1 Year Review of the Tamron 17-28mm F2.8 for Sony E-Mount with Samples on A7III

Today, we'll be talking about this Tamron 17-28mm F2.8 lens, which is a wide, fat zoom lens for Sony E-mount full-frame cameras.

This is a full-frame e-mount lens for Sony, but if you were to use it on an APS-C camera like the a6400 or the a6600 or even the a6500, you will get a focal length equivalent of about 25mm to 42mm, which wouldn't be as wide as you might want it to be, but it would be an option if you wanted to get a fast aperture zoom lens for your APS-C camera.

The Tamron lens became available about July of 2019, and when it came out, it sold very hot as well compared to his big brother, the 28-75 F2.8.

This is a wide lens that goes all the way from 17mm to 28mm. It's a very unusual focal length, but just like it's big brother, medium to telephoto lens, 28-75, it's a weird focal length, but I guess I just wanted to keep it the same.

Recently, Tamron also came out with the eldest brother or the biggest brother, the third brother, the Tamron 78-180. You have the lineup of all the three Tamron lenses. That's pretty much all the entire focal lens that you will need for most 90% of your shooting needs. If you haven't watched my review of the bigger brother of this lens, the Tamron 28-75, here's the link.

I've been using this Tamron lens for about a year now, and I feel like it's a very solid choice compared to the next alternative for Sony E-mount cameras, which would be the Sony 16-35 G Master lens.

Like the G Master lens, this is also an F2.8 aperture lens, and this aperture is constant in the entire focal range.

This Tamron lens has a constant aperture of F2.8. That means that the aperture does not change as you zoom in to different focal lengths, which makes this lens fast and good in low-light. Having a constant aperture in a budget friendly lens is very difficult to find because many of the budget alternatives have a variable aperture, meaning that the aperture changes as you zoom in.

For a period of time, I really like shooting at the medium to telephoto focal length because I really like that compression and that separation from the background that the subject would get, giving you very nice Boca and very nice blurry backgrounds.

But having shot for about a year with this lens, I can say that I'm starting to fall in love more and more with that wide angle lens look. Wide angle lenses are very good for architecture, street photography, wide landscape shots, and anything where you would like to capture the entire scenery.

Wide lenses are good because they push away the background to appear to be further than what it actually is. If you're in a smaller space, wide angle lenses come in very handy.

Wide angle lenses are not so great for portraits because sometimes they give you a very distorted look, but when used creatively, they can create pretty cool results, whether for video or photo.

Let's talk about the build quality of the Tamron lens. It's similar to its big brother, the 20-75, and the way it's built. It has a very nice matte black finish, and it feels solid enough, similar to its bigger brother.

The construction of the lens is plastic, but the mount at the back, it's made of metal, which is a good thing. The 28-75 is about 1.2 pounds, and this one is just under 1 pound, which makes it a very light lens for gimbal work. This is a lot lighter than the G Master 16-35 as well. That G Master lens is about 1.5 pounds, and this is just under 1 pound.

The zoom ring feels quite smooth actually. And what I really like about this is that the zoom is internal, meaning that the barrel does not extend out as you Zoom in.

The focus by wire of this lens is intuitive. It has enough resistance, pretty good. This lens has weather resistance, but it's not weather sealed, so I'll be wary if it's pouring, draining a lot, but if it's just drizzling, I think it should be okay shooting with this out there.

The filter size of the Tamron lens is 67mm, which is exactly the same as the other 28-75 camera lens, which makes it really easy to carry the same filters.

This lens has some macro capabilities and can focus very closely at about 7.48 inches. One thing that this doesn't have, unlike the Sony lenses, is an auto-focus, manual focus toggle switch, so you cannot switch that directly on the lens. You have to do that in the body of the camera.

Let's talk about autofocus performance. The Tamron lens is not as fast as Sony lenses, but in my experience, it's fast enough to be usable.

Eye detection in photo mode is actually pretty good as well and is able to lock on to the eye for most of the time.

This lens has a variable focusing distance, so at 17mm, it focuses as close at 7.48 inches, but when you're zoomed in all the way to 28mm, it focused at 10.23 inches.

At 17mm at F2.8, this lens is pretty sharp in the center, but you can see that it's a little bit soft around the edges. This is not as apparent in slower aperture than F4, F8, and F11. At F8, it seems like it sharpens in the corners.

At 20mm, this lens was pretty sharp all around, and the corner started to be sharper at F4.

At 28mm, this lens was pretty sharp all around.

You can see from these samples that this lens is not as sharp in the edges, but honestly, I really have to zoom in on my computer monitor to notice a difference. And if you're not pixel peeping, it should be fine.

The bokeh of the Tamron lens is quite nice, but a closer look, you will see that there's some little elements or the little circles inside those bokeh circles, so, bokeh inside a bokeh. It's almost like a bokeh inception or something like that.

At its widest focal length, distortion is actually quite minimal, and it's not bad at all.

Having used the Tamron lens for about a year now, is this lens worth it? At about $899 (prices may change), honestly, it's a very good option if you want a fast aperture white zoom lens. It's a lot cheaper than the G Master lens, and it's a lot lighter.

In terms of sharpness, this lens was pretty sharp overall. It's not as sharp as the Sony G Master lens based on what I see online, but the image that you get out of this lens is actually very usable. It's also a very good gimbal lens because it zooms internally.

The only thing is that it doesn't have a manual switch between autofocus and manual focus, but it's not a big deal for me. And also, if you have been using Sony lenses for a while, they'll take some time to get used to the focus ring as it is reversed, but it's nothing that you can't learn.