is it just me or this tammy produce more harsh bokeh & less sharp at 2.8 but gone better up.

By way of further clarification, I have been using a Canon 24-105 L for some time. A great lens but I wanted greater flexibility in low light shooting.

All my cathedral shots are in available light, usually at 1,600 ISO, but no more than that, with as little image manipulation in Lightroom as possible.

For me, the Tamron lens does the business with super colour rendition.

This lens solved a number of issues for me. I'm 76 with arthritis and am passionate about cathedrals. Both are relevant. I had a Canon 24-70 L which was far too heavy for me and was an ergonomic nightmare when attached to my Canon 5D Mk II; together they were badly unbalanced. Now I can shoot free hand in many locations that are inaccessible with a tripod. I don't know that the lens is there as it is so well balanced.

The Tamron is a cracking piece of glass comparing well with my other Canon L Series lenses. Very sharp and together with Lightroom 4.2 most anomalies are easily corrected. Also, the VC is a real bonus; I've only had one dud shot so far from camera shake. I'm getting some great images.

Highly recommended!

I have one of these, I've done portraits and landscape images. It works great. I've had no trouble on my 7D with 12 fps shooting and VC. I usually use the 12 fps for HDR bracketing. Much better than the Canon 24-70 f2.8 L for sharpness, and just about everything else. Great price. Cant wait to see the 70-200 VC. I hope it keeps up with the quality.

Wow, 100+ comments so far, seems a popular unit. Have been using this for more than five months now (first rented for test,,) For me the main reason is the excellent sharpness at F/2.8 @ 70mm.

Vibration Control works fine with videos, does not work fine with fps shooting (I guess the stabilizer has no time to find a "stable" position between shots). Since the FF body is heavy and stable, as well as my hands, the VC is always turned off (except videos). At a positive size, VC works fine at single shot mode (so no continuous).

CA sometimes a problem at corners with high contrast (direct sunlight), even at F/9. Depends on certain situation (angle, subject) though.

Corners are softer than on Canon 24-70 /2.8.

AF is silent, smooth, fast, accurate - could not dream of better.

Glass is so good that it outperforms 21mpix easily. Would like to hear from Nikon D800 users - has anyone had a chance to test this lens with 38mpix?

Other than that, the lens is a real honey.

If I was searching for a full frame all purpose lens, this would definitely be the one.

Is it the best out there? Certainly not.

Is it good enough to produce wonderful images under whatsoever conditions? CERTAINLY YES!

I have to say as a portrait photographer who doesnt need a standard zoom except for personal work and on rare occasion. But when I need it I have to have it. this is a really great lens. I use 50mm 85mm primes portrait shoots to do what a standard zoom would. Every now and then I shoot weedings or a corporate event and I have to have a standard zoom. It is really refreshing to not have to pay Nikon 1900 dollars for something I dont use professionaly often. This is a great option as i was unwilling to settle for the poor image quality of the 24-120 f/4 or 24-85 f/3.5-4.5 or espeacially the old sigma that I have had since college.

In the past I have generally held sigma 3rd party lenses in higher regard than Tamron. I have to say this really works to change that. This is a splendid lens that I have already had great success with

Also it is the firs IS wide angle lens I have ever shot. the ability to take hand held workable pictures at 1/10 of a second has some neat applications

Here are samples from my Tamron 24-70 on the D800. All the indoor shots were taken at a shutter of 1/13 and all photos are at f/2.8. The full 36MP images are enabled for viewing...

http://horshack.smugmug.com/Other/Tamron-24-70-on-D800/25653517_pc7Qv3#!i=2118494460&k=bxF43Cx

The guys over at CrisisLab did a comparison video of 4 popular standard zooms - this lens, and the 24-70s from Canon, Nikon and Sigma. It's one of the best (and funniest) comparison videos I've ever seen. Highly recommended.

http://nofilmschool.com/2012/11/canon-nikon-sigma-tamron-24-70mm-lens-shootout/

I am a wedding photographer and was looking forward to Canon finally releasing a 24-70 IS. I would have bought it at any price. When they screwed us over I decided to sell my old canon 24-70 for this Tamron. Best upgrade I have ever made. The Tamron is noticeably sharper at all focal lengths, a bit wider somehow and the stabilization has saved the day in many low light situations (ie church ceremonies). The vignetting does not bother me – in fact I often add it in post production. I assume tests will show that the Tamron is not quite on par with Canon's new 24-70. However, clients do no pixel peep for sharpness or compare the quality of bokeh. Being able to get a shot a non is lens can't, is more important.
I sincerely hope people with common sense will ignore Canon's overpriced 24-70 mk2 for this great Tamron lens - teach them a lesson for not listening to customer demands.

