Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD SP

Name: Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 Di VC USD SP
Brand: Tamron
Rating: 8.6 (7 reviews)

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Lens Review
Specifications
Description
IS Test

24-70mm	$1,159 average price

Lab Test Results

Nikon D7000
Nikon D800e

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

Blur
Chromatic Aberration
Vignetting
Geometric Distortion

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SLRgear Review
February 8, 2016
by Andrew Alexander

The Tamron 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 Di VC USD has been out for a few years now, but it has been often requested for a lens review that we asked our friends at LensRentals.com if they wouldn't mind sending us a copy to test.

The Tamron 24-70mm was unique among its contemporaries for a long time, in that it was the only lens in its class to offer image stabilization. In 2015, Nikon finally released a VR-enabled 24-70mm f/2.8 lens of its own. While its telephoto range would not seem to justify image stabilization - just 70mm - Tamron's Vibration Control (VC) IS system is useful, and as you'll see in our test results, quite effective.

The Tamron 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 Di VC USD is available in Nikon and Canon lens mounts. It is a full-frame compatible lens, meaning it will work on both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, on which it will provide an equivalent field of view of 36-105mm (Nikon) or 38-112mm (Canon).

The lens ships with a petal-shaped lens hood, takes 82mm filters, and is available now for around $1,200.

Sharpness
The Tamron 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 offers good, but not great results for sharpness, especially when used wide open at ƒ/2.8. When stopped down, image sharpness improves significantly.

When used on a sub-frame camera body like the Nikon D7000 or Canon T5i, the camera's sensor doesn't "see" the problematic edges of the lens, focusing instead on the better central region. Consequently we see good results at ƒ/2.8 (especially at 24mm), better results at ƒ/4 (between 24mm and 50mm) and best results at ƒ/5.6. In fact, at 50mm and ƒ/5.6, images are tack-sharp across the frame.

On our full-frame D800e test camera, we see the flaws in this lens; at ƒ/2.8, you will note some very present corner softness, especially at the 50mm setting. If you're looking for a lens which produces subject isolation in the center of the frame by blurring out the sides of the image, you are in business here, but if you want edge-to-edge sharpness in your images, you're going to have to stop down.

Stopping down the aperture to ƒ/4 improves image sharpness on the D800e only slightly; you really need to stop down to at least ƒ/5.6, where we note a dramatic improvement in corner-to-corner image sharpness. Stopping down further to ƒ/8 produces a slight improvement, but no further gains are possible by stopping down to ƒ/11 due to diffraction limiting.

Image sharpness is good all the way through to ƒ/16, though you might want to avoid ƒ/22 due to diffraction limiting; we note a generalized softness across the frame.

Chromatic Aberration
The Tamron 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 generally handles chromatic aberration quite well, though at wider focal lengths CA becomes more evident as the lens is stopped down, showing up as light magenta-cyan fringing in the corners in areas of high contrast.

Shading (''Vignetting'')
Corner shading is negligible when the lens is mounted on a sub-frame camera like the D7000. On the full-frame D800e however, we note significant corner shading - specifically at the 24mm focal length setting. At ƒ/2.8 and 24mm we note corners which are over a full stop darker than the center; other focal lengths are more forgiving, but corner shading will always be a factor if you shoot full-frame with this lens.

Distortion
As you might expect, a lens which provides both wide-angle and telephoto capabilities produces some distortion; it is somewhat pronounced with the Tamron 24-70mm ƒ/2.8. At the wide end at 24mm, mounted on the full-frame D800e, we are seeing +1% barrel distortion in the corners. There's a useful area of near-zero distortion around the 35mm mark, but as you zoom in towards 70mm we see pincushion distortion, getting to its most significant at the longest length of the lens, -0.5% at 70mm.

Autofocus Operation
Autofocus is conducted electronically, without the use of a mechanical screw. It takes less than one second to focus from infinity to closest focus, and it's very quiet as it does so. The front element doesn't rotate during focus operations, making the use of a polarizing filter that much easier.

