I'm a potential customer for this lens. I still shoot with the old Nikon 17-35/2.8 (which self-converted to manual focus) on an FTZ despite it's relatively poor imaging performance compared to modern-design lenses. I'll need to see how bad the diffraction softening gets at f/11 and f/16 to make a final decision.
I bought this lens a week ago and just finished post-processing the first batch of images. For context, my reference lenses, i.e. the lenses I am naturally comparing this Tamron to, are the Canon EF 17-40mm f/4L II and the Sony 24-70mm f/2.8 GM II.
TLDR: I am more than happy, in fact I am pleasantly surprised.
For nearly all "serious" work I mostly rely on primes, and bought this lens to photograph parties, my kids, and events in confined spaces, mostly indoors, nearly always at f/2.8 or f/4 due to limited light.
I knew it wasn't a heavy lens, but as many of you know the specs alone do not always tell the whole story. The lens feels incredibly light in hand, the good kind of light when it doesn't scream cheap. The build is good. I use it mostly on the Zf, which doesn't like even slightly heavy lenses, and I have no complaints regarding how everything balances.
I did not bother with testing extreme corners, field flatness, or flare resistance because these attributes do not matter for my use case here. My real world images look exactly how I want them to be. Sharpness is very good at f/2.8 in the central 2/3rd of the frame. Not as biting as the Sony GM zoom, but equal to my EF 17-40mm in the center, and perhaps slightly better in DX corners. What is remarkable is that its performance appears to be the same regardless of the focal length. I dislike lenses with "gotchas", and this one is not one of them.
For the first time in my life, I got influenced by you guys and checked the lens for "decentering". I noticed the far left corner being a touch softer @f/2.8 at 16mm. It doesn't bother me at all. Other focal lengths like 20mm and 30mm appear to be equal everywhere.
The only criticism I have is the overly lightweight zoom action. It zooms with almost no effort. There's no gravity-induced zoom drift though. Ok, another nitpick is the exposed USB-C port. Even my office equipment with naked ports tends to accumulate dust in them. I wish Tamron offered some kind of a rubber plug for it.
I will say that ultra wide angle is a challenge for me. I can't stand stretched objects, meanwhile even the sky looks like shit when viewed wider than 20mm. Some learning & experimenting to do! Cheers!
old-gregg wrote:
Ok, another nitpick is the exposed USB-C port. Even my office equipment with naked ports tends to accumulate dust in them. I wish Tamron offered some kind of a rubber plug for it.
I was also bothered by the exposed USB port on mine (I also have the Tamron 70-180/2.8 G2 with the same issue). I ended up buying some USB-C port plugs on Amazon.
I do prefer the USB-C port on the barrel of the lens so you can use these plugs, I have a few Viltrox and other Chinese lenses where the USB port are on the face of the mount, where it’s not possible to use a plug without fiddling with it every time you mount/unmount the lens.
