically. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle of the B061 (Tamron’s internal code for this lens, which we will use in this review for brevity) have been done with the Sony a6400 and a6600 cameras.
I was recently asked if people were supposed to know what all those letters in a lens name meant. I know from experience on my channel and this website that many people don’t, so let’s quickly help you with “Tamron speak”. Di III is the designation that Tamron uses for mirrorless mounts, and, in this case, Di III-A refers to a lens designed for APS-C mirrorless cameras. VC refers to “Vibration Compensation”, which is Tamron’s term for an optical image stabilizer. VXD refers to the focus motor employed here (Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive), which is currently Tamron’s most premium autofocus system (which makes it surprising to me that it was employed here). So, the B061 is a lens designed for APS-C mirrorless cameras only, has optical stabilization, and has a high powered linear focus motor driving autofocus.
This all has important meaning for you as a potential buyer, however. First of all, this is the first Tamron Di III-A lens that is not just designed for Sony E-mount (the version I’m testing), but is also available for Fuji X-mount. This is hugely important, as it not only gives Fuji shooters a very nice new lens option, but is also the first Tamron development for the XF mount since Fuji opened up their mount to third party development. In my opinion this is extremely important to the long time survival and competitiveness of the Fujifilm XF system. Both Sony E-mount and Fuji X-mount cameras share a 1.5x crop factor, which means that the effective focal length of this lens is a full frame equivalent of 27-450mm, going from reasonably wide to extreme telephoto. You can go from this at 18mm:
…to this at 300mm:
That’s obviously going to be useful!
Optical stabilization is arguably even more important on APS-C than it is on full frame, as where all Sony full frame mirrorless cameras released in the past 4-5 years include IBIS (In-Body-Image-Stabilization), the same isn’t true of APS-C cameras. The a6400 (a current camera) that I used for most of this review doesn’t have stabilization, so being able to utilize the lens stabilization made a real world difference for me. I haven’t seen a CIPA rating on the stabilization, but this real world shot was taken at 1/25th second, 300mm, which means that it is getting about four stops of stabilization.
It’s not perfectly sharp, but definitely stable enough to use. Having stabilization on a lens that reaches so far is going to be useful, and Tamron also touts that AI technology helps to provide superior stabilization for video at shorter focal lengths (70mm or less).
Finally, having a premium autofocus system in the B061 shows that Tamron is not treating this like a second-tier lens but is giving it some serious technology. You can focus with speed and precision using the B061, which makes a tangible difference in its usability and flexibility.
The Tamron 18-300mm isn’t a small lens. It’s actually larger and heavier than the full frame 28-200mm RXD lens (my review here), which surprised me, but the B061 also has more than twice the zoom ratio (16.7x vs 7.1x). Tamron elected to make this lens good rather than just small, but this does define its audience. You can check out my thoughts as to whether or not the Tamron 18-300mm VC should be on your radar in either my text or video reviews, or just enjoy the photos below.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a retail loaner copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. The opinions here are completely my own.
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
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Keywords: Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3, VC, VXD, withmytamron, B061, Tamron 18-300 VC, VXD, F2.8, 18-300mm, Di-IIIa, Sony, E-mount, Tamron 18-300mm Review, Tamron 18-300 review, Review, Sony a6400, Sony a6600, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Travel, Astrophotography Let the Light In, Autumn, Canada
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
2021 has been the year that Tamron has adjusted their aim to include a very important (and oft-overlooked) space – Sony APS-C E-mount. There are a LOT of Sony APS-C mirrorless shooters out there, and despite the large audience, there are relatively few APS-C specific releases. Not from Sony or from third parties other than the multitude of cheap manual focus lenses that pop up every few months. That seems to be changing, though. At the beginning of 2021, Tamron released their 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD fast aperture standard zoom lens, which I noted in my review might now be the biggest advantage for Sony in the APS-C space. The B070 (as Tamron refers to the lens) is a well made, fast focusing, optically excellent zoom that pretty much has it all. But Tamron clearly wasn’t done, as we now see a new APS-C for the middle of the year, this time a wide angle zoom that continues the tradition of a constant fast aperture of F2.8. The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD (which Tamron calls the B060) is another intriguing addition to the Sony APS-C mirrorless space.
Tamron loves its initials in their lens names, so let’s sort out that alphabet soup. Di III is their designation for a mirrorless lens design, and, in this case, the addition of -A at the (Di III-A) refers to their development for APS-C mirrorless. RXD refers to the focus motor. I’m a fan of the RXD motors, as in every application I’ve tested, I’ve seen quiet, fast, and precise autofocus.
There are few legitimate alternatives to this lens, as there are few wide angle lenses on Sony APS-C E-mount, and only one comparable zoom. The Sony E 10-18mm F4 OSS has a similar though not identical zoom range, a smaller maximum aperture of F4, but compensates by having optical stabilization. The two lenses are priced similarly, though the Tamron is more of a premium lens due to having a “professional-grade” maximum aperture, a stronger optical performance, and having a weather sealed build. Outside of the Sony 10-18mm, there really aren’t many options. There’s some overlap in focal range in the E 16-55mm F2.8 G, which is Sony’s premium player in this group, though that lens is more of a standard zoom and doesn’t go particularly wide. It is also priced about $500 higher, so I see that lens more as a competitor to the 17-70mm F2.8 from Tamron. On the lower end of the price spectrum there is another new option – the Samyang AF 12mm F2 that I recently reviewed. That lens might be a legitimate alternative if you don’t need the zoom range and want to save some money. But Tamron knows its business, and I like that they are utilizing a lot of their skills honed on their very well received Sony full frame zooms for these new lenses in the APS-C space, as this is another premium option for Sony shooters. It is a lens worth its roughly $830 USD price tag? Read on to find out…
I used both my Sony a6400 and Sony Alpha 1 in APS-C mode to do this review. Watch my definitive (long format) or standard video review by clicking on the link below.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me an early loaner of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review.
B060 Build, Handling, and Features
I found the 17-70mm F2.8 to be more like a full frame lens in terms of size and weight, but the B060 is more compact. It weighs nearly 200g less (335g) and is over 33mm shorter (86.2mm). This makes for a nicely compact lens when you consider the wide angle of view and large maximum aperture. It is larger and heavier than the 10-18mm F4 from Sony, but F4 lenses are always smaller and lighter relative to F2.8 lenses. The 10-18mm is only 225g and is only 63.5mm long, so if your priority is small size, that continues to be the winner. As noted above, however, the Tamron is a more professional grade lens in a number of ways. Here’s a look at how the specs for the various lenses break down:
The lens isn’t tiny, then, but for a wide aperture, wide angle zoom, it is still reasonably compact, and matches my a6400 just fine.
