Hey, it’s Jay P. here. Today on The Slanted Lens we’re out in The Valley of Fire outside of Las Vegas. But we’ve got with us the new Tamron 70-180mm G2 second generation of that 70-180mm. This is a tough category for lenses to compete in. There’s some great offerings out there. Tamron needed to update this lens and they’ve done it. They’ve added some things to it that I think really improve it. Stabilization, which is super important. We’ve got a closer focusing distance which makes this lens very versatile. We also have the ability, as we have done a lot of these professional lenses that they have offered, we’ve got that USB port. So we can plug in and customize the lens. Plus it’s f/2.8 all throughout as the last one was. But it’s a much improved version from the first generation. Let’s take some pictures with it. Let’s see if the elements that have been added are going to give us sharper images. Let’s just see how the tracking works, the autofocus, let’s check it all out. Let’s get going here in Valley of Fire.
So it’s pretty exciting, this morning as we’re driving up here in the canyon we saw a group of big horn sheep. We were able to get some great images. I hopped out. I was able to shoot some at 70mm and so I was really wanting to see how the autofocus was going to track. How quickly it was going to lock onto the eye. I quickly shifted the camera to the animal. And even in silhouette, you see some of these images, even in silhouette that eye was catching, the eye of the big horn sheep up on the horizon in that silhouette. It really did an excellent job. I mean they’ve updated this lens. I got it more in the category of the 150-500 mm which has incredible tracking, sharp and fast with that VXD motor gets in quickly, focuses quickly. And I saw that this morning as we were shooting these sheep. Because it really stayed on them. So I’ve been very impressed with this. I think that’s an update that is really important for this lens because this is a go-to lens if you’re shooting people, animals, some kinds of sports. Especially people if I’m doing portraits I want a fast focus going to stay on the action. And they’ve updated the automobile, also the other kind of tracking modes that allows you to get quick action, quick response with that VXD motor. So it’s doing an excellent job. It certainly did this morning. There’s a lot more of those images. We had a great time photographing those sheep. I think that’s an upgrade that really helps this lens be worth the money that it’s going to be to upgrade to that next generation. It’s certainly worth it for that almost alone.
One of the things this lens really needed and Tamron put into the second generation is stabilization. So it has VC mechanism which is the Vibration Compensation you get with Tamron’s lenses. This has really been needed because you need stabilization both for stills and for video. And Tamron has really brought that into this lens. So the stabilization in this lens works really well in low light situations when you’re doing stills. And it has an AI feature that in video, that 100mm or less, the AI is deciding exactly what type of stabilization you need in order to get the shot that you want. So whether you’re panning or whatever you’re doing it’s going to compensate in a manner that’s going to match the type of movement that you’re working on. So that’s a great feature that works at 100mm or lower.
So what made this lens slightly heavier was they’ve completely redesigned the optics of the lens to give you sharper images. Let’s look at some of these images because I’m seeing very sharp. They render extremely well. I’m shooting on a Sony a7R V. This gives you an incredible amount of detail. And this lens really is rendering on that sensor and looking fabulous. So this lens has been completely redesigned. It’s got 20 elements in 15 groups. They’ve combined multiple different specialty elements to create this lens from extra low dispersion to low dispersion. Then you just have the spherical lenses. It really comes together with that B-Bar coating, second generation of the B-Bar coating which makes this lens so you almost can’t flare it. I mean sometimes you’re going, I want a little flare in the corner. You can’t make that happen because of that coating. So it’s a very effective coating that helps cut down on chromatic aberration and all the other issues that the lens could possibly have.
So the lens has a lock when you’re at 70mm to lock it so it won’t creep. It is an external zoom. It’s zooming in and out. It’s not internal zoom. But it’s very tight. We also have on the upper side we have three customized settings. This button will activate whichever one you’re set to. That button will activate it, 1 second on 1 second off. So you can change it back and forth. Mine is set on custom one so that I can switch back and forth quickly between manual focus and autofocus. Hold it one second, I’m in the autofocus. Hold it one second, back to manual focus. Which is really easy if I want to switch and be able to fine-tune the focus. If I want to switch over to video mode I can do that really quickly. It makes it easy to switch back and forth. We got that USB-C port so you can plug it into the app and be able to work on the app. Which really makes it easy to customize the lens.
So this second generation is slightly heavier than the first generation. But it comes in at 30.2 oz. It’s very lightweight. It’s the lightest weight in this class for f/2.8 that has vibration compensation. So it’s really very small. It’s at 6.2 inches. It’s got 30.2 ounces.I find it very easy to carry. I mean the size of this to put in a bag and to be able to carry and travel with, it makes this very, very useful. You keep that 67mm on the front of all the lenses that you get, not all, but most of the lenses from Tamron. That gives you the ability to adapt it to all your filters and things you’re shooting with very quickly. So it’s small, lightweight, easy to travel with. For 70-180mm that checks a lot of boxes for me. That makes it really useful.
