Tamron 35-150mm 2-2.8 Zoom, Pro Lens? Let’s See!

Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens I’ve got Tatiana here with me. We’re going to take a look at a very unique lens from Tamron. It’s a 35-150mm f/2-2.8 lens. Tamron is doing very different things. This is a lens that fits right in the middle of that trinity of 24-70 and 70-200. But it gives you a ton of options and is very fast. We’re going to take it out, we’re going to shoot, we’re going to see exactly what it does for its unique application. Let’s just see how it works when we shoot Tatiana here at the Pink Motel in Los Angeles.

So at 35mm it’s f/2.0, and from 40- 60mm it’s f/2.2. Then from 60-80mm I’m at f/2.5. And then when I go from 80mm on up to 150mm I’m at f/2.8. So it gradually jumps up about a third of the stop as you go up. I do like the fact that if I’m on f/2.0 at 35mm, and I go to 150mm, it’s going to stop down to f/2.8. It gives me a nice option because then when I go back to 35mm, it goes back to f/2.0, it doesn’t stay at f/2.8, which is really nice. It goes back to that shutter that I set when I first started.

So the minimum focusing distance on this I have read is about 13 inches and that looks about right when I get in on her face here. It’s not a magnification lens. It’s not giving you macro capabilities when you focus at that distance. But I’m getting a really tight, beautiful shot of her face. I mean really tight. It looks fabulous.

Right off the bat I love the bokeh I’m getting. It’s very soft and round. It doesn’t really bloom. I don’t get a lot of cat eye in the corner. I mean it’s looking really nice, everything from that wide open. Obviously  you get better bokeh when you’re on that longer lens, but the bokeh looks really nice.

So that VXD motor is really jumping quickly from her face back to the background. I mean, it is super-fast and I’m really impressed with that. That’s one of the things about the Sony lenses that Tamron has made is that autofocus is really quick.I love zoom lenses just because they’re so quick. I can go in tight on her eyes. I can go back to a wide shot to see the stuff on the table. It just gives you a lot of options.

35mm is a nice wide lens. It’s not as wide as the 24mm which is probably my favorite, but it certainly gives me a nice wide view. So I can see contextually what’s here on the table into just a really tight shot of her face. And obviously I can get in close enough that I can focus really close on her eyes there.

The color is really clean. As I look down these blinds I just get a nice color rendition on the entire sensor. It just is clean all the way across and just a beautiful look. I love how things are falling out of focus and I love the color rendition.

While Tatiana changes to another outfit a couple of thoughts about how customizable this lens is. It is really set up so you have a USB port, you can plug it into the computer. You can go through and you can customize all of the buttons. There’s three buttons on the collar. Each one of those can be changed to do a different function. You can change the direction of the focus. You can change whether its focus or aperture or whatever you want to make these rings do. I love the fact you’re able to change the type of focus with this lens. You can change it from a linear focus, which is more mechanical and allows you to move in and out for video. It’s much better for video. Then back to nonlinear which jumps and tries to find where you’re at. And that makes it great for autofocus, but not great for video.

Because it is a larger lens, it comes with an 82mm filter. So it’s a little larger filter. So it does jump out of that kind of ecosystem that Tamron has created. All 67mm for pretty much everything they put out at this point even for full frame or for APSC has been 67mm. So this jumps up to 82mm. lt is larger, but you need that if you’re going to get f/2.0. You got to collect light, it’s going to need to have a larger filter size.

So we’re back here in the diner. We’ve been shooting for the last few hours and there’s several thoughts I’ve had as I’ve shot with this lens. I love the range of this lens because it gives you wide and it goes to a much more telephoto tighter shot. I can get great shots of her eyes. I can get in closer and do more contextual shots where it come more wide. I think that combined with the fact that you can really customize this lens and make it a much better video lens as far as being able to pull focus in a manual focus mode.

I think the size is heavy, but I think it’s worth the glass and the speed of the lens. I feel like as I’ve shot with it, the breathing is minimal. I’m not seeing a lot of breathing. The chromatic aberration is very clean.

So who would use this lens? I think it’s a great wedding or event lens. An event lens is probably a great place for this because it does give you a little wider but it lets you get in tight. And when you’re doing events, a lot of times you’re struggling to get close enough and struggling to get wide enough. So in that way this might be a great application. It works great with strobes. It was really nice to be able to shoot everything from those wide shots into tight shots with neon in the background. So I feel like that there’s a lot of applications. People will use this who kind of want to make, they don’t want to buy two lenses 24-70mm and 70-200mm. They’re going to buy this in the middle to give them a nice broad range to be able to get the options as a longer lens and wider lens all in one lens. So I think as zoom lenses go, this is one of the better zoom lenses I’ve seen in a long time. This is some very innovative and new. I think it really fits a place in the market that is interesting and gives you a lot of options for a great price. So keep those cameras rollin’ keep on clickin’!