There’s no question this is an extremely useful focal range, giving you framing options from very wide (16.5mm full frame equivalent):
to somewhat tighter framing (30mm full frame equivalent):
This will enable you versatility in composing your wide angle scene and covers most of the classic wide angle options. While the depth of field is more equivalent to a full frame F4 lens, the F2.8 aperture will always have the light gathering capability of an F2.8 lens (regardless of whether attached to APS-C or Full Frame), meaning that the B060 has the advantage of being able to have more in focus at larger apertures but all the light gathering potential of an F2.8 lens – which can be a big help in low light conditions.
As has been Tamron’s design philosophy thus far, the design language is clean, modern, and without distractions. That’s the nice way of putting it. The glass half empty approach is to note that there are no features on the outside of the lens. No AF/MF switch, no switch for the VC, and definitely nothing like an aperture ring or focus hold button. Tamron has kept the prices on these lenses reasonable by focusing on excellent internals while adopting a fairly bare bones approach on the outside. It seems to be working, however, as Tamron’s sales on Sony have been brisk. The 28-75mm F2.8 RXD that started this revolution was the world’s best selling lens (period!) for several years following its release.
What you will find on the outside is two rings. Their position is reversed relative to the 17-70mm, which is unfortunate for those who will buy both lenses to use as a kit. The closer (and wider) of the two is the zoom ring. The zoom ring has a rubberized, ribbed texture, is easy to find by touch, and moves smoothly through the zoom range without any sticking points. The inner barrel will extend about 2cm at the 11mm position, and is fully retracted at the 20mm position.
While many would prefer an internally zooming lens, thus far all of these Tamron zooms have been externally zooming, though they must be doing a fairly good job of sealing the lenses, and I’ve heard little anecdotal reports from buyers about getting dust inside of them. I’ve owned the Tamron 28-75mm RXD for years and it is still clean inside. I also have the 17-28mm, 28-200mm, and 70-180mm and have had no problems with any of them. The inner barrel extends smoothly and without any wobble.
The second ring (nearer the front of the lens) is the manual focus ring. You will have to select manual focus from within the camera due to having no AF/MF switch (a pain!). This (like all mirrorless lenses) is focus-by-wire, meaning that focus input on the focus ring is routed through the focus motor to move the elements. Focus emulation is reasonably good, with a smoother focus action than I saw on the 17-70mm. The focus ring moves smoothly, but isn’t linear.
Tamron has included a shallow, petal-shaped lens hood with deep ribs inside that disrupt stray light bouncing around. It’s plastic and lightweight, but the quality of the plastics is apparent by feel. It doesn’t feel as cheap as some hoods that I see. It feels like it could take a few bumps without cracking. Due to the wide-angle nature of the lens, the lens hood is fairly wide, so it doesn’t reverse completely flush along the sides of the lens for storage.
Tamron has continued to retain the 67mm filter threads that it has managed to put in just about every lens it has created for Sony mirrorless. That really helps in allowing you to share filters, and is one incentive for customers to keep buying additional Tamron lenses.
The lens’ housing is a nice grade of engineered plastics with a satin finish. There’s a platinum-colored accept ring right near the lens mount. Nothing fancy on the outside, but the lens “look” is clean and it looks nice mounted on the camera.
As noted, however, the good stuff is inside. There’s a rubber gasket at the lens mount that is the outer evidence of the weather sealing inside, and this is diagram from Tamron shows that there are a total of seven seal points in the lens. This is capped off by a nice fluorine coating on the front element, which not only helps protect it from scratches but also makes it water and fingerprint resistant and thus easier to clean.
Tamron’s recent trends regarding MFD (minimum focus distance) hold true here, as the lens sports two different MFDs for wide (0.15m/5.9″) and telephoto (0.24m/9.4″). Both are pretty close, frankly, with the 11mm position requiring you to be nearly on top of your subject (the length from the sensor to the end of the lens WITHOUT the hood is 12cm, leaving you only 3cm of working room to your subject. If you leave the hood on, that length grows to 14.5cmm, leaving you a few mm of working room. It will be almost impossible to avoid shading your subject with the lens attached, so remove the hood to give you a bit more working room. Even so, I found it almost impossible to properly light my test chart even moving my lights right in, as this is what MFD looks like:
Should you be able to get that close, you get as high as a 0.25x (1:4) magnification figure, which looks like this.
Being able to pull off shots that close in the real world are rarely going to happen, so I consider that 0.25x figure to mostly be marketing. You can still get a reasonable magnification by backing up a bit, though. My preference is just to use the 20mm position. The telephoto end gives you a better working distance and better results in terms of sharpness, but unfortunately the magnification figure drops to a much more pedestrian 0.13x, though even that figure is better than the Sony 10-18mm F4. The magnification at 20mm looks like this:
You’ll note that the 20mm position gives a nicely flat plane of focus, meaning that real world results are nice and crisp:
The telephoto figure is a bit lower, but achieving the result will be much simpler in the field and probably much more satisfying in the process.
As is common with wide angle lenses, Tamron has reduced the number of blades from nine to 7 rounded blades. A lens like this is less about bokeh and more about being able to produce nice sunstars, and the seven bladed aperture produces a cleaner looking sunstar.
Tamron touts the flare resistance of this lens, but frankly, I’m not seeing it…particularly at smaller aperture. More on that later.
All told, though, the B060 is another very nicely made lens with some professional internals…even if the outer shell is fairly plain. This is a lens designed for performance rather than features.
Autofocus and Video Performance
The B060 has Tamron’s excellent RXD, and the Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive (RXD) is everything a mirrorless autofocus system should be. It is fast, quiet, and accurate. Tamron has a bit of an advantage on Sony as Sony is a stakeholder in Tamron and grants Tamron access to their focus algorithms. This means that Tamron doesn’t have to reverse engineer everything like they did on Canon and Nikon, and the difference shows. I’ve found no difference between Tamron lenses sporting the RXD and VXD focus systems and the best Sony lenses. I really see this in the stability of the focus, as these Tamron lenses focus rock solid without any pulsing or hunting. I was able to get good focus results on either my a6400 or the Alpha 1 in APS-C mode.
