Thoughts on the Tamron 17-70 thus far...

I've had the lens now for almost two weeks and have been able to get out with it several times, though not much in full daylight due to work and being with my kids while they're on summer break. I may write up a "review" after I've had it a bit longer, but for now here are some images with accompanying descriptions and thoughts.

All images are SOOC except for some minor cropping in a couple of images, and some exposure adjustments to a couple of the astro shots. In-camera corrections are on but no other tweaks to jpeg settings; all set to 0. I've also made a short video of its behaviour doing focus transitions in video mode on the X-T3.

Link to video: Tamron 17-70mm focus transitions

Staring into the sunrise, 70mm f2.8 on an X-T3. The X-S10 + Viltrox 13mm was busy doing a timelapse. Unfortunately I decided to return the Viltrox, as it had terrible flare and ghosting with the sun in the frame.

17mm f11 at 1/3 sec handheld, iso 160:

70mm f/11 at 1/2 second handheld on the X-S10, iso 160. Decent sharpness in the rocks, I guess the IBIS and VC are working together, since IBIS + OIS was an option in the camera menu. I don't think Tamron has specifically stated if or how they work together (or not):

Flare at 70mm f4 compared to ...

...flare at 70mm f11 in direct, low sunlight:

1/2 second handheld at 70mm f8 on the X-T3, so this is with Tamron's VC enabled:

1/2 second handheld on the X-S10 at 17mm f2.8, just for kicks

Astro? Why not The 16-55 can do astro in a pinch, looks like this lens can too. I adjusted the exposure a bit since it was taken on the night of the brightest moon, but that was the only night I could get out 17mm f2.8, 3 secs at 6400 iso. I tried it at 70mm as well; I think it could work well with a tracker. See if you can find Andromeda

70mm f2.8 on the X-T3, cropped but no other adjustments. Blows out the backgrounds nicely, and even though there is some onion ring bokeh in stronger points of light, I'm finding overall the oof areas render quite smoothly and pleasing to my eye:

Finally, minimum close focus at 70mm, f2.8 1/125. If you zoom in on the "hairs" of the petunia, you can see the softness and "ghosting" that happens at minimum close focus distance throughout the zoom range. To me this is the main weakness of this lens, though of course it's relative due to the broad focal range. I'm finding that if one moves the lens back from MFD better results might be achieved, but it's trial and error.

looks like a nice lens!

How do you feel about no aperture ring? I thought it was an interesting design decision from Tamron not to include.

Cheers and enjoy it!

RustyRus wrote:

looks like a nice lens!

How do you feel about no aperture ring? I thought it was an interesting design decision from Tamron not to include.

Cheers and enjoy it!

Honestly it doesn't bother me; I like having it if it's there but for myself it's not a must-have feature. I have spent several years with Fuji, but over the past two years I have switched to the Nikon Z system and the Panasonic S5 with two lenses, and previous to owning Fuji I had m43 cameras, so I'm used to PSAM and lenses without aperture rings. Most other systems have aperture control on the front command dial by default, so I guess I'm used to it by now

I think Tamron is probably in a "test" phase with Fuji to see how sales go over time, so I doubt they would want to stray too far from their existing lens designs. It's a bit of a shame really; if they had jumped in from the beginning with a "Fuji" aesthetic (i.e. aperture rings), I'm sure more people would be seriously interested. For now though it's still nice for us to have more choice. This zoom range is very useful, and to have it in a 2.8 APS-C lens is very welcome, imo.

Thanks for the beautiful images with this lens!  From a Fuji-curious perspective, the Tamron lenses make Fuji X a more attractive option.  I've had good experiences with Tamron lenses dating back to film SLR days.

Lettermanian wrote:

RustyRus wrote:

looks like a nice lens!

How do you feel about no aperture ring? I thought it was an interesting design decision from Tamron not to include.

Cheers and enjoy it!

Honestly it doesn't bother me; I like having it if it's there but for myself it's not a must-have feature. I have spent several years with Fuji, but over the past two years I have switched to the Nikon Z system and the Panasonic S5 with two lenses, and previous to owning Fuji I had m43 cameras, so I'm used to PSAM and lenses without aperture rings. Most other systems have aperture control on the front command dial by default, so I guess I'm used to it by now

I think Tamron is probably in a "test" phase with Fuji to see how sales go over time, so I doubt they would want to stray too far from their existing lens designs. It's a bit of a shame really; if they had jumped in from the beginning with a "Fuji" aesthetic (i.e. aperture rings), I'm sure more people would be seriously interested. For now though it's still nice for us to have more choice. This zoom range is very useful, and to have it in a 2.8 APS-C lens is very welcome, imo.

Tamron designs for the Sony mount first and ports those designs to other mounts, so it is likely that their designs will continue to reflect a Sony gestalt. However, Nikon Z and Canon RF lenses also have programmable rings that can be set to aperture, so maybe Tamron will adopt rings if they support more mirrorless mounts.

Lettermanian wrote:

...flare at 70mm f11 in direct, low sunlight:

FWIW, that's almost certainly the purple grid flare common to X-Trans cameras and has nothing to do with the Tamron. Fuji had stated it was fixed with the X-T3. But I shoot a lot of landscapes as well and you can still find it when the sun is in the frame, the aperture is small-ish and light hits just right.
Here's one starting to manifest with the XF 70-300mm (lens is only at f/7.1 or it would be stronger):

No that is lens flare and not a particular nice one. This is how the purple "sensor flare" looks like.

https://www.littlebigtravelingcamera.com/?p=11095

That I only managed to see once in thousands of shots btw.

Thanks for sharing; that's a much stranger pattern.

Human Elements wrote:

Lettermanian wrote:

...flare at 70mm f11 in direct, low sunlight:

FWIW, that's almost certainly the purple grid flare common to X-Trans cameras and has nothing to do with the Tamron. Fuji had stated it was fixed with the X-T3. But I shoot a lot of landscapes as well and you can still find it when the sun is in the frame, the aperture is small-ish and light hits just right.
Here's one starting to manifest with the XF 70-300mm (lens is only at f/7.1 or it would be stronger):

It's actually a flare pattern common across most brands of mirrorless cameras. Google "red dot flare" and you'll see numerous discussions and opinions about it. It happened with my Nikon Z5 and Panasonic S5 too. I took a series of photos from f2.8  to f16 with the 17-70 purposefully to show the flare pattern in these conditions. The good news is it can be avoided and doesn't always display.

In these pics you can see it's almost the same conditions, but the flare pattern is being avoided:

asostrin wrote:

Does the new tamron 17-70 for fuji allow for the 40 megapixels with the new XH2?

If you send me an X-H2 I'll test it for you

I doubt there will be any significant issue. From my experience I'd say this lens falls in between the 16-55 2.8 and the 16-80 f4 in terms of overall optical performance. I'm sure we'll start seeing more real-world sample images and comparisons as the camera becomes more available.