Light weight, compact, f/2.8

low light hunting, slow fine focus in low light,

I have had this lens about a year now.
The build is plastic and does not have the solid weight you would get with a more expensive lens. In everyday use it is very smooth with focusing in and out and in good to moderate light focuses very quickly. Low light the lens will struggle to focus unless you can find a strong point of contrast, and another struggle I had was that in moderate light it will take a little while to finishing focusing, and while I can take the picture the image is not crisp yet, you have to wait for the lens to finish focusing, which entails me listening to the lens turn ( this does not happen a lot but it does happen and I have to keep this in mind in moderate/low light ).

The lens comes with a lock button to lock it in position, however you can only lock it into position at 28mm, which means its more of a storage lock than anything else.

Image quality is where I am most happy with this lens, while the may struggle at times in low light to focus once it has completed focusing the image can come out very crisp, with no obvious visual defect. I have used this lens in pretty much every time of day with excellent results
http://www.dewandemmer.com/eloise-and-hein-holtons-wedding-at-makiti-muldersdrift/
This link is a series of images from full sunlight, to very lowlight and off camera flash. This is the main reason I have kept on using this lens is the fact that I get results, it does have its short falls and thats to be expected for the price compared to its competitors, but the final result is just right.

Image quality

Plastic, 6-year warranty

If you want your image good only for short period time (like half year), it should be OK for this lens. I think I am unlucky guy for this lens.

After read Popular Photography Magazine test result for this lens, I took the plunge. But it was out of the stock in New York. I call all Tamron retailers on my planed trip location. Found one in Boulder, Colorado. Flew to Boulder, bought in MSRP price at Mike’s Camera.

The first impression was the build quality – plastic; Down-toward zoom is too easy; up-toward zoom is very hard. I think there is no damping inside the lens. The non-internal focus lens, when you zoom out, like at the plastic inner barrel. I am worry it will be broken some day; Focus always hutting in low light, I must turn the lens zoom to some location and focus again and again.

When I brought this lens from the warm temperature of the car to the cold temperature outside (17F). Some time later, I found 3 racks in front glass. Back to Houston, I called Tamron USA If is it belong the 6-year warranty (material defect). Said “please mail to us. It is very difficult to discuss on the phone…”

After one week waiting to input my data to Tamron system. I called them again. They asked me $160.87 to replace the UV-Filter-Like glass. 6-year warranty only for mechanical defect. Not for material defect. I have the experience with Sigma for 50-500mm. I dropped the lens to the concrete ground. Both zoom and focus rings are locked (barrel deformed), I called Sigma USA. They ask me for $70 and then mailed to Sigma USA. Two weeks later I received a new serial number lens (change the outer barrel) – this was after one year warranty and it was gray market lens.

If you look at Tamron website Contact us – there is one sentence “All declined repairs will incur a $10.00 return shipping fee.” Do you think how many customs like choose - “declined sky high repair price”. I did.

Right now I am choosing macro lens. No Tamron any more. Do not be cheated by the 6-year warranty.

Customer Service

Badly

Similar Products Used:

Tokina 12-24
Sigma 50-500mm
Sigma 120-300mm

f/2.8

Autofocus inconsistent.

Lens filter size is unique to Tamron, therefore my other lenses require other filters.

Great price for a 2.8 constant aperture. Lightweight.

Autofocus is inconsistent and a touch slower than I hoped for.

Range is not wide enough for a "walkaround lens" on a 1.6 crop camera.

I have seen some excellent images come from this lens on other user's galleries. I think it is a very capable lens, but does not suit my needs as well. I will be trading it in for a Canon 17-55 f/2.8 IS lens. So far my experience is that you get what you pay for.

Sharpness, contrast, build quality, relatively low weight and inconspicuous size

None as far I can see

I bought this lens in Hongkong via Ebay, with some reservations as reviews mentioned the huge variability in quality of the lens. The seller assured me though that the international warranty was valid in Europe so I decided to see what would come of it. When the lens arrived there was some dust between the elements, so I sent in the lens to the service department here in Holland asking to clean and calibrate it, which was done without any cost and trouble. So finally I could try the lens, which proved to be awsome. I made test images comparing the performance with the Canon 50mm 1.8 and the Canon 85mm 1.2. Compared to the first lens the images were comparable in sharpness though the excellent contast of the Tamron stood out clearly. This was even the case when compared to the 85mm. (the Tamron on 75mm F8), where the difference in sharpness was almost negligeable. Quite an acievement, if you know the outstanding MTF figues of the Cnon 85mm 1.2 (4.6 on photodo.com). The pictures made with the 85mm were a bit cleaner and had more transparancy, but didn't have the beautiful contrast of the Tamron (which probably also has to do with the excellent flare control). Anyway, I was considering replacing the cheap Tamron by the Canon 24-70mm, but after my tests I relized how extraordinarily good the Tamron actually is. My copy gets a 5, without any qualms, I am very happy with it and can only recommend it as the absolutely best buy in this zoom range.