Eye Detect works fine (as it does almost universally now), though with a wide angle lens like this you have to be pretty close for the eye to occupy a large enough part of the frame to show active tracking. If you are close enough, however, the “stickiness” of the box on the eye is fairly good and will follow the subject around. You can see that this 20mm F2.8 shot is perfectly focused:
I also found autofocus fairly intuitive for either grabbing the subject I wanted or quickly changing to my alternate subject if I moved the AF point there.
The B060 was a great performer for video focus pulls, giving smooth, confident pulls without any noise, pulsing, or settling. Focus is completely silent in my tests, with no audible focus noise recorded by the onboard mics. Focus breathing was only minimal, with a very tiny chance of subject size depending on focus.
Focus speed is extremely fast, with focus changes from close to distant happening near instantaneously and without any drama.
Bottom line is that you probably won’t find a better focusing lens among any competing lenses. Everything here is top notch, and I have zero complaints…as has been the case with all of Tamron’s lenses equipped with either RXD or VXD focus motors.
B060 Image Quality
The B060 sports an optical formula of 12 elements in 10 groups, with 5 of those being exotic elements (molded glass aspherical, hybrid aspherical, and Low Dispersion). Here’s a look at the optical design and MTFs:
If you understand MTF diagrams, you will note that these are very good looking MTFs for a wide angle zoom lens. Tamron does its MTFs wide open, and the surprising thing about the 11mm result is that there is actually a bit of dip in resolution near the mid-frame position with the corner resolving better than the mid-frame area (though contrast is must lower in the corner relative to the mid-frame). The 20mm result shows a more typical slide towards the edge of the frame. I had no problems getting nicely detailed images with the lens:
Over the years I’ve always gotten a lot of questions from viewers or readers about how an APS-C lens works on a full frame camera. In this case Sony E-mount is identical, so E-mount lenses fit perfectly on FE (full frame E-mount) cameras. Just because the lens fits, however, doesn’t mean that it covers the image circle. Some APS-C lenses cover a considerably wider area of the frame than the APS-C crop, so they are worth considering using on full frame and cropping a bit. In this case, however, Tamron has cut things pretty close. This sequence of images shows the scene composed with the APS-C mode engaged on my Alpha 1, then shooting it full frame, and then the result after I cropped the mechanical vignette out (the completely black area with the lens image circle isn’t large enough to cover the sensor).
You can see that there really isn’t much of a difference, and if I finished cropping that last tiny bit of blackened area in the corners, then the difference would be essentially negligible. This is an APS-C lens, so it’s best to use it on an APS-C camera.
My formal tests are done on the 24MP APS-C sensor of the Sony a6400, which is a very common resolution point at the moment. Here’s a look at the vignette and distortion at 11mm:
We can see both moderate barrel distortion and vignette. Due to a quirk of Lightroom having just been updated, the B060 already has a correction profile available in Adobe, but I’ve done a manual correction here for demonstration purposes. I like to do manual correction for these tests as it allows me to examine the flaws without them being hidden by a clever profile. In this, however, there’s nothing particularly nasty. The distortion is fairly linear, so I could get a reasonable result even with a manual correction of the distortion (I used a +10), and vignette was also manageable. I used a +46 and moved the midpoint over to zero for a nicely clean result. Use the standard profile in camera for JPEGs and Video for a cleaner still result, or use the correct profile in your editing software for RAWs to get a nicely clean end result, though I did find the Adobe correction profile for vignette a little too aggressive for my night sky images, where the edges appeared lighter than the center. Fortunately I could scale that back for a more balanced result.
As is typical for a lens like this, the distortion pattern flips to a pincushion style distortion at 20mm, though this distortion is even more linear and easier still to correct for. I used a -8, and the vignette was also lower, requiring only a +26 to correct for, which is pretty negligible.
I’ve seen a lot of otherwise good lenses derailed by distortion or heavy vignette, but that’s not the case here; this is a very good result. Everything is easily correctable and none of the flaws extreme.
I watched for chromatic aberrations but so little evidence of them. Longitudinal chromatic aberrations (fringing before or after the plane of focus) were essentially impossible to spot in real world use, and, while I could see trace amounts of lateral chromatic aberrations on my chart (fringing in dark to light transitions near the edge of the frame), they were too insignificant to see in real world use, so no problems here.
Let’s move on to resolution and contrast. I do my examinations at 200% magnification, as this clearly shows lens strengths and flaws for you to see. First, here’s my test chart:
We will start with F2.8 crops (near 200%) at 11mm from the center, mid-frame, and extreme lower right corner.
What they show is that this lens delivers a strong performance across the frame at F2.8, with contrast and acuity looking a little softer in the extreme corner. Stopping down to landscape apertures like F5.6 and F8 did improve contrast and resolution a bit, but not significantly.
This mirrors what I see in the real world, though at a more typical 100% magnification, real world results are even better. What you’ll find from the series below, however, is that this scene doesn’t really look much different whether shot at F2.8 or at F5.6. Contrast is ever-so-slightly improved at F5.6, but not by much, and that’s true whether looking at the center or edge of the frame comparison:
I found that the B060 really hit its stride in the center of the zoom range, though, with great clarity and detail across the frame at either 14mm or 16mm:
Where it is truly exceptional, though, is at 18mm, where it delivers a flawlessly sharp performance everywhere on the frame even at F2.8:
This is where I would shoot for optimal sharpness, which is truly excellent anywhere in the frame in a real world shot, whether in the foreground or background.
The copy of the B060 bucks the trends of the MTFs by actually giving me a slightly better performance at 20mm than what it did at 11mm, with 18mm only being ever-so-slightly sharper. Even at F2.8, I got nice detailed images across the frame:
At landscape apertures the lens delivers beautiful, highly detailed results.
While you don’t turn to wide angle lenses for bokeh, the quality of the blur is reasonably good here. It’s better, frankly, than what we saw on the 17-70mm F2.8 despite that lens having much more potential for creating the blur. This image at 20mm, F2.8 has a fairly nice transition to defocus.
I also think this image looks fairly good, as did others where the background was defocused.
The weak spot for the B060 is in the flare resistance. The image above looks fine, and, frankly, the performance at wide apertures is much better than the performance at smaller apertures. I was surprised to find that the B060 has Tamron’s 2nd Generation BBAR coatings, as they are excellent in other lenses with them I’ve tested. I just wasn’t very impressed here, however. The first set shows the B060 wide open at 11mm, then stopped down to F11. The second set repeats that at 20mm, while the final set shows a few random images, including the final at a more moderate F5.6 aperture. In every shot there are ghosting artifacts, and in some cases they are quite pronounced.
