(If you want to watch the video review go to The Slanted Lens on YouTube!)
Hey, it’s Jay P here. I’m out in Monument Valley. I love this place. I truly do love coming out here. I’ve been coming for years. I love photographing here. It’s just a beautiful place to be. 
But I brought with me on this trip the 17-70mm Tamron lens that they are just offering now for Canon and for Nikon (And also available for Sony and Fujifilm). So, I brought an R7 here so we can shoot on an APS-C sensor. So, this is a lens built for an APS-C sensor. 
That really gives us a 35mm equivalent of about a 27-112mm, which puts it into a category of kind of the classic video lens of 24-105mm on a 35mm. So, we’re going to take a look at this and just see how it works for video. We’re going to see how it looks for close focus and put it through its paces and just see exactly what we’ve got. 
I’m excited to shoot with this. Tomorrow morning, we head out to Totem Pole. We’ve got a guide to take us out there so we can photograph the sun coming up. It’ll be a lot of fun. Let’s get this lens out. Let’s shoot with this and let’s just see exactly what we got.
So, this really is an excellent zoom range. It’s a 4.1x zoom range from that 17-70mm. It really makes it great for street photography. It’s excellent for this kind of landscape application. And super good for portraits. 
Anytime you get into that 85-100mm it’s a great portrait lens. And the fact that it’s an f/2.8 throughout makes this a professional lens. Lightweight, easy to carry, great travel lens, a lot of fun. 
So, when you’re shooting video, it’s got an autofocus, manual focus button right here on the lens, which makes it really easy for me to switch back and forth. Also, there’s a VC on or off, so I can turn the vibration control on really easily, or I can shut it off if I don’t want it on if I’m on a tripod or something. 
It is nice that the new lens has these two toggle switches that allows me to go between VC on or off, or manual to autofocus. I really like that. Some of the ones in the past, you always have to get into the back menus, which is okay, but this is just a little quicker and I like it.
So, this lens comes in about 18.7 ounces and 4.8 inches. So, it’s very compact, very small. It comes with that 67mm on the front. Just makes this a very compact, lightweight zoom with f/2.8 throughout. Really is a compact, easy lens to carry with you in your bag. So, that’s what I love about it the most is just how absolutely lightweight this lens is.
So a 17-70mm lens on an APS-C sensor is a 35mm equivalent of about a 27-112mm, which puts it kind of in that sweet spot or kind of the category of what used to be a very common well, is still very common video lens. That’s the 24-105mm. That’s the 24-105mm f/4. But if you look at f/4 on a full-frame sensor, it’s going to give you the same depth of field equivalent as an f/2.8 on an APS-C sensor. 
So, this lens really does fall in that sweet spot for doing video. It gives you a great range from a little wider to a little longer. It just gives you a lot of different options. And certainly for video, this has been a go-to lens forever. So, that’s just something to look at as we shoot. We’ll play with that thought and see what we got.
So the magnification ratio of this lens at 17mm is 1:4.8. At 70mm is 1:5.2. So 1:5.2 or 1:4.8 I mean, they’re very close. It’s just like I say it’s a little easier to work when you’re on that longer lens. So if you back off just a little bit from 17mm to like somewhere around 24mm or 35mm, I found it really workable. 
You still get a really close image and yet you can get the lens out of the way and it just makes it so you can get some nice close-up type images. So, I love that about these types of zooms. 
When you got an f/2.8 zoom that gives you an f/2.8 throughout and you can get fairly close to subject matter, to your subject matter. I think it’s a win all the way around.
So, let’s talk about the ergonomics of this lens. You know, this is the Canon version, and I do love the fact that you’ve got an autofocus, manual focus button. You’ve got your VC on or off button on the lens, so you have the ability to make that change right there. It’s just easy to switch that back and forth. It’s very fast. You’ve also got the USB-C port, so you can take and tailor this lens, and be able to set it up however you’d like to. So, it gives you the control of the lens in that way. 
I just love the fact that we got our zoom up front. The zoom is very fast on this going from 17-70mm. It’s a quick change. And then we got a focus ring that’s back close to where my hand sits so I can get my fingers on that close, that focus ring when I’m doing video. So I want that focus ring close to my fingers so I can get my hand underneath and I can get my fingers right on that focusing ring. I don’t want it up front. 
It’s too far away. And the back is perfect. So quick to zoom, easy to focus. We got the buttons on the lens to allow us to turn the VC on and off for the autofocus, manual focus, and we got the USB port, USB-C port, so we can adapt our lens to however we’d like to shoot with it. So, it’s really a lightweight, compact offering for that Canon or Nikon. And they have it for Sony as well, APS-C sensor size.
So, we got up at 3:30 this morning, headed out to Totem Pole. We had a guide who took us out to Totem Pole. Just a beautiful area out there. We saw a couple of beautiful arches. We were able to photograph Totem Pole as the sun came up. 
So, take a look at some of these images. That 17-70mm really gave a lot of great images. I was able to do some wide angle stuff when we’re shooting the sand in the foreground with a totem pole in the background. 
I was able to shoot some longer stuff when we’re a ways away from it to be able to bring it in closer as the sun’s coming up. See those great sunset images there. It was really fun to shoot with this lens. 
It gave me a great range that really worked for that area out there. Then we did some portraits also of our guide. 
It was fun as well.
So, I’ve been very happy with the vibration compensation with this lens. It’s got fast, very quiet autofocus. It snaps right to as I’m autofocusing. I use a single point that sometimes allows me to jump to different points if I want to or just a multi-level if I’m shooting just people and I see the lens picks up the eye, goes right to the eye. 
The autofocus is quick to find a subject and stick to it. So, it’s been very effective. So, I found that this works seamlessly with the Canon R7.
So, this seems like the place to wrap things up, the spot where Forest Gump decided he’d run long enough. So, let’s wrap this up here with that 17-70mm APS-C sensor from Tamron for Canon and Nikon. And also available for Sony and Fujifilm. 
You know, this lens I feel like is a great video crossover lens because it gives you this equivalent pretty much of that 24-105 f/4. F/2.8 on an APS-C sensor gives you about the same focus as an f/4 on a full-frame sensor. 
So, it really becomes a great video lens, a great range in that video world. The zoom is fast, the autofocus is excellent. I love the buttons on the lens that allow me to change from the VC control, turn it on and off. 
And the autofocus to manual focus turn that on and off. I can customize the lens and it just really gives us fast, quiet autofocus. I found this very easy to use the last few days as we’ve shot. It just gives you quick autofocus. Focus breathing is very minimal. 
Great offering from Tamron in a lightweight lens with a 67mm filter. Just really easy to carry with you and fits the form factor of that mirrorless camera. So you keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’.
