Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Hands-on Review: A very good ultra-wide-angle zoom lens

posted Wednesday, December 8, 2021 at 12:00 PM EDT

Click here to read our Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD Hands-on Review

The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD (Model B060) is a new ultra-wide-angle zoom lens for Sony APS-C cameras. We went hands-on with the lens, albeit with full-frame Sony Alpha cameras using the automatic APS-C crop functionality, and the lens impressed with its good build quality and impressive image quality.

The lens is reasonably compact given its constant F2.8 aperture. The lens weighs 335 grams (11.8 ounces) and is 86.2mm (3.4 inches) long. The lens uses a 67mm filter thread, which is nice because it's a common and affordable filter size. Inside the lens are a dozen elements arranged in ten groups. Among these elements are two glass-molded aspherical elements, an eXtra low dispersion (XLD) element and two low dispersion (LD) elements. The lens also includes Tamron's BBAR-G2 coating. The lens has a lot of bells and whistles and a robust design. It feels high-quality in the hands, and it produces high-quality images.

In use, the lens's Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive (RXD) pays dividends. Autofocus is fast, quiet and accurate. The lens is compatible with Sony's Fast Hybrid AF and Eye AF technology, too, which is great. The close-focusing distance is 15cm (5.9") at 11mm and 23.8cm (9.4") at 20mm, so while it's not a macro lens, it can focus quite closely, which works well when focusing on a foreground element in a landscape scene.

Sony A7R IV - 13mm (19.5mm equiv.), F2.8, 13s, ISO 6400. This image has been edited.

Speaking of landscapes, the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 is a great lens for landscape and travel photography. While it doesn't have a lot of reach at the longer end of the focal length range, reaching 30mm in 35mm terms, its wide-angle field of view is excellent for capturing expansive scenes. Thanks to its F2.8 maximum aperture, the lens is also well-suited to night sky photography. The manual focusing experience is quite nice and the lens, despite producing somewhat heavy vignette at F2.8, captures sharp images of the night sky.

Sony A7R IV - 11mm (16.5mm equiv.), F11, 3.2s, ISO 100. This image has been edited.

There's a lot more to say about the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD lens, so head over to our Hands-on Review. You can also download full-resolution images from our Gallery. Tamron has made a great lens and it's a worthwhile addition to the kit of any Sony APS-C photographer looking for a fast wide-angle zoom.