I‘m holding a telephoto lens and acting like this
If I can’t shoot an Animal documentary, I will just be Groot
If I can’t be Groot, just put me alone in a pot and I’ll decorate my studio
I’m counting on this lens to get me some nice shots today
Yet another Tamron lens
This 70-300 Di III RXD is a new lens from Tamron
Another telephoto lens for Sony E-mount this year
Really, I can’t even remember
how many telephotos lens Tamron has released this year
We have a 28-200mm released early this year
Following by the 70-180mm
Now, we have this
Unlike other brands that choose to make their selection of lenses cover a wider focal range
Telephoto lenses from Tamron deliberately overlap focal lengths
to offer a wide variety of choices to users
This lens has the similar Tamron formula
Build quality and finishes are also familiar
Its lightweight design makes this lens suitable for travel photographers
All recent e-mount Tamron lenses have weather sealing
and a fixed filter size of 67 mm
It seems that Tamron wants to build an army of lenses all with 67mm filter size
But what’s the actual performance and characteristics of this lens?
We will test this lens out
and have a definite answer at the end of this video
What kind of photography is suitable for this lens?
Welcome to Colorbee Photography
I am Brian
A lot of fans are worried about us living in Australia
Fierce kangaroos might camp in your backyard
Snakes might hide in your toilet
Poisonous spiders might be in your house
and kill you within half an hour
Such a horrible place for life to survive
Indeed, we have seen all those creatures before
Therefore, we are waiting in our backyards
to see if we can capture any of those creatures
In our test today, we have this 70-300
with an also lightweight Sony A7C
Apart from above
we also brought a Sony 90mm for Macro shots
See if we are lucky enough to get you a portrait for a spider today
I also got a Batis 18mm in my bag
which is my new favourite
See if I can capture something interesting to share
This lens only weighs 545g
which is the lightest among all of our 300mm lenses
As it just passed 500g
you won’t feel the heft in your bag
The size of this lens at 70mm is similar to a can of Coke
It can then be extended like this
The most common large animals among our studio are Kangaroos
They are normally everywhere
but we can’t find any of them today when we actually decided to take a few shots
There are lots of Kangaroos in Australia with different varieties
Such as those very big red kangaroos in the middle of Australia
tree kangaroos in the north, and rock-wallabies
The most common type of kangaroo that lives in Melbourne is the Eastern grey kangaroo
Soft grey fur covered most of their body with white bellies
Their heights are normally between 1.2~1.5m
They look big, but are timid by nature
Normally they keep about 30m away from humans
even if you tiptoed quietly
You can probably get their full-body shot
if you are using 300mm lens
The focal length of this lens can be extended to 450 mm under the crop mode
In this mode, you can get more details
like that in the thumbnail
Comment below if you know what it is :)
Best to share with everyone what’s the use of it :D
Now let’s talk about its sharpness
Previously, we tested this lens on a SONY A7R2 camera body
We found this lens struggling a bit to fulfill the full resolution of 42 megapixels
At 70mm focal length, the sharpness is decent
But when it comes to 300mm
this lens is kind of falling behind
In particular, there might be slight color fringing along the edges
To solve this, we tried to down-size the files from 42 megapixels to 24 megapixels
or use a 24-megapixel camera strightaway
The sharpness is then totally acceptable
However
I wonder if there are any A7R3 or R4 owners
who’d like to buy a less-than-900-dollar telephoto lens
Its image quality is undoubtedly worse than that of the 100-400GM lens
But, truth be told, it is fairly competent for daily use
I see a couple of wood ducks in the middle of the pond
Wood ducks are aboriginal creatures of Australia
And also said to be one of the fastest bird species in the world
I’m here trying to take some close-up photos for you guys
Now you listen to the chirp of noisy miner
who’s protecting her nest by intimidating that cormorant
Cormorant is loopy
and unaware of entering the bird's territory
Small as they are, noisy miners are rather fierce animals
They often form small groups
to expel larger birds that are trespassing their territory
Such as Australian magpies, as well as crows
I’m gonna get a bit closer
Lotus and telephoto lens
these are enough to make an old man’s photography good
And I did get several surprisingly good-looking photos here
I didn’t expect so beautiful flowers in such a small pond
which is water lily to be exact
in the right season of full bloom
When we are shooting water lilies, I did found a small issue
The lens is so compact and small
that it has no optical stabilization
The stabilization relies on the camera body
Even at 1/250 seconds handheld
images can still be occasionally blurry
A 1/250 shutter speed
plus a maximum aperture of 6.3 at 300mm focal length
What do you make of that?
