This is the Tamron's new 20-40mm f/2.8 lens
for Sony E-mount,
and if you would have asked me a couple years ago
to describe my dream lens,
on paper, this would be it.
Let's get undone!
(upbeat music)
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone and it was me all along, Barry.
For disclosure,
Tamron lent me this lens to make this review.
I don't get to keep it,
no money exchanged hands,
and Tamron does not get any input on this video's production
or get to preview it before it's posted.
Essentially, I just wanted to try it for myself
to see if I was gonna buy it
and figured I'd share my thoughts with you along the way.
I've had it for a couple weeks now.
I took it with me to New York as my only glass
to see how it felt as a walk around lens.
And I've used it in a few other applications
that I'll share with you a little later.
I like the build quality of this lens and the handling.
It balances nicely on the latest full frame Sony bodies.
The rings are only lightly dampened,
but they feel good to me,
and I haven't noticed any barrel sag from gravity
pulling out the zoom.
Although this lens actually extends when going to 20 mm,
and is retracted at 40 mm.
The only thing I don't like about the build
is the lack of any switches.
There isn't even an AF/MF switch,
so you're gonna have to do everything on the camera.
The front filter thread is a 67mm
and the lens weighs 365 grams.
Tamron claims that it's moisture resistant
and has several seals to prevent leaks
throughout the barrel.
And even the USB-C port is waterproof.
Now I didn't use it in extremely inclement weather,
but I did have it in the rain for a while,
and it was perfectly fine.
And speaking of that USB-C port,
this is one of my favourite features
of the new Tamron lenses,
including that 35-150mm lens that I adore.
You can connect your lens
to Tamron's software very easily with just a cable,
without needing any kind of docks or adapters
and adjust a bunch of valuable settings on your lens.
The most important ones are the direction and linearity
of your focus ring as well as the throw.
So you can make it completely linear
and set the travel to 90, 180, or even 360 degrees,
which makes manual focusing excellent on this lens.
However, it's not parfocal.
Meaning you don't keep your focus as you zoom.
It's close, but it's not perfect.
It's probably good enough that on a wide shot
you might not notice too much,
but if you shoot anything close up or with a lot of detail
you can see that the focus is off after zooming.
If you're using auto focus, this isn't a big deal
as the VXD linear motors in this lens are fast enough
to keep up with changes in focal length.
Unless you're just crash zooming in and out like a madman,
in which case, this is not the lens for you.
You can close focus down to 17cm or 6.7 inches at 20mm;
and 29cm or 11.4inches at 40mm.
This will give you a maximum reproduction ratio
of approximately 1:4 and 1:5 respectively.
So definitely not a macro lens,
but you can get some reasonably interesting
close focused shots
at the wide end of the lens.
Auto focus performs quite well.
As I mentioned these are Tamron's latest linear motors
so you can rack from minimum to infinity almost instantly.
And the motors are smooth for use in video,
but there is some focus breathing to be aware of.
It's definitely not the worst I've seen,
but it is noticeable in some shots.
I recorded a tape measure here
so you could get a sense of how much of the frame is moving
as you rack focus.
And the results are about the same
at both ends of the zoom range,
but the effect is different because of the magnification
and field of view.
And unfortunately, as far as I'm aware,
there is no support for third-party lenses
with Sony's focus breathing compensation,
so you're stuck with the breathing as is.
But let's put it on my main camera here
and see if it poses an issue in talking-head scenarios.
Okay this is at 20 mm
and then
40 mm
and then we'll pull back to 35.
Okay, so this is that lens set to 35 mm.
I showed you the 20 to 40 zoom range there ahead of time.
I think this is close to the frame that I had set up before.
Let's see how the focus breathing plays.
If we can see it.
If you just move around a little bit with talking head,
it should be tracking my eye.
If I move close,
so it's not too bad.
It seems like the breathing
falls more on the really, really close end.
If I get up close.
Let's see.
Yeah, so it breathed there.
So if you're at a reasonable distance
then these movements
shouldn't be too distracting in the frame.