I’m somewhat surprised that Tamron is bragging about this aspect of lens design, as it is to my eye the single greatest weakness for the 11-20mm RXD.
What is definitely stronger is the coma resistance, which, other than a bit of “star-stretching” in the corners, looks quite good.
Overall, however, we’ve got a very good lens optically. It’s a good wide angle zoom range, and can produce a lot of great looking images. If you compare the MTF charts to the older Tamron 10-24mm VC lens, the newer zoom is far superior optically
the B060 joins the B070 as worthy additions to any Sony APS-C shooters kit. You can go from very wide to medium telephoto with a constant wide aperture and great sharpness across the two lenses. I suspect that Tamron would love if you bought both of them to pair together. You can check out more photos by visiting the image gallery page here.
Conclusion
I concluded my review of the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC RXD on a very positive note, calling it a system seller. It was simply better than any competing lens that I had used on any other platform, and there’s some similar truths to be had about the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD lens. In some ways the B060 is most similar to the very expensive (and very large) Fujinon XF 8-16mm F2.8 LM WR lens. The Fuji is obviously a wider, more extreme instrument, but, like the Tamron, it has a constant F2.8 aperture and weather sealing. Most competing zoom lenses are either variable aperture zooms or have an F4 aperture. The Tamron is a far more practical lens, however, weighing a little over a third as much and costing less than half as much.
The B060 has a nice (if plain) build with thorough weather sealing, great autofocus, and has really fantastic image quality across the zoom range. It is compact, lightweight, and handles great. Not a lot to complain about, really.
My list of complaints is brief. I would have preferred a little better flare resistance, and would like an AF/MF switch on the barrel, but outside of that, this lens was pretty much nailed by Tamron. Here’s hoping that they continue to fill in the gaps for Sony APS-C shooters who have had a long season without much attention. 2021 has been a good year thus far, however, with the two Tamron zooms along with the Samyang AF 12mm F2 all providing great options for APS-C shooters. More, please!
Pros:
Great wide angle zoom range
Maintains F2.8 aperture
Relatively compact and lightweight
Good build with weather sealing
Fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus
Shares a 67mm filter thread with other Tamron lenses on Sony
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
2021 has been the year that Tamron has adjusted their aim to include a very important (and oft-overlooked) space – Sony APS-C E-mount. There are a LOT of Sony APS-C mirrorless shooters out there, and despite the large audience, there are relatively few APS-C specific releases. Not from Sony or from third parties other than the multitude of cheap manual focus lenses that pop up every few months. That seems to be changing, though. At the beginning of 2021, Tamron released their 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD fast aperture standard zoom lens, which I noted in my review might now be the biggest advantage for Sony in the APS-C space. The B070 (as Tamron refers to the lens) is a well made, fast focusing, optically excellent zoom that pretty much has it all. But Tamron clearly wasn’t done, as we now see a new APS-C for the middle of the year, this time a wide angle zoom that continues the tradition of a constant fast aperture of F2.8. The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD (which Tamron calls the B060) is another intriguing addition to the Sony APS-C mirrorless space.
Tamron loves its initials in their lens names, so let’s sort out that alphabet soup. Di III is their designation for a mirrorless lens design, and, in this case, the addition of -A at the (Di III-A) refers to their development for APS-C mirrorless. RXD refers to the focus motor. I’m a fan of the RXD motors, as in every application I’ve tested, I’ve seen quiet, fast, and precise autofocus.
There are few legitimate alternatives to this lens, as there are few wide angle lenses on Sony APS-C E-mount, and only one comparable zoom. The Sony E 10-18mm F4 OSS has a similar though not identical zoom range, a smaller maximum aperture of F4, but compensates by having optical stabilization. The two lenses are priced similarly, though the Tamron is more of a premium lens due to having a “professional-grade” maximum aperture, a stronger optical performance, and having a weather sealed build. Outside of the Sony 10-18mm, there really aren’t many options. There’s some overlap in focal range in the E 16-55mm F2.8 G, which is Sony’s premium player in this group, though that lens is more of a standard zoom and doesn’t go particularly wide. It is also priced about $500 higher, so I see that lens more as a competitor to the 17-70mm F2.8 from Tamron. On the lower end of the price spectrum there is another new option – the Samyang AF 12mm F2 that I recently reviewed. That lens might be a legitimate alternative if you don’t need the zoom range and want to save some money. But Tamron knows its business, and I like that they are utilizing a lot of their skills honed on their very well received Sony full frame zooms for these new lenses in the APS-C space, as this is another premium option for Sony shooters. It is a lens worth its roughly $830 USD price tag? Check out either my text review or video reviews to find out.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me an early loaner of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. I used both my Sony a6400 and Sony Alpha 1 in APS-C mode to do this review.
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I have a serious soft spot for my vintage glass (I’ve got about 12 vintage lenses that I still use adapted modern cameras). Some of my favorites are classics from Japanese-made Takumars, Soviet-made Helios lenses, and German-made Zeiss (and their derivatives). While many of those classic lenses have greater flaws than modern lenses, they also tend to have greater character, which translates into truly beautiful images. Here are a few of my favorites that I’ve shot with some of my vintage glass:
Some of the color rendition, bokeh quality, and even lovable optical defects like flare patterns or “swirly bokeh” of these lenses are pretty special. Not clinical or boring. I see a lot to love in them, but unfortunately many of them do share one less-than-desirable quality: they don’t have a great minimum focus distance/reproduction ratio. My worse offender in this regard is the Super Takumar 150mm F4. It’s minimum focus distance is an astoundingly bad 6 feet (1.8M).
Umm, wow. As a byproduct, this represents maximum magnification for the bare lens:
Not exactly a macro shot! But by employing the macro focusing heliod in the Vello adapter, I’m able to focus much closer and end up with this result:
Still not exactly a macro shot, but considering what we started with, that’s an impressive improvement. And, if we were to choose a lens that isn’t as bad of an offender, like, say, the SMC Takumar 55mm F1.8, we start with this minimum focus result:
Use the Vello adapter, and you can get this degree of magnification:
That’s more like it. It gets even better if I use a lens with even a moderately good minimum focus distance like my SMC Takumar 28mm F3.5, which can focus down to 1.4 feet (40cm). I was able to achieve this degree of magnification with it:
That is getting very close to 1:1 reproduction ratio.