It means I’ll have to step up the ISO when taking photos
Now we with a cloudy sky
let me check the ISO settings
It must be set at 800 or higher
to ensure a safe shutter speed with max aperture
This is a bit disappointing
There are frogs here
And
you may see
bubbles in the water as well
The first wave of tadpoles have already been hatched
There are also frog spawns over there
With this 70-300 on an A7C for handheld video shooting
You may find the stabilization to struggle
It’s trying to keep the subject steady in the frame
But the focal length is just too long
So some jittering becomes unavoidable
which makes all handheld footage unusable
Especially for serious work
So, if you want to use this lens for video
get yourself a unipod at least
Mount it on a tripod to achieve the best result
I’m now testing the macro capabilities of this lens
I might be spoiled by the performance of previous 28-75 and 17-28 Tamron lens
I took it for granted that this lens will also have powerful macro performance
However, having tested it for a while, I found that it is not the case.....
You may shot a bit closer at 70mm focal length
But at 300mm, you’ll have to step back for about 5 feet (1.5m)
To get a snappy focus on the object
So, when shooting macros with this lens
you should be aware of its limitations
A remarkable feature of this lens is
its coating for a decent anti-glare performance
which is on par with its ancestors
If you have to shoot in a backlight scenario
even under direct sunlight
Basically, you don’t have to worry about large-scale backlighting
However, color fringing of high-contrast objects is still worth noticing
Ah! Giant white!
Cockatoo
That’s the renowned cockatoo
Often foraging in flocks in fruit season
I’ll check it later to see if I get a clear shot of her
I just walked through the grass
and found many rainbow lorikeets
They are the prettiest parrots as far as I’m concerned
Telephoto lens are mainly for wildlife and sports photography
When pairing with a camera that has a mediocre focusing system
It works fine at 70mm
But when you zoom in to 300mm
The camera will be busy keeping the image stabilized
while focusing at a max aperture of f/6.3
So focusing does feel a little bit sluggish
And the way they designed the lens
they didn’t leave a switch for AF/MF
In order to change focus mode
you will have to go into the camera’s menu system
Also the focus ring is closer to the camera body then the zoom ring
It’s not so natural for me to operate
But as I said
do you really want to count on the focus accuracy from a Sony camera viewfinder?
Based on my experience
it’s very probable to have spiders in this pile of bricks
Please look out for me
Ah! Box!
Hand me a box!
Look!
How stunning!
Absolutely beautiful
Taking a “Portrait” with this 90mm macro lens
Help me hold a flash!
It can get as large as 15cm (6 inches)
I’ve seen one this big
Right under the lid of my house’s trash bin
These spiders like to hide under car hoods
behind the curtains and spots like that
They are not annoying until they surprise you
There was one time, one of my friends had a spider in her car’s sun visor
It dropped on her lap when she flipped the sun visor
She was just a hair close to jump out of the car
Imagine a girl driving on the highway 100ish km/h(60ish mph)
with a spider suddenly dropped on her lap
90mm macro
just enough for a half portrait
Guess how many eyes it has
Two on the top
and four on the bottom
May I have a highlight on the eyes please
It even has eyelashes
Come on, come on
Don’t be shy
Turn around
Look at me, don’t move
Hey, perfect angle
Let’s do a 45 degree Rembrandt light on it
Look at those sharp eyes
I am glad to show you guys all these wildlife near our studio today
The wildlife in Australia looked bold and strong
But they are mostly timid creatures
This is just like Australians
harmless and gentle for the most part
Even though they might look bold and strong
But that’s just a result of evolving in a harsh natural environment
A way of surviving right? :)
Let’s get back to the lens
This 70-300mm Di III RXD from Tamron
Didn’t impress me too much
other than being very light-weight
Overall performance is mediocre
We checked the price before we made this video
Its MSRP is $999 AUD
But when I checked the price again right before we uploaded this video
its pre-order price is only $890 AUD
That would make this lens a real bargain
Especially when Sony FE 70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 G OSS is priced just at almost $1900 AUD
How much do you think will be a fair price?
Since the prices in Australia are usually higher than other regions
Leave your ideal price for this lens in the comments below
Alright, who is this lens targeting for?
Let’s take a look
If you’re a full-frame 24MP user
and already has Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 Di III RXD
This Tamron 70-300mm Di III RXD
can be a good extension to your telephoto range
There’s one thing I have to mention
even though this lens has image stabilization, due to its small aperture
It’s a lens only suitable for well-lit environment
If you’re going to on a photo shoot with kids to the zoos during broad daylight
Or snapping photos for running kids on a sunny football field
this lens will handle it just fine
But if you’re an full-frame user
who’s looking for an easy carrying telephoto zoom lens
I think Tamron 28-200mm F2.8-5.6 Di III RXD would be a better choice
If you shoot photos in a dark environment
Tamron 70-180mm F/2.8 Di III VXD will be your best bet
Like stage events or landscape photography that includes sunrise and sunset scenes
Alright
That’s all my thoughts on this Tamron 70-300mm Di III RXD
Please leave your comments below if you like to see more videos from us
We have links in the description below for those spider photos
And you are more than welcome to forward those to your brave friends and have some fun
Thank for watching, I’m Brian, and I'll see you next time