It is funny how many snobs would not buy this lens just beacause it is a Tamron. They don't even bother to comment because it is a Tamron...Nikon and Canon love you guys, that's for sure!!!

One of the posters below gave the best chuckle of the night. They would never buy such a lens because, in their words, it's slow.

a) This lens has a huge 82mm filter thread. A hypothetical zoom with constant f2 or faster max aperture would be the size of a can of Foster's Lager and would cost 4 times the price at least.

b) everybody here is fully aware of the advantages of fast primes but this lens is made for when it's not practical to change lenses to get the shot as in photojournalism, sport, weddings, etc

b) f2.8 is a common max aperture on the standard FF professional grade lens like those from Nikon and Canon.

I just saw the pricing for this lens. $1300?!? Not for a Tamron, no way. Drive this baby off the lot and it depreciates by 40%. I'll keep the Nikon thanks. VC is nice to have, but it's not a necessity especially with the way Nikons perform in low-light these days.

The Nikon 24-70 is a killer lens, with a better build and IQ, and you always know that you can resell your Nikon lens without losing too much.

I think Tamron did an EXCELLENT job with this lens. Adding VC can compromise IQ alot(IE tamrons 17-50 vc). I think for a....starting wedding photog, ect... This would be a great lens. Its better then the first gen pro lenses, but not as good as the current pro lenses. Saving 1k on something that someone will most likely NOT be able to tell the difference. Thats a pretty big deal. A "busy" background can be dealt with in photoshop pretty quickly.

Vignetting is very very easy to correct.

Weather sealing doesnt hurt either.

Interesting lens. As a Nikon user, I don't see it as a totally satisfactory replacement for the AF-S 24-70 2.8 G. But price/performance seems fairly good in spite of a few issues like heavier than normal vignetting wide open and corner issues.

From the tests online, 24mm is it's best focal length. Why can't lens designers make 70mm the sharpest focal length on these lenses? I already have an UWA lens.

I have this lens with my 5DIII but continue to experience AF problems. It requires AF adjustment (unlike my canon lenses). But the real headache is that I cannot adjust the center AF point to match peripheral AF points. When the center point is adjust perfectly, the peripheral points are back focused. Then when peripheral points are adjusted perfectly, the center point is front focused. I tested 2 more copies at the store and they all had this problem. Had mine sent into Tamron and they acknowledged this problem and couldn't even fix it and instead sent me a new lens from a new batch. It is a lot better than my original lens but problem still exist just difference between center point and peripheral points is not as severe.

I have this lens. The vignetting is the only draw back, its a little strong. It is the best performing 3rd party zoom i am aware of and it in my opinion is batter the the canon usm 1 witch i never owned but a photographer i did a lot of image processing for did. Vignetting is correctable but i find myself wishing lightroom would hurry up and profile this lens

It's $1000 less than Canon's v2 with IS(vc), minor optical flaws can fix in batch process. This Tamron has better IQ than Canon's v1. AF is not as fast as v2, but, is good enough. For general walk around zoom, this lens is hard to beat. How many more images can you get in low light situations with VC, 5%, 10%, 15%,....... whatever percentage it is, is it worth $1k LESS than v2?

Simon, I have a question.

If you take multiple pictures of the same scene handheld with VC on, and you start the VC while pointing at different locations relative to the final location, does the across-frame sharpness vary a lot from frame to frame? The position of the IS elements can, in some designs, greatly affect the across frame sharpness, and I'm seeing little hints of that in a few of the images, but there aren't enough images and information to make that determination.

I don't know if it's just me, but it seemed to render the colors very coolly. I get the impression that all the dock pictures were taken on a warm summer day and yet everything looks too cold. Perhaps its the white balance on the camera, but I will wait for some more advanced testing before I would think about this.

nice to see samples.
lens looks good.
altho i would have liked to see more 'low light, slow exposure handheld' to see performance of stabilizer.

also, strange that these show capture date of july and the posting happens four months later. why such a delay?

Ou est les review? Mon dieu.

I would love to see you guys provide video samples for lens like this. Using a full frame camera for video this lens is the only game in town if you want to hand hold f/2.8.

I want to see comparisons on how well the IS system works in video mode, I'd want to know if a lens like this performs as well as a lens like the new 24-70mm F/4.0 hybrid IS.

You might say they aren't related, but when you consider so many people are now shooting video on full frame and carrying around a tripod and fluid head is extremely difficult sometimes. For journalism how these lens perform from a stable hand held position is important.

Samples look fine, except bokeh.