![\"\"](\"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/tamron2875.jpg\")
<\/a>Construction and Handling<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
The Tamron 28-75mm f\/2.8 features a similar focal range and the same fast maximum f\/2.8 aperture as the Sony 24-70mm f\/2.8 GM. However, one of the big benefits of the Tamron lens is its significantly smaller size and lower weight. In comparison with the GM lens, the Tamron is a bit shorter, but significantly narrower and nearly 50% lighter. The lens is similar in size, but also lighter than the Zeiss 24-70mm f\/4, despite being a full stop faster. As a result, the Tamron 28-75mm handles beautifully on my A7 III, and the lighter weight is definitely felt. When I reviewed the 24-70mm f\/2.8 GM, the size and weight immediately made their presence known. It was a beast to carry on long trips out shooting. The Tamron in comparison feels downright svelt. It’s not a light lens, but it is also not heavy, and the smaller barrel helps it feel closer to the kit lens in use than the monster of a lens that is the Sony GM.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Part of this size and weight savings is due to the longer wide-angle end of the zoom, but it’s also in the construction. The exterior construction of the Tamron 28-75mm f\/2.8 is entirely plastic, save for the metal lens mount, and the smooth finish looks fairly nice, but feels a bit cheap. While the materials don’t feel expensive, they are very well assembled. The lens exhibits no creaks or flexing. The lens tube, which extends as you zoom towards the long end of the range, has no play in it at all, even when fully extended. While the construction seem solid enough, the materials are definitely a solid step down from those on the G-Master lens, and as a result, it doesn’t feel like a high-end optic in the hand. The zoom action is fairly smooth and well damped, and the focus ring has some light damping, but is a bit too easy to turn.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In all, while lacking the feel of high quality materials, the better handling while still maintaining good tolerances is more than a fair trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n If you’ve followed the release of this lens, you may have seen some discussion of autofocus problems in certain situations. I’ve seen reports of AF failures during video shooting, which is fixed by turning the camera on and off. I am not much of a video shooter, so this particular bug did not present itself in my shooting. However, when I first received the lens, I experienced quite a bit of missed focus with the lens, always with a tendency to focus in front of where the focus point was. This was repeatable both indoors and out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After some experimentation, I changed the camera setting for ‘Priority Set in AF-S’ and AF-C to ‘AF’ instead of ‘Balanced Emphasis’, and since changing that setting, I have had no real issues with accuracy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Aside from that hiccup, I found the focus of the Tamron to be accurate and reasonably fast, locking very quickly in good light, and a touch slower in dimmer light. When stopping down, focus slows to a moderate speed, as it focuses at shooting aperture. All the standard focus modes, such as EyeAF, also work as expected. I shot a Bar Mitzvah and heavily used the Tamron, and it performed quite well for me during that shoot.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Edit: Since I first reviewed the lens, Tamron has released their firmware update, which corrected lockups in video mode, and also seems to have fixed any other latent focus errors with the lens. In the time since this review was first published, I have shot another paid event with great success, and have continued to experience fast and accurate AF with the lens. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n When the Tamron 28-75mm f\/2.8 was announced, the question that made its way to the top of people’s minds was, “will this be as good optically as the Sony 24-70mm f\/2.8 GM.” The answer is: No. It’s not as good as the GM. However, it is a very good lens, and it’s not too far behind. Given the huge savings and far more compact package, the Tamron may also be the *right* choice for a lot of people when considering these two lenses. Let’s look at the optical properties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The first thing that came to my mind when I reviewed the Sony 24-70mm f\/2.8 is how sharp it was. The Tamron doesn’t quite reach the lofty sharpness of the GM, but it does a very nice job in this department. The lens is sharpest at 28mm, and is quite sharp across most of the image frame right from f\/2.8. Stopping the lens down brings edge and corner sharpness up, and by f\/8-f\/11, it’s very sharp all the way to the corners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Performance at the middle focal lengths is similar, but absolute resolution drops a touch the further you zoom out. By 75mm, the lens still maintains good sharpness at f\/2.8, but the edges are a bit softer here, and it’s not quite as crisp as at the wide end. Stopping down brings the edges in line nicely, while the corners retain just a touch of softness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In all, it’s a very nice performance that works well for both wide open and stopped down work. The only exception is at close focus distances. The Tamron 28-75mm has very good maximum magnification, reaching 1:2.9 at the wide end and 1:4 at the long end, providing near macro-range focusing capabilities that extend the versatility of the lens. However, there is spherical aberration that rears its head at very close focus distances, which softens detail considerably when shooting at f\/2.8, most notably at the long end of the zoom range. Stopping down to f\/4, or even better f\/5.6, will help eliminate the spherical aberration, and at these apertures, sharp results are available at any focus distance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The bokeh of the Tamron 28-75mm is not easy to describe in one catch-all statement. The bokeh is fairly variable depending on focus distance, aperture and focal length. Bokeh is most pleasing at the wide end of the zoom, where shots at f\/2.8 and with reasonably close focus produce imperfect yet fairly pleasing out of focus highlights.