So how does it work?
The best way to answer that question is by watching this brief video and seeing it in action:
Put simply, however, the Vello LA-NEX-M42-M (the official name) adapter works by employing a ring that looks like a focus ring on the adapter.
When you turn that ring, the adapter itself extends out, which functions much like extension tubes. As the lens gets physically further from the camera sensor its ability to focus down more closely increases. At the extreme limit any lens can focus down much closer than its original minimum focus distance, though at the expense of the ability to focus to infinity. Unlike extension tubes, however, you can retain infinity focus simply by reversing the “focus ring” and bringing the lens back to the normal distance from the sensor. The adapter is no larger than a typical adapter, so you can use it as you would any other…until you want to focus closer. You first focus the lens down to minimum focus, then rotate the ring and extend the adapter until you are at your desired focus distance.
And how sharp is this combination near minimum focus? Very good, I would say.
Looks pretty sharp to me…and that’s on a 42MP Sony a7RIII body.
So, any issues? There are the typical issues with adapting old lenses. No electronics, so EXIF data won’t be communicated. I also noted an odd light reflection in an image on a couple of occasions in unique lighting conditions (more of a back-lit situation). There wasn’t much to complain about, though, and I really found that the Vello adapter extended the usefulness of these lenses for very little cost involved.
So, if you are looking for a fun and inexpensive way to maximize the potential of your vintage M42 mount lenses, considering picking up the Vello macro adapter and see what kind of magic you can make!
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Keywords: Macro, Vello, M42, Sony E, E-mount, Vello M42 to E Adapter, Vello M42-Nex-M, Vello Macro Adapter Review, Vello M42 Macro Adapter Review, Dustin Abbott, Takumar, Helios, SMC Takumar, Extension Tubes, Sony FE, Sony Alpha, Sony a7riii
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Samyang/Rokinon have long been known for making budget, manual everything lenses. I reviewed my first Rokinon lens in 2013, and have reviewed 9 others since (this will be the 11th Samyang/Rokinon lens I’ve reviewed). In the last two years Samyang has shifted to developing some autofocus lenses, and this is the second of their autofocus lenses (AF) for Sony FE (full frame mirrorless) that I have reviewed. The new priority at Korean lens maker Samyang is written all over the box of their newest lenses…literally. The letters AF festoon it in giant print on multiple sides. After years of being known as makers of relatively inexpensive manual focus prime lenses often sporting surprisingly good optics, Samyang has shifted gears and has started to develop autofocus lenses. They started on Sony’s FE (full frame E-mount), but have diversified now with a few AF lenses for Canon EF and one for Nikon F (as of the time of this review). The Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 is Samyang’s 4th lens for Sony FE, and it may just be their best thus far.
I reviewed the AF 50mm F1.4 earlier this year, and, while I liked the excellent light transmission and soft, artful bokeh, I criticized the lens for being fairly soft at wide apertures, having a lot of chromatic aberrations, and for having buzzy, somewhat unsophisticated autofocus. While Samyang’s autofocus development remains a work in progress, Samyang’s engineers have made great strides since the AF 50mm F1.4 I reviewed at the beginning of the year and the AF 35mm is a much more sophisticated lens. The 35AF (as we’ll refer to it) shows tremendous amounts of maturation in overall lens design.
There are few lenses that I personally enjoy better than a good 35mm lens. If I had to choose a single “walk around” focal length for full frame it would be 35mm. You can create some nice bokeh when getting close to your subject, shoot portraits without much distortion if you step back and little, and 35mm serves as a great landscape focal length, too. As a result, I have excited to test this Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 lens because 1) I love wide aperture 35mm lenses 2) I’ve heard good things about the optics and 3) because I don’t have a 35mm on Sony (I adapt my Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II). There are three major 35mm F1.4 options now on Sony, the very expensive Sony Zeiss Distagon 35mm F1.4, the medium-priced Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART, and this Samyang AF 35mm F1.4, which is the least expensive option.
Before progressing deeper, I’ll note that the copy I’m reviewing has the V3 firmware and this review (and my observations on autofocus) will be based on that. Because Samyang is relatively new to producing autofocus motors and autofocusing lenses, their autofocus performance is a moving target, as firmware releases have improved both focus speed and general performance. That’s great news if you are a lens owner, but as a reviewer I only have the opportunity to freeze a certain moment in time and record it in a review. The good news is that Samyang’s engineers will receive feedback based on my review and others like it, and that helps to translate into better performance for potential owners of the lenses.
Firmware updates can be had by using their Lens Station. To date this has proven a little difficult to find at times in North America, though it’s fairly easy to find on Ebay. It’s worth investing in if you are interested in Samyang lenses, and those who have owned AF lenses and had their firmware updated over time have noted fairly dramatic improvements. You can make some other tweaks to lens behavior by using the Lens Station as well. It’s encouraging that the Samyang 35AF, though a fairly recent lens, has already received two firmware updates.
The Samyang (also distributed under the Rokinon brand in Western countries) comes at a great price when compared to the Sony Zeiss Distagon 35mm F1.4. It lists at $799 in the US market, but I’ve frequently seen it at prices as low as the $500 range. The Sony/Zeiss typically hovers around the $1500 range – 3x as much at the moment. That makes the 35AF a compelling option based on price…but does it perform well enough to get your hard-earned money?
Prefer to watch your reviews? I’ve got you covered with my detailed final verdict video here:
Samyang 35AF Build, Design, and Handling
There is a mix of good and bad on this front, but the basic build and design of the lens is actually all good. This is a sleek, nicely made, extremely modern-looking lens that has great presence on the camera. The biggest build objections are going to be what is missing: no switches (arguably unimportant), but, more importantly, no weather-sealing of any kind. This video breaks down what’s there and what’s missing, and gives you an interactive look at everything.
The 35AF is a substantial lens that is actually a tiny bit larger than the Sony/Zeiss lens. It 2.99″ (75.9mm) in diameter (so sports a common 67mm filter thread) vs the slightly thicker Sony/Zeiss at 3.09″ (78.5mm), which has a 72mm filter thread. While slimmer, the Samyang is a bit longer at 4.53″ (115mm) than the 4.41″ (112mm) of the Sony/Zeiss. The 35AF is even a bit heavier, at 1.42lb/645g vs 1.39lb/630g. This size and weight is due to being 1) optically strong and 2) solidly built with what feels like some metal alloys in the lens barrel.
