Tamron 150-600mm f/5-6.3 Di VC USD SP

SLRgear Review
January 21, 2016
by Andrew Alexander

Tamron released the SP 150-600mm zoom lens near the end of 2013, and it's far and away the longest optic offered by the company. The lens is available in Canon, Nikon and Sony lens mounts, and includes Tamron's VC (Vibration Compensation) style of image stabilization. (The Sony version excludes this feature, as its cameras have image stabilization built-in.)

On a Canon sub-frame body like the 7D this will equate to an equivalent 35mm field of view of 240-960mm: on a similar Nikon or Sony digital body this equates to 225-900mm. This lens isn't a "constant" lens, in that as you increase the focal length, both the maximum and minimum aperture sizes decrease. The following table reflects the change in apertures as you zoom the lens:

The lens ships with a round-shaped lens hood, a tripod mount, takes giant 95mm filters, and is available now for around $1,000.

Sharpness
The lens offers decent performance, but it never achieves tack-sharp images at any focal length and zoom combination. It does best on a sub-frame camera like the Canon 7D, where the camera's sensor is trained on the best parts of the lens.

On the 7D, the best performance is obtained at ƒ/8, either at the 150mm or 200mm zoom setting, where the image is almost tack-sharp across the frame. On the full-frame Canon 1Ds mkIII, we note much more corner softness: it's hard to nail down the optimum settings here, because you're trading off corner softness for central sharpness. On the average though, I would say that 300mm at ƒ/11 gives you your best performance on the 1Ds mkIII.

You don't buy a lens like this without seeing how it performs at its longest reach: the answer is, not bad. Image sharpness suffers lightly as the lens is zoomed in past 300mm, until it offers only above-average results for sharpness at its sweet spot of ƒ/11.

Avoid stopping down smaller than ƒ/22 if you can: diffraction limiting makes this lens pay a heavy price on image sharpness, especially above the ƒ/36 aperture.

Chromatic Aberration
The lens tolerates chromatic aberration fairly well, it is really only problematic at the edges of its zoom range: at 150mm, and 600mm. In these case you're looking at magenta-cyan fringing, on areas of high contrast, in the corners.

Shading (''Vignetting'')
Corner shading is not a factor when the 150-600mm lens is mounted on the sub-frame Canon 7D. On the full-frame Canon 1Ds mkIII however, there is some light corner shading (around a half-stop) when the lens is used at ƒ/8 or larger.

Distortion
The Tamron SP 150-600mm produces some pincushion distortion in the corners on both the 7D and the 1Ds mkIII; it's much more prominent on the latter. Specifically, you get about -0.5% distortion in the corners, no matter what focal length you set.

Autofocus Operation
Autofocus is conducted electronically, without the use of a mechanical screw. It takes less than one second to focus from infinity to closest focus, and it's very quiet as it does so. The lens can be focused mechanically in manual focusing mode. The front element doesn't rotate during focus operations, making the use of a polarizing filter that much easier.

Macro
You get average macro performance with this lens, with 0.2x magnification and a minimum close-focusing distance of 2.7 meters (just under 9 feet).

Build Quality and Handling
The Tamron SP 150-600mm ƒ/5-6.3 Di VC USD is probably the largest lens Tamron produces, weighing in at just under 2 kilograms (around four and a half pounds). The lens mount is metal, the 95mm filter ring is plastic, and there are weather seals integrated into the lens design. The lens offers a windowed distance scale, marked in feet and meters. Tamron's current implementation of autofocus means you can autofocus and turn the focusing ring to adjust focus manually at any time. A standard accessory of the lens is a removable tripod ring.

The lens has 20 elements in 13 groups with 3 LD glass elements and uses Tamron’s eBand coating and their conventional BBAR coatings (Broad Band Anti-reflection). The diaphragm has 9 circular blades which retains its nearly circular shape down to two stops from its maximum aperture.