Like I do see it move a little bit
but it's not as bad as like
when I had the the 35mm G Master on
if I did this, you know, the whole frame
was like coming in and out, so that's not too bad.
One thing I am noticing though
is obviously I had to bump the ISO.
I normally shoot on the 35mm 1.8
and I shoot it at f/2.2.
So I had to bump the ISO and I noticed
that even in New York when I was walking around
in fact the last time I was
in New York I was using a 20 millimeter.
It was the f/1.8 prime from Sony.
And there's a big difference in that one in a third stops.
I'm telling you, when you go
out in an evening or nighttime, you like the 2.8.
I kept having to jack up the ISO
and the shots were noisier and stuff like that.
So, but I mean overall this is, this is fine,
this would work, you know, this is okay, is adequate
I just have a little bit higher iso
I don't love that like a 2.2.
I find the background gives me more separation.
I can go all the way to 1.8, 2.8 on 35mm of this distance.
The background's there like it's
it's only slightly outta focus.
So I don't think I would use it for this shot.
I think I prefer to shoot it
like I said, f/2, f/2.2, somewhere in that zone.
But it looks good as far
as image quality and color and, and again
the focus breathing isn't too bad
and the auto focus is doing well
to smoothly stick to my eye.
So performance wise it's great.
Just comes down to taste whether you need more separation
or you know, you wanna expose differently.
All right, let's talk about image quality.
I've got some choice samples here in light room to go over.
These first two are just to give you representation
of the difference between 20 millimeter and 40 millimeter.
This was more to talk about distortion.
I've noticed that when I was shooting sort of
like architectural stuff in New York
that there is a lot of distortion
which I didn't find as bad on my 20 mil prime
but there aren't correct lens correction profiles yet
for this lens.
So you know, I can try and ma--
I can try to do my own distortion correction
in Lightroom and it works.
But I just wanna let you know
that there is some weird stuff going
on as it currently stands.
So you're gonna have to do that manual if you wanna fix it.
Same with here, just like look at the windows
it's not so bad at 40 mil
but I would say from 20 to 30 it exists.
This one was at 30 mil actually.
And then I did some portraits, goofy portraits
with Ifondo to sort of be able to get a look at the
the bokeh in the background but also see, you know
what the eye sharpness looks like in that kind of thing.
So this one was at 40 mil.
And this also goes to show the magnification differences
and I believe these are both somewhat close focused
like about as close as I get the auto focus to grab the eye.
So this is 40 mil. We can punch in
and this is what the out of focus orbs look like.
And also, yep, reason I, nothing
about this lens screams super sharp, but it's, it's okay.
Like they're all sort of like reasonably sharp
but it's not like 35 millimeter G master sharp
kind of thing, you know?
But we'll get in a more sharpness detail in a minute,
but this is okay.
And then at 20 mil obviously
is a much different perspective.
That distortion comes into play now.
I would say at 40 mil it's not really that distorted at all
kind of almost looks natural.
But then here we're getting a, you know, a different look.
It's still managed to be quite
quite sharp and decent on the eye there, which I like.
And I would say the bokeh is about the same
except for 20 mil.
We can start to see the blades a little bit more
in the out of focus areas.
Both of these were at 2.8, so this is as big and you know
round as the orbs are gonna get on this lens.
And then I don't know what this one is, is this anything?
I think maybe I was messing around with flare.
I have mixed opinions regarding flare on this lens.
It comes with a hood, which is good
because if you manage to catch some flare with this lens
it tends to be really, really, really strong.
I did that test with a flashlight because people request it
and whenever I don't do it, they go, why didn't do that?
Just insane flare.
But sometimes I was shooting directly into the sun.
I think I have an image here
like this and it's extremely well controlled.
The contrast reduction is
is only really kind of like isolated
to this little zone here and we're really punchy for
I would say, you know, 85% of the frame.
So that's great.
But then I have a video clip of me, you know
moving around and then the flare comes back.
So I don't, sometimes it's there, sometimes it's not.
Use the hood if you don't want it at all.
Otherwise take your chances
if you can avoid it by, you know, angle and light source.
