Tamron 70–180mm F/2.8 Di III VXD A056
First Hand Review
Today is the release day of Tamron 70–180mm F/2.8 Di III VXD A056 worldwide. Because this lens is the third lens from Tamron which carry a F/2.8 constant aperture with 70–180mm focal lane, so the lens itself is just 810g and size is just smaller than a normal 70–200mm F/2.8 , it fit users demand a much lighter and smaller lens with F/2.8 and good quality.
Design
The lens is very simple in design. You just find a focus ring and zoom ring on the lens , apart from this , the lens itself just have a zoom lock , which help you to lock the lens zoom ring while you travel.
The lens is not a internal zoom, but it just extend around one inch when the lens zoom to 180mm, so overall it will not affect operation and shoot.
Lens Tube Design
The lens itself is water and dust resistant because it is well sealed. If you are 28–75mm F/2.8 and 17–28mm F/2.8 lens owners, you can find that the lens itself I’d not easy to have dust and it performs very well when using in rainy weather.
Because it need to be light, so the lens itself is mostly plastic. But overall the materials is durable. It is also a bonus that the lens front elements use a fluorine coating, it provide a harder and more resistant than normal coating.
You can use a normal cloth to clean the lens and such design made the lens easier to clean and keep in a better conditions. This design is important and welcome by professional.
New AF motor
Tamron use a newly design motor VXD (Voice-coil eXtreme-torque Drive) for 70–180mm F/2.8 Di III VXD A056. It provide fast speed AF in both AF-S & AF-C mode. AF speed is sensitive and responding especially in AF-C mode.The lens is best for Video shooting , overall in the whole range, the lens provide fast and accurate focus tracking and AF performance.
We suggest that you can use AF-C mode for most of the time. For best operation, you can configure the camera AF-on button to AF-Stop function. Together with Sony Face detection AF and Eye AF mode, it provide fast and accurate respond for AF.
Shooting performance
The lens use 19 elements and 14 groups optical designs, it include 1 XLD lens , 5 LD Lens , 1 glass molded aspherical element and two aspherical lens. The lens offer in camera correction function, include shading , chromatic aberration, distortion correction.
Close focus distance
70–180mm F/2.8 provide a minimum 0.85m focusing distance and 1:4.6 Mag. ratio for normal use, it already better than other 70–200mm lens , usually focus in 1–1.2m. The lens also provide a special super macro mode, when switch to 70mm and manual focus mode. The lens can focus up to 0.27m and provide 1:2 Mag.ratio, the is one of the bonus design and provide more opportunity to creative professional.
Convenience design
The lens is small and light, it use 67mm Filter and the weight is 810g and max. Diameter is 81mm only, much more lighter than normal 70–200mm F2.8, usually will weight for around 1.3–1.5kg.
For your references, the new Tamron 70–180mm , together with 17–28mm and 28–75mm, the total weight is just 1,780g and smaller in size.
The lens provide top of the class optic performance, and shooting using Sony E-mount A7RIII and A7RIV camera provide the best shooting result, especially A7RIV.
We find that the lens provide the same center sharpness performance as the Sony 70–200mm F2.8 GM lens.
From the testing sample, we find the lens even perform better than Sony 70–200mm GM.
Left : Sony 70–200mm F2.8 GM 200mm center
Right: Tamron 70–180mm F2.8 Di III VXD A056 180mm center
You can see Tamron Provide more contrast and sharpness
Pros:
-Light 810g, small 67mm Filter
-Fast AF
-close MOD and 0.27m super macro mode
-Good quality
Con:
-No AF stop button on the lens
- plastic lens tube.