As noted, the lens has a very sleek design, due in part to having nothing other than the manual focus ring on it. No switches of any kind. The Sony/Zeiss does sport an AF/MF switch (which is nice to have) while also have a second switch to declick the aperture (also nice to have). I personally keep the down direct on the rear D-Pad mapped to a quick switch to MF to make up the difference with lenses, so that’s not a huge deal to me, though I do prefer having the physical switch. There is no option for declicking the aperture, as, unlike the Sony/Zeiss, there is no aperture ring on the lens. This will significant for some videographers, particularly those who do employ techniques like aperture racking, but for most shooters this will not be missed. I would recommend looking elsewhere if you are seriously into video. The Zeiss Loxia 35mm F2 is probably the better option for filmmakers, though the Sony/Zeiss Distagon may also be appealing.
The tradeoff for having not switches or rings on the barrel is that if you like minimalism, this arguably one of the better looking lenses on the Sony platform. It has a sleek, anodized look, broken up only by the wide, tightly ribbed manual focus ring and an elegant red accent ring near the front like a Canon L series lens…though arguably a little classier. The lens looks and feel great!
The 35AF, like most mirrorless lenses, is designed with a “focus-by-wire” manual focus system. With such lenses there is not direct coupling between the focus ring and internal focus elements. Instead input from the MF ring is registered and run through the focus motor itself, which then drives the elements forward or backward to achieve manual focus. Due to the nature of this focus system there is no “hard stops” at minimum or infinity…the ring can be moved endlessly with no limit on either end. The “feel” of these focus rings still varies widely, however, with some easier to use than others. On Sony, MF is aided by two things. First, when input is detected on the focus ring on the 35AF, the selected focus area will automatically be magnified in the viewfinder or LCD screen to help you visually confirm focus, and a digital distance scale will also be displayed to help you determine the distance to the subject. You can further augment this with focus overlays if desired.
The focus ring moves fine (smoothly) for major focus shifts, though I find that it isn’t as precise as what I would like when fine tuning focus. It’s almost as if there is a tiny amounts of drag or stickiness when trying to finely tune focus, and so instead of moving with even resistance you feel an ever-so-tiny catch and release, catch and release. Note that I’m trying to explain something that is very small, but I do find that I don’t enjoy precision MF as much as what I do on some other lenses. It’s not bad, but neither is it exceptional.
As previously noted, the 35AF does not have weather sealing. It has a nice metal lens mount, but gasket there to help keep out dust and moisture, nor does it have internal sealing. On Samyang’s most recent autofocus lenses for DSLRs they have started to include weather sealing, so I’m hopeful that future lenses for Sony FE (85mm and 135mm, please!) might include this.
The lens has nine rounded aperture blades which do retain a circular shape at wider apertures, but when stopped down to F5.6 or smaller you can see the nonagonal shape.
There is no image stabilization in the lens, but neither is there in any of the competing lenses on Sony, either. This is handled in body by Steady Shot, and it works well enough to allow for low shutter speeds where desired. I got plenty of keepers around 1/10th second, which, considering the high resolution of the a7R3 that I was testing it on, seems very reasonable. This cat photo is a 1/10th second shutter speed shot, and looks fine…and that’s with a living subject…and things that breathe move.
You focus as closely as near one foot (30cm) and achieve a maximum magnification figure of 0.17x (1:5.9). That lags a bit behind the 0.18x of the Sony/Zeiss, but not enough to be meaningful. This is still useful for getting close to a subject and blowing out the background:
Though I do wish it were weather-sealed, this is a beautifully made lens that feels more premium than what its price suggests. I own the Sony/Zeiss Planar 50mm F1.4, and the Samyang AF35 feels more similar than different to that lens.
Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 FE Autofocus Performance
Autofocus is the new priority at Samyang, and outside of their premium XP series of manual focus lenses (which are pretty fantastic), pretty much all their recent lenses have been autofocus lenses. As I noted earlier, autofocus remains a work in progress at Samyang. My review of the 50mm F1.4 criticized the somewhat crude nature of the autofocus motor, which was somewhat buzzy, slower than competing lenses, and with a general lack of sophistication. Samyang debuted a new focus system in the 35AF, however, which they call Dual LSM (Linear Sonic Motor). If I understand correctly, there are actually two motors engaged in the focus process, which produced faster, MUCH quieter, and generally accurate autofocus.
There’s no question that the autofocus is now much quieter. Gone is the buzzy sound of a focus motor that seemed to be laboring. Autofocus is achieved very quickly, with only the faintest sound of tiny pulses as the lens rapidly locks focus. The loudest sound you will hear single shot mode is the sound of focus being locked. AF-S (or DMF) are my preferred focus modes with the 35AF. It behaves nearly identically to my very expensive Sony/Zeiss Planar lens in AF-S, providing near instant, very quiet focus results. Focus precision is generally excellent as well.
If I were commenting solely on single shot AF, I would assert that the Samyang 35AF works pretty much equally well to other lenses in my kit or that I’ve tested. But there are still some quirks to be worked out when you switch over to AF-C (continuous autofocus). Autofocus continues to be rapid, but there is a little more noise in general, mostly because the focus motor refuses to lock and settle, even if the subject is static. There are near constant micro-pulses, and you can visually see focus settling, slightly defocusing, and then refocusing. This is not a major defocus (focus rack); it happens on a micro level. The problem comes if you happen to take a photo during one of those split second when focus is doing a micro-pulse. The three image crops below were taken a few seconds apart. Two well focused results bracket a very poorly focused result. The difference is that microadjustment.
I was intrigued by this focus pattern, so I ran a series of real-world portrait tests to determine what the issue was. I first mounted the camera on a tripod and then used EYE AF to focus on my model, and had her sit still while I defocused in between shots. I shot with F1.4. so the margin for error would be very high. I had a near perfect run over 30 shots even as I changed different focus modes (AF-C all points active, AF-C Flexi-point, and AF-S). I put the Sony/Zeiss Planar on and got essentially identical behavior. Here’s a look at 9 images from the AF-C series:
Very consistent. Okay, so why didn’t I see as consistent a result in real world shooting in AF-C mode? I decided to introduce a few more variables. I shot two more comparisons, both at F1.4 again, in AF-C mode using EYE-AF, but this time I shot handheld and had my subject shift poses between each shot. In the first series I had SteadyShot ON (IBIS). My keeper rate dropped (I showed you a few frames above) to about 40% perfectly focused and 70% acceptably focused.
