Exploring the Range: Tamron 28-300mm Lens Hands-On Review

(If you want to watch the video go to @TheSlantedLens on YouTube)

Hey, it’s Jay P here. I’ve got my hands on the new Tamron 28-300mm. This is an F/4-7.1 All-In-One lens. You know, it’s got that new great sleek design from Tamron. They’ve really evolved into great lenses that give you an incredible range. Something you can take on vacation and shoot everything from sports to planes to birds.I mean it just gives you an incredible range. Let’s go shoot. Let’s see what this lens looks like. Let’s see what it’s, really the specs are, how close we can get to things and just how nice the images look.

So let’s get started and see what we can do, 28-300mm.

So the size of this lens is what really makes it attractive. It’s 5 inches long which makes it very small and easy to carry with you, to pack with you. It’s 21.5 ounces, so it’s very lightweight. I think those two combined with that reach of 28-300mm make this really a successful lens for any kind of travel application. You know, if you’re going to go off and shoot, you know, whales breaching in Alaska, you’re going to shoot flowers in Holland, I mean this really becomes a great travel application. I love the 28mm on that wide end. I think that really makes this valuable because it gives you enough to shoot buildings and yet long enough to pull things in and do things like wildlife or sports or you know, like say whales breaching, you know, in Alaska. That was something that was amazing to see there. So those kinds of things make this ergonomically a really good travel lens. A good all-around lens. If a person was really just, you know, dabbling in photography and didn’t want to spend a lot of money. Actually, my dentist is a person who loves to shoot photography but doesn’t want to spend a ton of money on lenses. This becomes, for $899, a lens that really solves a lot of the different situations you’ll be in and gives you a lot of options. It becomes a great lens for just all around use.

So let’s look at the ergonomics of this lens. You know, first thing for me is I really do love this groove in this new series of lenses. It’s just this beautiful black finish on them. But what’s important to me is that groove allows me when I’m holding this to tell where my front telephoto is and my back focus is. I can feel that groove and I know where I’m at on the lens. That really works for me. It’s got a single button here that allows you to program this to do different things in the lens. If you want to change that to be able to change your manual focus to autofocus you can make those adjustments with the app. It does have a USB port that allows you to plug this in so you can work with it on your computer or you can just work it, you can make the adjustments in the app. I do love the deep grooves that they put on the front ring here of this now. It just makes it easy to pull this, especially if you’re wanting to try to do some kind of a zoom in doing video. That really works really well for me. I love that kind of, those deep grooves and the same with the focus. It makes it easy for me to find that and to be able to pull focus when you’re in manual mode. You can change the focus on this with this button if you want to change it to more of a linear focus. And that allows it to be a little more video friendly. So it has those options. It’s 67mm which means it fits all the other filters of this lens series. Most everything Tamron has done now for the last, you know, couple of years has been with that 67mm. So when I put ND’s on it I have the same ND setup that goes on this as on every other lens that I own except for their larger telephotos. You got a locking mechanism here to lock it here so it won’t zoom out.

So this lens is made to be outside. It’s got a really great surface coating on the lens that makes it very hard to scratch. It’s got seals all through the lens that make it water resistant. You’ve got a fluorine coating on the front of the lens that makes it so it’s water and oil resistant. And the USB port is waterproof. So this lens is made to be outside which makes it again a great travel lens and lens to take with you wherever you’re going.

So the vibration compensation suppresses the camera shake. Which allows you to be able to get stable images and stable video through 300mm. Even in low light situations where you have to lengthen your shutter it’s going to allow you to hand hold and get more sharp images at those shorter shutter speeds. So that’s a really important thing. So up to 100mm you get that AI assist that gives you more stable video. So this has a close focusing distance of 7 1/2 inches on 28mm which means we’re really, we’re getting a 1:2.8 magnification. So I’m able to get in very tight. That’s on 28mm. You can’t focus as close when you go to 300mm but it becomes a macro lens in a lot of ways at that 1:2.8. So using it in different situations where you see insects or flowers, it’s really a great lens for doing that.

So we’ve been out shooting the paragliders here this morning and the autofocus has been really good about tracking both in video and stills. It’s just it’s high precision autofocus tracking. It does everything from your eye detect to faces to cars. It has a whole variety especially I’m using it with the Sony a7R5. And so it’s just been really spot on. It was nice to follow and to shoot. Nice to see the video as I followed, just how it kind of stayed right with the person. So the focus and the focus tracking on this is really good.