<\/p>\n\n\n\n At longer focal lengths close up, bokeh is also fairly smooth, but as you focus further away, especially at the long end of the zoom, the out of focus area is a fair bit harsher. The biggest issue in the bokeh is that it is very high contrast, and with some bright ring outlining, it can create a rough look in many situations. Also, at the longer end of the zoom range, there is visible mechanical vignetting of the blur discs that occurs at the edges, leading to cats eyes and some cut off specular highlight circles near the edges, leading to a somewhat swirly appearance. Stopping down softens the edges of the blur discs, so the bokeh evens out a bit when shooting at f\/4-f\/8, though of course there is less absolute blur at these apertures as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In all, the performance is fine for a zoom of this type, but a lens like the Sony GM does a better job overall at smoothing backgrounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tamron, like most modern lenses, maintains high contrast and vibrant color at most every setting, save for wide open close focus, where spherical aberration dulls the contrast some. It’s a generally pleasing look, aside from the contrast in the bokeh as noted above. The lens performs well for general use and fits in nicely with the other high quality Sony lenses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There is a bit of lateral chromatic aberration with the Tamron that is easily corrected in postprocessing, and it becomes more pronounced at very close focus distances. It’s not a major deal, but you will want to check that ‘remove chromatic aberration’ box in Lightroom. Longitudinal CA is very well controlled, however, with just the slightest hint of blue\/yellow fringing fore and aft of the focus point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tamron 28-75mm f\/2.8 displays a very typical distortion profile for a standard zoom lens. Barrel distortion is fairly pronounced at wide focal lengths which then transitions into moderate pincushion distortion at the long end. For the past several weeks, when I required distortion correction, I successfully used the existing profile for the DSLR version of the 28-75mm, which wasn’t 100% accurate, but was good enough. However, Adobe just released an update that includes a proper native profile for this lens to correct distortion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Flare control isn’t bad for a standard zoom lens. With point light sources indoors, there were no real issues. Outside when shooting into the sun, the lens maintains good contrast, but ghosting can be an issue, and the ghosts change depending on focal length and aperture. See below for one example.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The 28-75mm displays somewhat pronounced vignetting at wide apertures that eases a bit when stopping down, but never really goes away entirely. In my opinion, it’s not too objectionable, but I prefer a bit of vignetting in my lenses in most cases.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When you look at the whole picture, the Tamron is a very good lens optically, with very good sharpness, excellent control of longitudinal CA and the other optical properties are in-line with other standard zoom lenses. It’s not quite the optical superstar that the Sony GM is, but it also punches well above its price point, and provides very nice image quality throughout the zoom and aperture range.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Tamron 28-75mm f\/2.8 is a fast standard zoom that is an excellent value for money. It’s rather sharp, and produces very pleasing images with a good overall image rendering. Bokeh can get a bit chunky at times, and there’s some distortion that you’ll have to correct, but when taken as a whole, the optical performance of the lens is quite good. Considering the reasonable $799 price tag, and the very high price of its competition, the bang for the buck is the best among all the standard zooms for the full-frame E mount.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In addition to the good optical quality and affordable price, the Tamron succeeds most due to its compact nature. In comparison with the Sony 24-70mm f\/2.8 GM, the Tamron 28-75mm is so much lighter and easier to handle as a walk-around lens that it would be hard for me to entertain the GM even if their cost was similar. While improvements could be made, it’s a very solid effort from Tamron, and will fit the bill for a wide range of Sony shooters. I started out a bit wary of the lens, but have grown more and more fond of it the more I’ve used it. I’ve found it to be a very versatile lens with very good image quality, and it’s earned a permanent spot in my bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Click on an image to enlarge<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n As the full-frame Sony E-Mount system matures, the available lens selection has continued to grow year after year. While Sony and Zeiss have created a wide variety of lenses from 12mm through 400mm, third-party lens makers have yet to fully embrace the system, save perhaps for Voigtlander, which has released a fair few lenses for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[359,8,181,382,381,160],"class_list":["post-7618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","tag-e-mount","tag-review","tag-sony","tag-tamron","tag-tamron-28-75mm-f-2-8","tag-zoom"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/tamron2875.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p28RGq-1YS","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7618"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12652,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7618\/revisions\/12652"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/admiringlight.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a>Autofocus<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Continue: Image Quality<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Image Quality<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Sharpness<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a>Bokeh<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a>Color, Contrast and Chromatic Aberration<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Distortion, Flare and Vignetting<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
<\/a>Continue: Conclusion and Image Samples<\/a><\/h4>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Conclusion<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Pros<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
Cons<\/h4>\n\n\n\n
\n
Image Samples<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a><\/a>If you enjoyed this review, check out my other reviews in the Review Index<\/a><\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"