Then the coding, this has the second gen coding on it
does an extremely great job
but if you catch it just right
it's like nothing you've ever seen just like whew
like just layers and layers of artifacts
and like ghosting and crazy prismatic effects or whatever.
So I don't know, do with that what you want.
It comes with the hood, use it, I'd recommend it.
Now let's talk about chromatic aberration.
There is some, this is at 20 millimeter
and you can definitely see that we go toward that, you know
blue as we go out to focus this way and a little bit more
on the orange color as we come in this way.
And at 40 mil it's actually a little bit worse I think.
Yeah, like you can see the blue and that amber color here.
And then if we shoot this one is 40 mil looking
for lateral chromatic aberration, which isn't as bad.
This one you can obviously fix just by
you know, de fringing.
But there's a little bit there, but it's, it's not too bad.
But the loca, the previous one where it goes
from foreground to background, that one's harder to remove.
You can really only remove by stopping down.
But another reason
for this shop is to talk about distortion.
If you look at the outer edges here versus the center
we could see there is a little bit of distortion
not 40 mil, but it's not too bad.
But at 20 mil the distortion is much more pronounced
as you can see in the sort of central area here.
But there is a fall off in sharpness, which I've noticed.
So let's go into around 150%
if you look at the 90, which is where I focused.
And then look at the 60 and then the 30 it
it really starts to fall off and out toward the edges.
Like we're pretty much full soft over here
and it's not that much better at 40 mil, this is 40
as we move up toward the edges there's 60
and then you can see significant reduction
in sharpness as we move down.
This is more of a controlled bokeh assessment here
in the studio here with fairy lights.
And I put them in the corners
and we can see that they main at 40 mil.
It maintains its shape
at 2.8 even up into the corners, which is nice.
And again, we're getting similar quality
just a little bit of onion ringing
a little bit of that outer membrane, but not too bad.
But at 20 mil we do start to cut into our shapes here
in the, in the edges and in the corners.
And we can see just a little bit
like I said, of the blades, it's not completely circular.
And this is at 2.8. As we stop down, this is at f/4.0.
We bring the circle back a little bit
and we retain it a little bit better
but now obviously we're starting to see those blades.
And then at F 5.6 it's not really cut off at all anymore.
But now we're really, we're basically looking
at stop signs for the bokeh at this point at a f/5.6.
And then this is just to evaluate the sharpness and color.
This is the 20 to 40 at 20 mil.
And if we punch in right here
which is believe where I focused
let's go to around 200 or so percent.
Looks pretty good, decently sharp.
And then this is the Sony 20 millimeter at f/2.8.
This is the 1.8 lens though, stopped
down to 2.8 and as you can see, it's obviously sharper.
So if you have the prime, the 20 prime, you
you get a better result flick back and forth.
You can see that Sony, Tamron, Sony
it's a bit sharper, but colorwise, if we do sort of a one
of these type of zooms, the colors are pretty good.
I would say, you know, mix and match
good color reproduction matches the Sony.
But again, that sort of fall off toward the edge.
So if we look at this chart over here on the right hand side
of the frame, this is the Sony 20 mil.
And if we compare this to the Tamron, by my eye
the Tamron is definitely looking softer and darker.
There's more vignetting too, it seems.
Here's some sunstars for people who care about that.
These are at f/22. Chromatic aberration
not on a chart, but like outside.
So this is a fence I normally use.
Let me zoom out here so we can see how the focus
you know, into the, into the background gets more blue
and then more warm down here.
You can see this one without even zooming in
like this whole section
of the fence has blue, blue fringing on it.
And same with this shot, this area up here.
You get significant blue
and then starts to get more yellow and amber down here.
And then this one was just to see what
about lateral on an actual object that's sort of back lit.
And again, the fringing isn't too bad laterally
but there is some definitely right there also to talk
about flare a little bit.
No flare.
And then you, you just move slightly
and then you get these like, like I said
strong sort of artifacts in your frame.
But you wouldn't think that from here
to here that all of a sudden you would have just flare.
That's why I'm saying just put the hood on
because you never know.
