Hey, this is Jay P here. We’ve got the new Tamron 35-100mm f/2.8 lens. Is this the new mid lens for the trinity? You know, when you start looking at that 24-70mm, 28-75mm, a 35-100mm has a lot of options. So, I’m excited to shoot with this and just see if this is the new mid lens for that trinity. So, let’s get some shots. See what we got.
So, we’re downtown Los Angeles today shooting the 35-100mm f/2.8 lens from Tamron, just released, just available. This is a really interesting lens to me because you have your standard trinity and usually a 24-70mm or a 28-75mm in Tamron’s case fits into that middle gap. This kind of spans out a little bit from that. Gives you a 35mm. So, it’s a beautiful 35mm. It’s not super wide, but it gives you a wider view to a 100mm, which is a great portrait lens. So, it really gives you that environmental portrait from 35mm to a more closeup kind of head shot at 100mm. So, you’re going 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm. Just a great range. I think an argument could be made that this is a really good lens. If you get this with the 16-30mm that Tamron makes, that gives you that wide end of the Trinity. Then you do the 70-180mm. This gives you a great gap between those because this one goes from 35-100mm and it just fits nicely in the middle there and it’s f/2.8 throughout which is really what you want.
It takes a 67mm filter like all of Tamron’s lenses except for very few. So it really fits into that trinity. I think it is a lightweight excellent option. It’s under $1,000 if you’re using it for Sony. It’s around $1,300 or $1,400 if you’re using it for Nikon. It’s a great offering from Tamron. But I just want to shoot portraits. We’re down at Grand Central Market. Going to be down here in Los Angeles. Just shoot people, street people, which is always fun to do, and just see what we’ve got. But let’s just see how this fits in that middle gap of the trinity that might be the way to go.
So, this lens fits perfectly in Tamron’s ecosystem. It’s very lightweight. It’s 19.9 oz. It’s only 4.7 inches long, which makes it a compact, lightweight mid-range zoom to go in that trinity. It also has a very, very short barrel move. So, it just makes it really fast, especially if you’re doing street kinds of portraits, you want to change up your zoom, your millimeters. It works really quick.
So, it’s really important to know the minimum focus distance on any lens that you own. This lens on the wide end is about 8.7 inches which gives you a 1:3.3 magnification. On the long lens is 25 plus inches. That’s going to give you like a 1:5.9 magnification. So it’s not really a macro lens, but it does allow you to get in pretty tight, which is what is kind of the case with most of the Tamron lenses. They give you that option to get in pretty tight, give you some kind of magnification. At 100 millimeters, I’m 1:5.9 and I’m back quite a ways. I’m not getting great magnification, but on the wide end, I can get really close. That’s pretty cool. I can get in pretty close. This really gives you a lot of options on that wide end to get in tight and do some interesting shots. So, there’s a look at the different ends of that lens when it comes to close focus distance.
So, this lens has a nine blade construction, so it just gives you beautiful dreamy bokeh in the background. So, you can see that in some of these images that we’ve been shooting. It also has that BBAR, the G2, second gen G2 BBAR coating, which means you can’t get a flare off this thing if you had to, which sometimes if you’re trying to shoot flare, it just, it’s going to be difficult to do. Just gives you a clean, beautiful image. Look how warm these are. Look at this couple I shot on the street. It’s so warm and so cool.
So, this lens works with Tamron’s utility. You’ve got the single point you can change to program that to do different things. I usually set mine to turn autofocus and manual focus on and off. But then you have a custom button there that has three different settings, one, two, and three. Which allows you to give you three different custom applications for the lens. So, it works really seamlessly with the app that you get from Tamron. And it’s a programmable lens. It’s got the port on the side, so you can update it and get any kind of firmware updates that come along. You’ll be able to use that port to update it. So, it’s just a professional lens. It’s made to be in their professional line of lenses. It really is.
So the 35-100mm comes with the VXD linear motor focus mechanism that they put in all of their lenses. It’s just if I stay on autofocus, continuous focus, it just jumps. So, it just gets right in there. It really works seamlessly. It’s really nice to be able to use. It tracks real well as I click on somebody as they walk by. It just tracks with them. I mean, the autofocus working with my Sony works really seamlessly. I’ve got the latest firmware on the Sony, so these two are working together really well. So, super happy with the focusing.
All right, so let’s wrap this up. I think this is a great offering that fits so nicely between that 16-30mm and the 70-180mm. It really becomes that gap lens. It’s f/2.8. gives you beautiful bokeh. It really fits in there just like the 28-75mm does, but with a little more range. So you get just a little more of a portrait lens on the long end. Which I really like because it includes that beautiful 35mm environmental portrait type look all the way to more of a close face, you know, at 100 millimeters. Especially with a close focusing distance. So, I find this lens really interesting. A lot of people are going to make a decision between those two lenses, the 28-75mm or this one, which is 35-100mm, both f/2.8. So, a great offering. Fast autofocus, just really worked really nicely as we walked around and shot with it today. So, I think it’s a great offering from Tamron and a type of lens that I think you’re going to see a lot more of in the future. So, keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
