Today on The Slanted Lens, we’re going WIDE and reviewing the Tamron 17-28mm lens on the Sony mount! I want to see if it’s as good as the 28-75mm which I love and use just about every day.
I’ve got here with me, Leah Kim @gogoleah to help us test our this lens.
So what is this lens good for? It’s really great for events. We were shooting with it at an event and it’s great for getting those group shots. It’s great for landscapes, interiors, for buildings, there’s a lot of things it’s good for.
One of the things I love about it is that it zooms internally! Which means if you put it on a Gimbal or something, if you change your zoom, it’s not going to change your balance. Also, you can focus up to 7.5 inches!
With this kind of a lens, a 17 to 28mm lens, it’s about design elements, because you’ve got a wide view and I’m going to be able to use this space here as a great design element. It’s about shooting great design elements around your subject matter. So I’m going to shoot some images and see if resolves well and just see what we get.
Image Quality Test
First off I was super impressed with how sharp these are. I was also really pleased with how fast the autofocus worked on the a7 RIII, which means the autofocus is working flawlessly with the 17-28mm lens.
When I look at these, it’s really interesting cause the first one, we’ve got this flare in the corner, and you know, it’s almost hard to get a good flare with a lens these days.
We’re at 17mm, all the ones where she is jumping with the fountain in the background and they are just so nicely sharp on her face.
At 28mm we shot this building at f3.2 1/2000 sec and that blue sky is pretty clean all the way around.
When I look at these ones of her next to the Disney building, on these I burned in the sky above them cause it was just so bright, so that color in the sky was done in camera RAW.
This is really a test of the a7 Riii more than anything, but these are really nice images.
I do see a bit of vignetting when I get to the buildings at 17mm, you see just a little bit of it up in the sky.
I’m pretty impressed! I enjoyed shooting with it, walking around with it and I thought the image quality was great!
We showed the lens to event photographer Paul McKelvey to get his thoughts!
Paul was super impressed with the size difference, the fact that the lens focuses really close, and he touched on the fact that the size of this lens is perfect for the small body of the a7 Riii!
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Autofocus Test
I just want to talk about the autofocus really briefly. I’m looking thru all the images that I shot and just looking at these, my autofocus is on point and that’s a combination of the Sony camera performance and the Tamron lens. The photos are just sharp one after another as she moves around. We’re getting that same face detection, that same eye detection. This lens is working every bit as well as any other lens I’ve used on the Sony.
I think there are some things about this series of lenses that Tamron has done that is extremely important and there’s 2 or 3 things that I want to point out.
You have a mirrorless camera that is a small light weight, compact camera and now you have a small light weight compact lens to go with it. So it has kept the integrity of that thought of wanting a small compact camera.
Conclusion
The one thing that I don’t like with these electronic lenses is when you are manually trying to focus for video it jumps around. You can’t set a spot and focus and move back to another spot to focus. They are difficult to use if you are pulling focus for video. Using it in autofocus mode for video is much better!
For still photography, they’re going to work with the autofocus in the camera, they’re going to be sharp and easy to carry, and overall I think they are just a really good offering from Tamron.
So there you have it, a look at the 17-28mm lens! I tried to be as honest and as fair as possible with regards to my conversations about these lenses, regardless of whether they are a sponsor of ours or not.
If you want to pick up one of these lenses, they are super reasonably priced. You’re paying a half or less than what you’d pay for a major manufacturer’s equivalent, with regards to Sony camera especially.
Keep those cameras rolling and keep on clicking!
GEAR USED:
Tamron 17-28mm Lens
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Sony a7 Riii
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Blackrapid Strap
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