So one of the things I’ve loved about the lenses that Tamron’s been doing is they try to give you as short a focus distance as possible. So that the minimum object distance is as short as possible. They’ve done it on most of their lenses. This one has been improved compared to the first generation. Now at 70mm you can get down to about 11.8 in. Which I wouldn’t consider a macro lens but you certainly get in super tight. I mean, by the time I get to that working distance I’m about 4 in or so from the front of my camera lens. It autofocuses that close so it’s really perfect if you got to do a ring shot, if you got to get in tight on flowers or something. Or you want to do some kind of just simple kind of close-up photography. In a 70-180mm lens that’s pretty amazing. So at 180mm it’s more like 33.5”. So you don’t get as close with that 180mm. So really at 70mm is where you get in closer. Your object is going to be larger in the frame. It’s going to give you closer to a macro type shot at 70mm. That’s a great improvement with this lens.
So this is an incredible view here in Valley of Fire. Love this view, love photographing from here. When we came up to photograph here we met a couple here who had found it on Instagram, imagine that! So they’re here getting, taking pictures of one another. I photographed them for a while. And the reason I bring that up is because this lens really is about people photography. It’s an incredible lens doing any kind of portraiture, fashion, all those types of images where you want the background to fall out of focus and get that beautiful bokeh. F/2.8 gives you a really shallow depth of field and allows the background to fall out of focus. And at 180mm you get a beautiful bokeh and things fall out of focus. It looks really nice. So that’s the value of this lens for me. Here’s some of the images I took. It’s really a people lens that allows you to get that beautiful out of focus background. At 70mm you can start to get some contextual and you see it in some of these shots. You start to see down the canyon. You start to see where we’re at. But when you get in tighter you just really let that background just melt away. Beautiful buttery bokeh looks so fabulous and at f/2.8 this lens really does a great job. It’s a little windy out here. So let’s wrap it up with that. Great people lens and the updates for the autofocus, the fastness of the autofocus with this lens and the sharpness really help us when we’re taking those kinds of people images.
So I love the USB port on these professional line lenses from Tamron that allow you to customize the buttons, change the direction of the focus, allow you to change these three different custom buttons here. So that you can do different functions from the camera. I’ve set it up so on a custom number one if I hold this button on the side for one second it goes to manual focus so I can jump back and forth. In the menus I can also set it up so that I do a linear or nonlinear. I usually run always linear focus. So it gives me the ability to use, in video I can focus, a linear focus is so much easier for video. Well it’s the only way you can do it. So all those things are really able to go in and to function and to change those functions in the menu through Tamron utility on your computer. Which really makes it so the lens is able to be customized to what you do. I’m probably going to change it so that the focus ring back here when I’m in autofocus becomes my aperture ring. And that’s going to allow me to just use that aperture faster with that one hand. So love that feature on this lens and all their professional lenses allow you to customize them. I think it’d be nice to have buttons here dedicated to those kinds of things. But it’s also nice to be able to choose what you want them to do as well.
But more importantly it’s just really wonderful to shoot. I’m seeing great resolution from corner to corner. You see it in the images we’ve been looking at. It renders great on the a7R V which is not always an easy thing to do. And I’ve enjoyed shooting it. It’s been very fun. The autofocus is fast. Everything about it has been just very enjoyable to do.
So let’s wrap this up. I’ve really enjoyed shooting this here today. I actually find shooting these kind of landscapes with a 70-180mm is a pretty interesting experience. You see things very differently. You’re isolating things. You’re reaching out and kind of flattening the perspective. And it’s really an interesting look. So I’ve enjoyed that a lot and I think that’s a great application. But for me this lens is really about people. I love shooting people with this lens from full body to tight shots. I love the beautiful bokeh you get in the background. And this lens really delivers with the new elements inside this lens. We’re getting beautiful bokeh in the images. We’re just seeing a wonderful kind of, as the background falls out of focus, it’s just wonderfully soft back there. I think that is what I enjoyed about this lens the most was just the image resolution and the way that it falls out of focus in the background. I think that is for me the test of a lens. I can live with a lot of things but if it doesn’t render and make the background look fabulous when you’re shooting on shallow depth of field, the lens doesn’t work. This worked really well. I really like the look. It was a beautiful soft look. I love the fact that we’ve got the stabilization in it which really helps for doing video. I like the fact that you can program the lens so you can change it to do what you want. It’s got that really shallow depth of, not shallow depth of field, but close focusing distance. Which really makes this lens even more useful just out of the box. The lightweight, the shortness of it, makes it easy to carry. Which for me in the trinity makes this lens just really, really important.
So should you upgrade from the first generation to the second generation? I think, absolutely and for the reasons I just listed. It renders a beautiful image. It’s still super lightweight at f/2.8 even though it’s a tiny bit heavier than the first generation. The stabilization is important. The close focusing distance is important. So the things they’ve improved with on this lens make it very much worthwhile. Look at the price point of this lens. It’s around $1,300 which is, you could buy two of these and have a 100 bucks left over for lunch compared to the Sony 70-200mm f/2.8. Now there are some limitations. The one is the frame rate on these telephoto lenses you get from Tamron. You have a 15 frames a second. So you don’t get as many frames per second like on the a1 that you would get on the proprietary lens. So that is something you lose. But it’s at $1,300 compared to $2700 or $2,800 I think it is for the Sony. So I think it’s an incredible deal. Sharp lens, light, easy to carry. I think it’s a home run from Tamron and an update that really was needed. And they did a great job in doing it. So there you have it. There’s my thoughts. Leave us a comment. Keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