Tamron has elected to swap the position of the zoom and focus rings: where most other manufacturer's zoom rings come first, and the focus ring further away from the body, it's the opposite for this Tamron.

The zoom ring is a generous 2 1/2 inches wide with a deep ridged, rubber coating. The ring has a long throw - it takes about 170 degrees to turn through the entire zoom range. The lens does extend as you zoom in towards 600mm, adding around three extra inches to its overall length.

The focusing ring is an inche wide and also rubber-coated, with deep rubber ribs. Since the lens now uses an electrical focusing system there are no hard stops on either end of the focus throw and the ring will turn forever in either direction.

The lens features Tamron's three-coil Vibration Control (VC) image stabilization system, offering just over three stops of hand-held improvement at 150mm, and around 2 1/2 stops at 600mm. It's worth looking at our IS Test tab for greater detail.

The front threads on the lens take a 95mm filter, and are plastic. However, the front mount doesn't rotate while focusing or zooming, so good news for polarizer users. The HA011 lens hood works well to prevent lens flare, and reverses on the lens for storage. The interior of the lens hood is matte black, and ribbed. Using the hood will add over 4 inches to the overall length of the lens.

The Tamron 150-600mm ships with a removable tripod mount, but there is an optional Model A011TL tripod mount with a longer foot that provides more mounting options.

Alternatives

Canon EF 100-400mm ƒ/4.5-5.6L IS USM ~$2,100
The Canon lens is optically better - sharper, and less prone to distortion and chromatic aberration - but you'd expect that, in an L-class lens that's almost twice the price. The Canon lens also offers image stabilization, a slightly faster aperture, but it doesn't zoom in as far.

Nikon 80-400mm ƒ/4.5-5.6G ED VR AF-S ~$2,400
The Nikon lens is much sharper than the Tamron, but again, at the price point you'd expect that. As with the Canon, it provides image stabilization, but doesn't match the Tamron for its zoom range.

Sony 70-400mm ƒ/4-5.6G SAL-70400G ~$2,200
The Sony lens offers excellent performance - better than the Tamron, but like Canon and Nikon, that comes with a much more expensive price tag. Also like the previous alternatives, the Sony lens doesn't match the Tamron for its zoom range.

Sigma 150-600mm ƒ/5-6.3 DG HSM OS "C" ~$1,000
Perhaps the most directly comparable alternative, Sigma's offering in this area is so close in performance to Tamron it's hard to tell them apart. Sigma's OS image stabilization system produces slightly better results, but has some quirks to it the Tamron doesn't. The Sigma is available in Canon, Nikon and Sigma mounts, so Sony users are out of luck.

Conclusion
If you aren't looking at the Sigma 150-600mm "C" in another tab right now, you probably should be: the lenses are very comparable, and are definitely competing for the same market. The Tamron is an exceptional lens for the price point, but its slow aperture range limits it to photography accompanied by natural light, tripod use, high ISO settings, or a combination of the three. There's a reason the pro lenses cost so much for those wider apertures, but if you aren't shooting situations where you need that kind of gear then the Tamron 150-600mm SP offers an excellent platform for shooting extreme telephoto shots.

Product Photos

Sample Photos

The VFA target should give you a good idea of sharpness in the center and corners, as well as some idea of the extent of barrel or pincushion distortion and chromatic aberration, while the Still Life subject may help in judging contrast and color. We shoot both images using the default JPEG settings and manual white balance of our test bodies, so the images should be quite consistent from lens to lens.

Still Life shot

VFA target

As appropriate, we shoot these with both full-frame and sub-frame bodies, at a range of focal lengths, and at both maximum aperture and ƒ/8. For the ''VFA'' target (the viewfinder accuracy target from Imaging Resource), we also provide sample crops from the center and upper-left corner of each shot, so you can quickly get a sense of relative sharpness, without having to download and inspect the full-res images. To avoid space limitations with the layout of our review pages, indexes to the test shots launch in separate windows.