Today we're talking about this new lens from Tamron--
this is the 35-150mm f/2-2.8.
As usual, disclosure wise,
this video is not sponsored by Tamron.
They don't get any say in this video.
They didn't give me any money to make this video,
but this video does have a sponsor, though,
and that Storyblocks.
Also have you guys heard of Dustin Abbott?
He is another YouTuber that makes videos like this.
In fact, he already made a video on this lens
and I happened to watch it.
And that guy's making great, in-depth videos.
So if you haven't checked out his channel
or if you haven't checked it out in a while, go check him out.
Especially with this lens as a good starting point
because I'm not going to cover everything that he already
covered because I want to encourage you to go check out
his video because they're great,
He focused a bit more on
the photographic side of things.
I think that's what he tends to do.
So I'm gonna try to fill in some of those gaps with video,
and I can also, you know, validate some of
the tests that I've done that he did as well.
But seriously, great creator. Go check out his videos.
Okay, a quick overview of the build quality, it's, it's good,
It feels solid and rugged.
It's really, well, weather sealed.
And this is unlike those other Tamrons,
the-- the zooms that have a four 20-75,
that kind of thing. This feels dense and heavy.
Kinda reminds me of like a Sigma lens like, you know,
the big, heavy Sigma lenses.
The zoom direction, though,
is the opposite of the Sigma lenses, has an external zoom,
by the way, I was asked about that on Twitter,
but it goes sort of clockwise to zoom just like
the Sony native lenses, unlike the Sigma lens,
which is the opposite.
So if you have Sony and Tamron,
you won't be backwards all the time
where Lindsey over here on the zoom is using
a Sigma 24-70 and it zooms the opposite way.
And in a minute I'm going to switch lenses with her to use
this lens. And I think you might find that it might screw
her up because the zooms go the opposite way.
Anyway, it's a small difference,
but I noticed it as a as a video shooter,
it's 1,165 grams,
so about two and a half pounds,
which puts it a little bit heavier than the new
70-200 from Sony F2.8 MK.II,
but lighter than their original 70-200 F2.8.
And the front filter thread is 82mm.
Now regarding the variable aperture at 35mm,
it's an f/2. But then as you zoom through to 85 mm,
it stops down to F2.8 with separate stops in between
there and then it stays at f/2.8 all the way up to 150.
But when it comes to the minimum aperture at 150,
you can stop all the way down f/22.
But then at about 95 mm,
you can only stop down to f/20, at 70 mm about F/18.
And then by the time you hit about 45 mm,
it's an f/16 until 35 mm.
Now about the zoom ring,
which has a lock which I like and the focus ring
are well dampened. They're nice to turn
and they're very smooth, and the focus ring,
as you can see from these two pieces of tape
that I have on here has quite a long throw.
If you look at one and then look at where
the other one is, it's about 180 degrees around the lens,
which you don't normally get that long
of a throw on sort of a hybrid photo lens.
And it's pretty linear
I found too. It might be perfectly linear.
It's hard cause I don't really have
a perfectly scientific test for this.
But what it is, I focused on something close,
put a piece of tape on it and then focused
on something quite far and put another piece of tape on it.
And then I went fast and slow and tried
a whole bunch of different ways to mess it up with
a nonlinear focus. If you go fast and slow,
it has acceleration that will throw off your focus.
But this one, every time I landed on a piece of tape,
no matter how I moved it, it was in focus at the two points.
So I think the focus is really linear
and it doesn't have hard stops. So consider that.
But despite that, it was easy to repeat focus and I found
the manual focusing experience excellent on this lens.
I also found it quite decently parfocal,
which I was surprised by considering, you know,
the focal range and the maximum aperture.
But whether I focused at 35mm then zoomed all
the way to 150 or focused on 150 pulled out to 85,
it seemed to maintain focus on even
the smallest details doing that.
So I think at least my copy of the lens seems to be pretty,
pretty well parfocal, which is great.
Now, in Dustin's video, he covered
the photo autofocus quite extensively.
Again, go watch his video and
I agree that in my experience, anyway, for a single shot,
it focused pretty much instantly.
It's using Tamron's best linear autofocus motor
and it performs well.
Dustin surmised that maybe it's not the best lens for,
you know, high action sports,
and you should probably use a dedicated lens for that.
Maybe like Sony's new 70-200.
But the versatility here can probably get the job done,
and it's a viable choice.
I would say on the video side of things that
I have confirmed similar results to what Dustin found,
but in photo, which is that it does the job most of
the time in most scenarios,
and especially in that sort of middling range where if you
have a subject that's not super close, you know,
it'll track them really well.
The only time I found that it sort of fell apart is when
I ran at the camera really quick and
I got right in that close focusing range.
It took an extra second for it
to focus where something like the 70-200 from Sony,
the new one didn't really suffer like that.
So again, only the extreme situations does this fall short.
But in most I would say normal pulls and normal operation.
It does the job really well. And now to demonstrate this,
as well as some other features I'm excited to share with
you, I'm going to throw it on camera number two,
which I have an idea in mind,
actually use this as the second angle zoom lens.
I think it might be perfect for a job like that.
Right now on that camera, as I mentioned.
We're using a 24-70,
this is it at 24mm and then all
the way zoomed in at 70mm looks like this.
So you can get an idea of how tight we can get,
but now we're going to switch it.
See what that focal length looks like.
See how the autofocus performs and talk
a bit about focus breathing.
Okay, so the Tamron is on there now.
This is 35mm, though, so we're tighter
than we were at 24, but we can reach further.
So I think we can actually back the camera up.
Let's do that now. This is it at 35mm.
And then I guess you just want to slowly pull it into 150.
So I don't really have anything here to show you,
here's my teleprompter remote,
so we can get probably much tighter than we could.