Macro
The Tamron 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 provides adequate results for macro - just 0.2x magnification, but it does benefit from a minimum close-focusing distance of 15 inches.

Build Quality and Handling
Tamron's new lens design format uses a very modern type face, and a stippled black matte finish. The lens mount is metal; the filter ring is plastic, and there are weather seals integrated into the lens design. The lens offers a windowed distance scale, marked in feet and meters. The lens features full-time manual focus override: that is to say, you can autofocus and turn the focusing ring to adjust focus manually at any time. There are two switches on this lens: one to enable/disable autofocus, and the other to enable/disable the Vibration Control (VC) system. The lens aperture is designed with nine curved diaphragm blades.

Tamron has elected to swap the position of the zoom and focus rings: whereas most other manufacturer's zoom rings come first, and the focus ring further away from the body, it's the opposite for this Tamron. Also, if it matters to you, the manual focus ring direction echoes Nikon lenses, rather than Canon. The focusing ring is about 3/8" wide and is rubber-coated, with deep rubber ribs. Since the lens now uses an electrical focusing system there are no hard stops on either end of the focus throw, and the ring will turn forever in either direction. The lens can focus past infinity.

The zoom ring is about 1 1/4" wide with a ribbed, rubber coating. The ring takes about 80 degrees to turn through the entire zoom range. The lens doesn't use an internal zoom design, so there is lens extension as the lens zooms out to 70mm: the lens will extend by 1 1/4". We didn't notice any lens creep at all, however the lens includes a zoom lock switch just in case. However, this switch is really designed just to keep the lens retracted for transport, such as while hanging from your neck or in a bag rather than keeping the lens locked at a certain focal length while in-use.

The lens features Tamron's Vibration Control (VC) image stabilization system, and as we've mentioned, it's of the few full-frame 24-70mm lenses to do so. It provides around three stops of hand-holding improvement, and it's worth looking at our IS Test tab for greater detail.

The lens ships with the HA007 lens hood, a petal-shaped hood that's ribbed on the interior to reduce flare. The lens uses a bayonet mount and can be reversed for storage.

Alternatives

Canon EF 24-70mm ƒ/2.8L II USM ~$1,800
Canon's offering in this category is unquestionably sharper than the Tamron, but it achieves this perhaps by not offering image stabilization. It's also significantly more expensive, but then it's some of Canon's finest L-series glass.

Nikon 24-70mm ƒ/2.8E ED VR AF-S ~$2,400
At last, the Tamron 24-70mm VC lens has a rival, at least for Nikon shooters! Introduced in August 2015, we've yet to review this lens (as of this review), but it looks to be a very promising lens for Nikon users. The major downside is price; at around $2,400 is significantly more expensive than both the Tamron and the non-VR Nikon option.

Nikon 24-70mm ƒ/2.8G IF-ED AF-S ~$1,800
Similar to the Canon option, Nikon's 24-70mm is sharper than the Tamron, but again, does not offer VR image stabilization. It's also more expensive.

Sigma 24-70mm ƒ/2.8 EX DG HSM ~$1,100
Sigma's 24-70mm does not feature image stabilization, but it is on the same level of sharpness as the Tamron - that is to say, wildly inconsistent. It offers some wonderful corner softness when used wide open on a full-frame body, and like the Tamron, must be stopped down considerably to get edge-to-edge image sharpness.

Conclusion

Tamron took a bold step in providing a lens with image stabilization in this category - perhaps sacrificing image sharpness to provide the hand-holding convenience. The question for the prospective shooter of this lens would be, do you value image sharpness at ƒ/2.8 over image stabilization, or vice versa? It's a good lens at this aperture, but not great - for that level of performance, you need to step up to the Canon or Nikon versions, and do without image stabilization.

Product Photos

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

Still Life shot

VFA target

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and ƒ/8. For the ''VFA'' target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.