Customer Service

Excellent in the Netherlands

Sharp, cheap, F2.8 over whole zoom range, good filter size, build quality

Quality control is awful, Tamron service (at least Germany) is useless, must not be bought in internet shops - I repeat - DO NOT BUY FROM INTERNET SHOPS - TRY BEFORE BUY

This is the best lense you can get for this money. F2.8 over the whole zoom range, good built quality, reasonable filter size .... but serious quality control issues.
My story: bought this from a german online shop for the bargain price of 300 EUR. The first shots showed the serious front focus problem on my 350D all people write about on the net. Well I sent the piece to tamron service Germany and it came back within 2 week including a official looking piece of paper saying that it has been calibrated.
Well .... it wasn't. Same front focus problem. After a few emails with tamron service I sent the lense to them a second time - this time with camera. After two weeks the lense came back - again nothing has changed.
I am really pissed with the tamron service since the front focus is so visible that a blind man can see it. I would have expected that they just admit that they cannot correct the problem but they just sent it back with another official looking piece of paper saying that it has been calibrated. It is such a shame since the lense is wicked. Tack sharp if manually focused.
I have sent mine back to the online shop and will buy one on Oxford Street this weekend where I can try things out.

Customer Service

Friendly and useless

Super Sharp. Not so heavy. Quiet.

I wish the range was better. It would be nice to have a 28-135mm for this quality and price.

I love this lense. You can't beat the quality for the price that you pay. It is very sharp for f2.8 thru f8.0 then the sharpness tends to degrade a little. Perfect for a Canon 10D or 20D. I shot some portraits with it, the picture were extremely sharp.
The detail is amazing for a lense priced below $400.00.

Build quality is not all that bad. A solid feel. An extremely sharp lens around f8 or there abouts. For Canon users, this should be a highly considered lens.

None to speak of, especially when you consider the price for a 2.8!!!!!! It does the job very well.

I purchased this lens for my niece who uses a Canon 10D. For Canon users, this is a very nice lens and she loves it. If you notice in these reviews, most of the photographers have Canon cameras. Many Canon lenses are made by Sigma, so Tamron is actually a step up. If the Canon lens line could match their digital cameras in quality, they would be used by more working pros.

Similar Products Used:

None in the Tamron line of lenses. When you use Nikon lenses, you don't have to go to Tamron for quality.

See above! Good image quality. :)

There are none, really. I do wish that it had a slightly bigger range (say from 18-105mm), but there are no lenses for Pentax that come close to that right now. The build quality could be a bit better. Focus speed isn't great, but most Pentax or Pentax-compatible stuff has that problem. Vignettes a little at the wide end.

I bought this lens primarily for travel and for portrait photography when I don't have a lot of opportunity to pose the subjects. Prime lenses are almost always better quality for the same price, but I've lost a lot of moments due to not having the right lens on at the right time and not being able to change before the moment is gone. So this lens fills that gap. I use this lens on a Pentax *ist D and so with the "crop factor" I more-or-less get a focal length of 42-113mm, which is a reasonably good range, especially for candid portraits. This is a very usable lens. It absolutely kills the cheap Sigma 18-55mm f3.5-5.6 lens that came with my DSLR. The build quality isn't as good as top-of-the-line lenses, but it doesn't feel flimsy either. There's a reasurring weight to it. The images are quite sharp. They rival those produced by my Tamron 90mm f2.8 macro lens. In fact, I'm hard pressed to see any real difference between the shots they each do. The lens is usable at all f-stops, though I rarely shoot it wide open or fully stopped down. Generally, I have it between f4 and f11. I don't really notice distortion at either end. There is a small amount at the wide end, but it's only to be expected and it is hardly noticable, really. The colours and contrast are excellent for a zoom lens. The manual-focus ring is a nice size compared to many modern zooms. You can usually tell if a lens is serious quality by the size of its focus ring.

Customer Service

N/A

Similar Products Used:

Various Pentax, Canon, and Sigma lenses.

Sharp and light

Hard to find a good one. Not tank quality build.

After 4 stores and 6 copies I found one that was sharp all the way through. I had recently tested the canon 24-70L and had a bad copy. I liked the mm range but even the canon would not keep up for heavy indoor sports like my 200L. As said I liked the zoom range and for $400 and about a week of searching found 1 out of six that I brought home. It is true about CQ for tamron. Keep searching and would recommend as I did: go to where they got them. You'll go through several before you find the right one. I had heard it was 1 out of 10. Guess I got lucky with 6. (There were 3 more to try, maybe the average was right). Three stars because of wasted time and energy. Price was great.

Customer Service

none

Similar Products Used:

200L 28-135is 50 f/1.4

Sharper at center than the EF 28-70/2.8 relatively inexpensive

This lens is so sharp at its center my much more expensive Canon EOS EF 28-70 /2.8 has been sitting on the shelf for over a year. While I haven't carefully studied how the two lenses compare at the edges, it isn't even close at the center: the Tamron easily surpasses the Canon lens. See http://lubowphotography.com/tamron-canon-test.htm Another plus: it's much smaller than the Canon lens. I'm not an advocate of third-party lenses, but this is the one exception.

Similar Products Used:

canon EF 28-70/2.8