I then tried the same test with SteadyShot OFF. I saw somewhat improved results, with about 58% perfectly focused and 85% acceptably focused. I also saw, on some shots, some evidence of a bit of motion blur (shutter speed was at 1/80th second, which is enough to eliminate most camera shake but not enough to eliminate subject movement). Here’s the final six of those frames to show you the variables:
IBIS being on or off did make a difference, so I surmise that perhaps the act of stabilizing the lens may cause slightly more of that microadjusting. You may notice a mild improvement in situations where you don’t need SteadyShot by turning it off, or that may not be a factor at all with your camera and lens combination. Now, to be fair, it is often possible to visually see when focus is more accurate and click the shutter then, and obviously a smaller aperture and deeper depth of field would hide some of those minor variances. Still, with the V3 firmware on the 35AF that I was reviewing, I did prefer its behavior in AF-S mode for stills. It behaves as well as my Sony lenses in AF-S, essentially as fast, quiet, and accurate as them. It is capable of being a lovely portrait lens:
At smaller apertures it can turn even a casual shot on a street into something special:
I’ve given Samyang’s engineers feedback on the AF-C performance, and was told that they are aware and continuing to work to refine that behavior, so here’s hoping for more improvement in future firmware updates.
I was actually less concerned over AF-C performance during video capture. The 35AF did a fairly good job of tracking my face (there are some clips in the video review that show this), and, with proper settings, I found that I got a very good AF performance while shooting one of my static, on camera segments (check out the intro portion of this video, which was shot using the Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 on the Sony a7R3). That video review also has some video clips taken of other scenes as well, and the lens does pretty well during video servo AF.
There’s no question that the Samyang 35AF is a huge step forward for Samyang in the quality and consistency of focus. Their Dual LSM focus motor system in this lens is a very positive development that shows much more sophistication than the last autofocusing Samyang lens I used. I do think there is still room for improvement (particularly when shooting in AF-C), but it does appear that Samyang is committed to supporting their lenses and continuing development in this area. I’m encouraged by what I’ve seen.
Samyang 35AF Image Quality
The best way to break down the image quality from the Samyang 35AF is by watching this video where I interactively break down its performance with real-world images and controlled tests:
I break image quality down in two main categories: resolution and rendering. Resolution covers the nuts and bolts of lens sharpness and the factors that impact that, including things like longitudinal chromatic aberrations, distortion, and vignette. Under the rendering heading I look at other aspects of image quality, from color to aberrations to bokeh, flare resistance, and more.
Resolution
The only 35mm F1.4 lens that I had on hand to compare the Samyang to was what I consider to be the best autofocusing 35mm lens out there – the Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II (a lens that I consider their best prime lens under 200mm, though the new Canon RF 50mm F1.2L may convince me otherwise when I review it). It may be a little unfair to compare the 35AF to a Canon lens that costs at least 3x as much, though I felt the Samyang didn’t fall apart when compared to this lofty competition.
Let’s first take a look at the global image from the Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 and 42MP Sony a7R3. While Sony does support third party lens corrections and does at times embed corrections into even RAW files, I feel like the RAW files are arriving fairly uncorrected. When I compare the JPEG and RAW versions of the same file, for example, this is what I see:
So, there is definitely no correction of distortion and vignette automatically taking place on the RAW files, though the JPEG looks fairly well corrected. What we can see is a moderate amount of barrel distortion and vignette. If I compare to the Canon lens, the vignette is heavier on the Canon but the distortion is milder.
When I compared the Samyang AF 50mm F1.4 to the Sony/Zeiss Planar and 55mm F1.8 Sonnar lenses, I discovered that the Samyang actually had better light transmission than both of them. It produced a brighter image with equal settings. The AF35 also shares this strength, clearly, as though the Canon lens metered with a 1/3rd stop slower shutter speed (1/2000th vs 1/2500th for the Samyang), the Samyang’s histogram was still shifted further left (brighter) than the Canon. I would estimate the light transmission advantage to be somewhere near one half stop for the Samyang…and that’s a good thing!
The Canon’s superior contrast and resolution can be easily seen at F1.4, however. In the center of the frame the resolution difference is not significant, though you can definitely see that the Canon has superior contrast. There is a slight haze to textures that show the superior microcontrast of the premium Canon lens.
That advantage is more pronounced near the edge of the frame, where the Samyang shows a great drop-off in performance than the Canon.
I also noted a slight centering issue where the right side seemed sharper/better focused than the left. I ran some tests to see if it was a centering issue or field curvature issue where the lens struggles to focus both sides of the frame identically. I found that focusing on the center (where I typically focus for these tests) produced a stronger right side performance than left side (though not by a huge margin). If I focused on the left side, the left side was sharper but the center and right sides were slightly softer. If I focused on the right side, the right side and center looked great but the left side was noticeably out of focus. A slight decentering issue seems the to be the problem, though fortunately at smaller apertures it less apparent and doesn’t often seem to affect real world results. This shot, for example, shows nice sharpness at F5.6 on either edge of the image:
I should also point out that this image was taken at 1/15th of a second, which shows the value of Sony’s SteadyShot.
The reason for the contrast difference can be seen in this shot, which shows that Canon has better control of the longitudinal chromatic aberrations that do cheat a lens of some microcontrast:
You can see some green fringing from the Samyang that the Canon lacks, and thus the Canon shows a little more “bite” on the plane of focus. The 35AF has much better aberrations control than what the 50AF did, though. Stopping the Samyang down to F2 shows a definite improvement in contrast.
A peak at the edge shows both haze and vignette lifting, allowing for a sharper looking image.
Stopping on down to F2.8 reveals a now excellent edge performance, with the vignette and haze fully cleared and sharp, crisp textures.
If we check back in with the Canon now, we find that there is little to distinguish them even on the edge. I would ever-so-slightly favor the Canon’s result, but I don’t think it would detectable without the side-by-side comparison. That’s impressive considering the price difference between the two.
This real-world, three dimensional subject comparison shot shows that if I did not label the two lenses, you would have a hard time distinguishing between the two.
Here’s a couple of real world F2 results that show that this lens can produce gorgeous results in more typical shooting conditions.
Stopping it down to landscape apertures allows it to produce highly detailed images that can really shine:
The AF35 is one of Samyang’s best lenses optically. It delivers a strong performance in resolution and contrast, and, while outclassed by the superior Canon lens, it isn’t by much.