This one I might have shown for a second earlier
in the video when we talked about macro reproduction
but it's interesting because this is 20 millimeter
at f/2.8 as close as you can focus.
And I was aiming for this water droplet right here, which
you know, sharpness isn't too bad.
I think that it, it did a decent job.
None of these images are edited, by the way.
These are just straight outta the camera.
Yeah, I did, it did okay as far as sharpness
but you can also see some of the character, the lens here
if you're gonna do close focus stuff at 20 mil
you get some very interesting swirly action going
on here a little bit with the
with the bokeh, which is I think actually kind of
creates an interesting effect.
Like I said, it's not as close
as you can get with other lenses, but
at 20 mil you can make some interesting shots
if you want.
I also tested this at home as my webcam lens.
I know some people think it's comical when I talk
about using a full frame camera and lens combo as my webcam
but I like it.
The a7 IV's USB webcam functionality is great
and I like the versatility I have in my small home office.
However, I often can't get the field of view exactly right.
So I thought this 20 to 40 millimeter would be perfect.
Okay, so this is my normal webcam setup.
This is the a7 IV with the 35 millimeter G Master set
to 1.8 and this is the shot.
And I have focus breathing compensation turned on, I think
let me see.
No, I have it turned off
because it was already too tight at 35.
So when I put on focus breathing compensation
because this lens breathes so much
it made it extremely tight.
So that's the disadvantage of this one.
I shouldn't just be using the 35 1.8 lens
but I'm using that one at the studio.
So anyway, you can see the issue I'm having here
it's either too tight or it breathes.
So let's try the Tamron
and see how it does in this situation.
But also pay attention to the background to, you know
how shallow the depth of field is.
Because this isn't just my home office anymore
it's also the nursery and I'm trying to not, you know
make that as apparent in the shot without
using those weird computational ones that you can get
in the calls that just do a terrible job around your hair.
But actually optically I think looks nicer.
Okay, let's switch the lens.
Okay, so at F 2.8 obviously it's darker versus 1.8
so we're have to turn that up to, we'll go with that.
I think I'm at ISO 1250 now
and it's not breathing too badly.
We can just see a little bit over here
on the plant when I move back and forth.
But we also have more control over the zoom obviously
so we can go wide.
That's 20 mil, so this is the total sort
of view of the nursery.
And then you know, 40 mil, that's what the, the 35 looks
like with focus, breathing, compensation turned on.
So it's too tight
but so now I can grab kind of the shot that I want.
Now there isn't quite as much separation between me
and the background though, that's the only problem.
And at 2.8, you know, I mean I can go even tighter to try
and blur it a little bit more
but this is the best I'm gonna get.
So really it just comes down to
whether or not this is adequate for Zoom calls.
It might be actually, you know, for the webcam uses
that that I have for this, this, this isn't too bad
it still kind of looks like a nursery
but I like that I have a little bit more flexibility
in the zoom and at the price.
It's pretty good.
I think for, I don't know what other lens I'm gonna put
on here that can do all this for less
which obviously for webcam I don't wanna spend that much
but it would be great if I could do like f/2.0 on this lens.
But anyway, this is what it looks like.
So to wrap up this lens is not the dream lens
I'd hoped to be.
It's not a bad lens by any means
and it's offered at a very reasonable price
but the overall performance ranks
at average or slightly above. It can't really compete
with the primes like the 20 millimeter f/1.8
but it does offer a lot more versatility.
But for most areas like sharpness
chromatic aberration, bokeh, breathing, et cetera
it's a seven outta 10 lens at best.
Okay, maybe eight outta 10 in some categories.
I'm not sure if I'll buy it.
I'm leaning towards, no, I'd say that if you live
in that focal range of 20 to 40 millimeters
and you're okay with its shortcomings, then
this lens could prove to be a useful option at a fair price.
But I don't think that it can adequately replace 20
and 35 millimeter primes from your camera bag.
Although it does have me wondering
if Tamron could make a monster f/2.0 version
of this lens with the same impeccable quality
of the 35-150mm. Now that I definitely would buy.
Alright...
I'm done.
(groovy music)