Are you still going? Oh, that's pretty good.
Look at that. Pull it all the way back out rapidly.
Crash. Woo. Okay. So yeah,
that's pretty versatile for that angle.
And when it comes to noise,
Lindsey's now a little further away with her noisy Ninja V
recorder, so we get a little further from
the shot too, so that's good.
Okay, now something I wanted to talk about was focus breathing,
which I think is excellent on this lens.
Okay, so we switched the lens over to manual focus now
and keep an eye on this. C stand here as we-- Lindsey
if you can pull focus all the way to one extreme looking
for breathing here and then come all the way back to
the other extreme.
Now we do the same thing, but 150mm
and we're going to look at this light here,
so rack focus all the way to one extent.
And then all the way back to the other. Perfect.
So as you can see, I think the focus breathing control
on this lens is excellent, I feel like in Dustin's video,
he actually undersold it a little bit, he said.
You know that it was good, but not great.
Maybe there's a little bit sample variance, I don't think.
I hope not. But my version is excellent when it comes
to focus breathing. That's all I can say.
I was really pleased with it, especially compared
to the G Masters that I've been reviewing lately.
Okay, now let's do a couple autofocus tests on the fly
because I think this is going to be
a really good practical usage case scenario for this lens,
this you know, sort of off to the side zoom lens thing.
I think it's great for that.
So first of all, I think we're doing eye tracking right now.
And is it tracking me okay?
And then now let's do some touch tracking
for rack focuses, so I'll put this here.
So if you can tap on that and then tap on
the drill behind me.
And then I'll say now,
I guess so that the viewers know when we're doing it,
so tap on this now. And tap on the drill now.
And then tap on this now. And the drill now.
So those look-- and then cancel tracking.
And it's back to my eye, right.
So as you can see, they're fast, they're smooth.
You can adjust that, obviously, if you want to.
I have it on the default,
I think four five-- 4/5 setting on the a1.
But they're consistent and they're fast.
Only time you're going to come into an issue like this,
is if you get really, really close to the lens.
And speaking of that close focusing,
I would say that's one of the major weaknesses
if you want to call it that of this lens,
it's not what the lens is for,
but it doesn't do that, which is that it doesn't have
a very great reproduction ratio in terms of like macro
close focusing. What is interesting, though,
is that it's very consistent throughout the zoom range,
which I appreciate because that's a convenient feature.
But on the wide end,
I think it's a 1-5.7 and on the tele end
like a 1-5.9. So very similar.
But that's not going to get you anywhere near any kind of
macro reproduction, which for me,
even though at 35mm like,
if you think of it as like a fast 35mm 35 f/2,
that's great. But if I buy a fast 35mm,
like the 35 1.4 G Master,
you can get really close
and get these really interesting,
smooth out of focus, you know,
tiny world detail shots that you can't really do with this
lens, it's not really built for that.
So if that's something you like to do then
the need to augment it with another lens
or if that's all you like to do, this isn't the lens for you.
So it is a weakness.
Just be aware of that,
that whether you're at 35 or 150,
you're not going to get anything too macro-y.
But what is cool about it is that as you zoom,
you can kind of zoom and get closer
and your magnification stays about
the same, the only thing that changes is how physically close
the lens will focus, so it creates actually really smooth,
interesting, you know, I'm used to having
a lens in my hand when I talk about the stuff.
It's weird having it over here.
Anyway, you get the idea not too macro,
but consistent in the reproduction ratio.
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Now, regarding image quality, this is something
that Dustin really covered well. If you want to analyze
the corner sharpness of different apertures
and focal lengths, he's got you completely covered.
What I can say, though, is that I agree with his assessment.
Both the wide end and the telephoto end are very sharp,
with only a minor dip in the middle focal range.
To be honest, this is one area
where I was expecting the lens to falter.
I figured it was too broad of a focal range
and too wide of apertures to keep consistent sharpness.
But I was wrong. It does exceptionally well,
and that sharpness is bolstered by excellent
chromatic aberration performance.
I also wasn't expecting to see almost no longitudinal
fringing, but I'm happy to report that it's tremendously
well controlled in this lens.
Bokeh, when analyzed closely isn't the best I've seen,
definitely not G Master quality.
There's some onion ringing,
and the fact that this is only
a nine bladed diaphragm shows you can see some of
the polygonal edging where the blades meet,
but it's also not terrible
or worth complaining about too much.
And in practical situations, it swirls together nicely,
in my opinion. The same is true for flare.
This lens doesn't have
the best flare control compared to super premium
lenses, but the way the flare does wash across
the scene is actually pretty pleasant.
There's the odd ghosting artifact that I'd suggest
putting the included hood on to help eliminate,
but the contrast reduction is smooth and has artistic merit.
I wasn't afraid of shooting into the sun on this lens,
and the rest of the time the edges are sharp,
the contrast is good, and the colours are rich.
No complaints. Overall,
this is a surprisingly impressive lens.
I was never a huge fan of those other Tamron zooms
for Sony E. While they offered a decent value,
I found they had major shortcomings
and they felt cheaply made.
This lens is the exact opposite.
Sure, it's large and heavy, but what do you expect?
What's more important is that it covers a massive,
useful zoom range with terrific control over
important factors like focus breathing,
chromatic aberration and manual focusing.
And the image quality is way better
and much more pleasing than it has any right to be
considering its versatility.
Honestly, this might be one of
the best hybrid lenses I've ever used.
There's the odd ghosting artifact,
why'd you double take it?
There's the odd ghosting artifact that--
now you delayed again.
There's the odd ghosting artifact that I suggest put--
There's the odd ghosting artifact
that I suggest putting-- I didn't get the line the right.
You did right, that's good. You did a good job.