Rendering
What about the other metrics of image quality? One of the things that I personally do if I’m considering a lens that’s been on the market for a while is to look at groups on Flickr or other places that are dedicated to that lens. I like to see the kinds of images that people have been able to produce with it, for, while the end results vary according to the individual’s talent and ability to post-process, I start to get a feel for what a lens is capable of. It was the general rendering of this lens that drew me to it.
We’ve noted that the lens delivers quite a strong resolution performance, though wide aperture contrast is held back a bit by longitudinal chromatic aberrations. There aren’t any additional aberrations, however, as I find no evidence of lateral CA in real world photos. You will spot a little green fringing in some shots, but, as you can see from this photo, the lens delivers fairly crisp results even at F1.4:
Here’s another photo that I find interesting that I shot at F1.4 in challenging conditions:
I typically find Samyang glass renders slightly warm, and I think that is the case here, though it seems fairly mild to me. Here’s a look at the color rendition from the lens under controlled lighting.
It seemed a little warmer than the Canon lens when I used them side by side, but I don’t see a significant difference when compared to the Sony Planar lens:
While I’ve mostly been shooting in winter, I have found a few bright moments to catch some color, and it looks fine to me:
How about flare resistance? I shot these tests on an extremely bright day with fresh snow reflecting a lot of light. I found some mild ghosting effects (look at the lower third of the image), but they didn’t seem particularly pronounced. Stopped down (F11) the ghosting pattern has more a more defined pattern, but it doesn’t grow to destructive proportions and contrast has held very strong. In the third image (strongly backlit at F1.4), I found contrast has held up very well.
The 35AF is not completely resistant to flare, but this is an area where it fares better than the Canon (which I’ve owned for years and have a lot of experience with). I give it good marks in this regard.
Finally, let’s talk about the bokeh. It’s a slightly mixed bag. In general I quite like it, as it allows objects in either the foreground or the background to nicely melt away.
You can get close to subjects and really create a creamy background that looks very nice. I even find the transition zone renders fairly well and doesn’t get too busy.
The Achilles’s heel of the lens is if bright lights are part of the defocused area, because that’s when the concentric circles show up. Commonly called “onion bokeh”, this is a look that I’m personally not a big fan of.
You can reduce that look through post-processing, but if you shoot a lot of shots with these type of lights in the background, this may not be the lens for you. If you don’t, I suspect that you will like the bokeh from this lens just fine.
I’ve used the 35AF for portraits, for events, for general purpose and city work, and for landscapes. It’s a focal length that works well for a lot of stuff, and it’s a lens I’ve reached for often during my review period. The Canon 35L II is optically superior at wide apertures and is slightly better corrected, but the argument for the Samyang is the same as it would be for the Sony/Zeiss Distagon 35mm F1.4, namely that it provides most of the same performance for around a third of the price. The difference between the Samyang and the Distagon would be even less pronounced, as the Canon is superior to the Sony lens.
My time with the Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 left me encouraged about Samyang’s future. They have significantly improved the autofocus performance with a much more sophisticated focus motor that is faster, quieter, and more competent in operation. As I noted, I do think there are still a few quirks to work out with AF-C performance, but the lens performs quite well overall (particularly if you use AF-S). Optically it delivers at least 90% of the expensive competitors at something closer to 35-40% of the price, so that makes it a strong value proposition. This is just the kind of the lens that has been needed in the Sony FE mount – strong performing third party alternatives to those who can’t justify (or can’t afford) the much higher price for the premium option. I could not and would not positively recommend the AF 50mm F1.4, but I can recommend the AF35 with no hesitation.
Pros:
Nice build and a great looking lens
Much improved autofocus that is fast and quiet…particularly in AF-S mode
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Use Code “DUSTINHDR” to get $10 off ($15 CDN) Luminar and/or AuroraHDR
Keywords: Samyang AF, Rokinon AF, Samyang 35 1.4, Samyang 35 F1.4, Samyang AF 35mm, Samyang AF 35mm 1.4, F1.4, F/1.4, AF, AF 35mm, 35mm, Dustin Abbott, Samyang AF 35mm review, Samyang 35 1.4 Review, Rokinon 35 1.4 review, autofocus, image quality, sample photos, video test, video review, Sony, FE, E-mount, a7R3, a7riii, a7iii, a73
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
Samyang/Rokinon have long been known for making budget, manual everything lenses. I reviewed my first Rokinon lens in 2013, and have reviewed 9 others since (this will be the 11th Samyang/Rokinon lens I’ve reviewed). In the last two years Samyang has shifted to developing some autofocus lenses, and this is the second of their autofocus lenses (AF) for Sony FE (full frame mirrorless) that I have reviewed. There are few lenses that I personally enjoy better than a good 35mm lens. If I had to choose a single “walk around” focal length for full frame it would be 35mm. You can create some nice bokeh when getting close to your subject, shoot portraits without much distortion if you step back and little, and 35mm serves as a great landscape focal length, too. As a result, I have excited to test this Samyang AF 35mm F1.4 lens because 1) I love wide aperture 35mm lenses 2) I’ve heard good things about the optics and 3) because I don’t have a 35mm on Sony (I adapt my Canon EF 35mm F1.4L II). There are three major 35mm F1.4 options now on Sony, the very expensive Sony Zeiss Distagon 35mm F1.4, the medium-priced Sigma 35mm F1.4 ART, and this Samyang AF 35mm F1.4, which is the least expensive option. While Samyang’s autofocus development remains a work in progress, they have made great strides since the AF 50mm F1.4 I reviewed at the beginning of the year and the AF 35mm is a much more sophisticated lens. I like it better optically and definitely find the autofocus performance much better. The images in this gallery will help you see just what this lens is capable of, and I’ll follow that up with my review that will highlight the strengths and weaknesses and help you decided whether or not it is the lens for you.
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Great News! I can now offer a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Use Code “DUSTINHDR” to get $10 off ($15 CDN) Luminar and/or AuroraHDR
Keywords: Samyang AF, Rokinon AF, Samyang 35 1.4, Samyang 35 F1.4, Samyang AF 35mm, Samyang AF 35mm 1.4, F1.4, F/1.4, AF, AF 35mm, 35mm, Dustin Abbott, Samyang AF 35mm review, Samyang 35 1.4 Review, Rokinon 35 1.4 review, autofocus, image quality, sample photos, video test, video review, Sony, FE, E-mount, a7R3, a7riii, a7iii, a73
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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