So the lens comes with VXD. (So that’s voice coil extreme torque drive.) It’s a really smooth mechanism. The autofocus has been fast. It tracks, it stays on the subject. So the lens is excellent at tracking. It’s the tracking both in video modes and in still modes. It’s excellent for tracking with birds. I’ve shot some birds. It’s excellent for tracking with the paragliders. Really excellent for a sports kind of application. It’s just going to stay on track. It’s really performed seamlessly as we’ve shot with it. So I’ve been very pleased with that.

So this was a lot of fun. We went into a butterfly exhibit and shot some really close-up stuff of the butterflies. It was interesting to me. And I love it when I see these kinds of comparisons. 28mm allowed me to get in closer and so I could get in close to that close focusing distance of 7.5 in. That allowed me to get in super close. But it was still very contextual. So you saw a lot of the surroundings. Contextual means you’re seeing a lot of the world around the butterfly even though I was in pretty tight. If I backed off and went to 300mm that gave me a nice kind of bokeh out of focus background. And that looked beautiful, which is my preferred look. Not in all cases. There was some I shot at 28mm that looked wonderful. So here’s some of those images like, take a look at the 300mm versus the 28mm. Just look at the difference of those two of the same butterfly. And you know every situation is different. Every situation is going to, you know, the distance to the background is going to make a lot of difference. You should check out how to create bokeh. It’s a lesson we have up on the channel. Check that out here. That’ll help you understand how to create that bokeh. But with a lens that’s a little slower like this you need as much distance as you can get between the subject and the background. So if you’re shooting people, your person’s going to have to be a long ways away from that background so you can get some nice bokeh that start to fall out of focus. And stay with as long a lens as you can get even though you can frame them up at 50mm, go back to 300mm. That bokeh is going to build every time you go up from 50mm to 100mm to 200mm to 300mm. That bokeh is going to build. You just have to back up so that background becomes more and more out of focus. A lot of fun, that kind of macro kind of photography is a lot of fun.

I was wandering around this morning taking pictures and I just saw in the background a bunch of guys in orange vests. I thought, that looks fun. So I kind of crawled through the weeds and walking out of the weeds going, “Hey guys, can I take your picture?” And I just love this about people. They all go, “Yeah!” They were totally into it. So it gave me an opportunity to shoot some 300mm shots. That background falls nicely out of focus. I was able to do some more wide shots and that gave us a little more contextual look as well and that kind of portraiture. I do love a portrait on 28mm. I think sometimes it looks fabulous. In fact, here’s some we did up with the paragliders. You see this gentleman here on a 28mm. We see all of his rig, his parachute or whatever you call it, paraglider on the ground with him in the background with that 28mm. But then we can go to a longer lens, 200mm or 300mm, and it brings that background in and just creates a much different looking portrait. So take a look at those two. I think this kind of a lens allows you to have that kind of range to give you everything from more street type photography where you’re seeing their surroundings. You’re seeing what’s happening in their world. To an isolation kind of look where you just have the background falling way out of focus. So there’s some more of those guys in the orange vests and some of the paragliders.

So I have always loved zoom lenses. I have because I work quick. I like different perspectives and it just gives me a lot of options when I’m shooting. I love that process, this kind of a lens when you go from 28mm to 300mm is incredible. Because it gives you so many different options. We’ve been a huge fan of the 28-200mm because of that. Julene shoots most of the stuff we do here on The Slanted lens with a 28-200mm. So this gives us a little more telephoto and a little less aperture. A little slower than that 28-200mm but it gives you a great range. I think that range makes this an incredible lens for a lot of applications. You really can make this a walk around lens. You can use this as a sports lens. You can take this on vacation with you. It’s a lens that you can use for so many different applications from sports to people. It just gives you a lot of options. And I think that’s what makes these really valuable at what, $899. I mean that’s an incredible price point to get into a lens like this. The quality and the builds with these Tamron lenses is so good. We’ve got that great coating so that they don’t give you any kind of flare. You’re not getting any kind of chromatic aberration. I mean it’s just a lot of that they are learning to correct in the lens, which is incredible. So I think this becomes a very simple decision for me. I love the thought of having something like this in my bag I can just grab it and I do this often. You know, I will grab a lens on a camera and we’re going to just walk around for the day. I like to have a camera with me. This gives me a lot of options. So I think it really checks all the boxes. Check it out. See what you think. Leave us a comment below and keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!