Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4 OSD Field Test: A full-frame ultra-wide zoom that’s big on quality but not on price
posted Thursday, November 29, 2018 at 2:10 PM EDT
Click here to read our Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4 OSD Field Test
Are you in need of an ultra-wide angle zoom lens for your full-frame Canon or Nikon DSLR? Great! Want a sharp lens that also doesn't cost an arm and a leg? You're in luck. The refreshed Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4 Di OSD lens may just be right up your alley. Oh, and it's also surprisingly small for a full-frame-format zoom!
Our resident landscape photographer Jeremy Gray recently spent some time field testing this new zoom lens in the already-snowy Maine wilderness and came back rather impressed for the most part with this affordable ultra-wide zoom lens. Jeremy's comprehensive Field Test goes in-depth with this $600 full-frame lens, covering handling and build quality characteristics as well as image quality assessments. He examines sharpness as well as vignetting and CA across the lenses zoom range.
The end results are impressive, despite the wallet-friendly price point. Even wide-open, the updated Tamron zoom lens is sharp across its zoom range, and especially in the center. Chromatic aberration is minimal, and while vignetting is noticeable, especially at 17mm, it's easily corrected for in software. The new weather-sealed design proved reliable, too, which is reassuring.
Announced back in August of this year, the new Tamron 17-35mm zoom is much-needed refresh of the original 17-35mm f/2.8-4 Di SP AF from the early/mid-2000s. The new lens features not only a new exterior design with updated styling and weather-sealing, but the optical design gets a refresh as well. There's also an all-new silent autofocusing system.
For all the details on how this lens handles out in the field, including image quality, AF performance and more, check out our Tamron 17-35mm f/2.8-4 OSD Field Test. Also, be sure to browse the extensive selection of gallery images, complete with both JPEGs and RAW files.
