Tamron 28-300mm f/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD lens (Model A074)
In summary
Tamron’s 28-300mm f/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD (Model A074) for Sony E-mount full-frame cameras is only 126 mm long and weighs just 610 grams, making it remarkably compact and light for a 10.7x zoom lens. It comes with VC stabilisation and supports fast linear motor driven focusing.
All-in-one zoom lenses are often the first choice for family photographers who want to be able to record everything from family events through to children’s sports. This versatility also makes them popular with travellers. Fast autofocusing and built-in stabilisation make this lens even more appealing to both types of photographers.
Full review
Announced on 31 July and due for release on 22 August, 2024, Tamron’s new all-in-one zoom lens, the 28-300mm f/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD (Model A074) for Sony E-mount full-frame cameras is only 126 mm long and weighs just 610 grams, making it remarkably compact and light for a 10.7x zoom lens. Photo Review received an early model on the new lens for this review from the local Tamron distributor and, given past experience with Tamron lenses, we’ve decided to subject it to our full range of lens tests.
Angled view of the new Tamron 28-300mm f/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD lens, shown without the end caps and bundled lens hood. (Source: Tamron.)
The last time Tamron released a 28-300mm lens was in February 2014, when DSLR cameras dominated the market. The Canon EF and Nikon F mounts dominated the market while Sony was gradually shedding its Minolta traces. Today’s market is quite different, with Sony a leading player; hence Tamron’s move to provide more lens choices – and more differently-configured lenses – for a growing customer base.
Although it’s 70 grams heavier than the 2014 lens, the new lens remains relatively light weight and its optical design is a little simpler, with 20 elements in 13 groups. It includes three moulded glass aspherical elements plus one XLD (eXtra Low Dispersion) and one LD element (Low Dispersion) lens elements for efficient control of chromatic and other aberrations, as shown in the diagram below.
The optical diagram for the Tamron 28-300mm f/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD lens, showing the positions of the exotic glass elements. (Source: Tamron.)
Nine diaphragm blades produce a circular aperture for attractive bokeh and 18-pointed sunstars. Tamron’s BBAR-G2 (Broad-Band Anti-Reflection Generation 2) coating has been applied to suppress ghosting and flare, including in backlit situations, while a fluorine coating on the front element repels moisture and grease, making the lens easy to keep clean.
Autofocusing is driven by a Tamron-designed VXD linear motor focus mechanism, which uses voice-coil motors. It’s fast and quiet and Tamron claims it maintains positional accuracy down to 0.005mm. Built-in VC stabilisation effectively suppresses camera shake but Tamron makes no claims for its degree of shake correction.
The lens is compatible with Sony-specific functions like Eye AF, Fast-Hybrid AF and in-camera lens corrections for vignetting, chromatic aberration and distortion. It also supports Direct Manual Focus (DMF) in AF mode. It is supplied with a petal-shaped lens hood and front and rear caps.
Who’s it For?
All-in-one zoom lenses are often the first choice for family photographers who want to be able to record everything from family events through to children’s sports. This versatility also makes them popular with travellers. Fast autofocusing and built-in stabilisation make this lens even more appealing to both types of photographers.
While the 28-300mm f/4-7.1 Di III VC VXD lens isn’t particularly fast, particularly at the telephoto end of its range, that’s the penalty you pay for its relatively compact size and light weight. The table below shows the maximum and minimum apertures across the focal length range.
Focal length range | 28-34mm | 35-46mm | 47-54mm | 55-74mm | 75-145mm | 146-300mm |
Maximum aperture | f/4 | f/4.5 | f/5.0 | f/5.6 | f/6.3 | f/7.1 |
Minimum aperture | f/22 | f/25 | f/29 | f/32 | f/36 | f/40 |
As far as using this lens on a Sony camera with an APS-C sensor is concerned, although the lens mount is compatible, due to the 1.5x crop factor you lose a lot of wide-angle coverage, while gaining at the other end of the zoom range. The 35mm equivalent focal lengths will equate to 42-450mm and your ability to shoot hand-held will be challenged at full zoom extension, built-in stabilisation notwithstanding, due to less light reaching the sensor at maximum aperture.
Although this lens will be a bit slow for low-light work, it’s more than adequate as a general-purpose lens for recording community events or children in action in normal daylight, particularly in outdoor venues. Its small size makes it just usable for street photography if you can shoot without drawing attention to yourself.
The longer focal lengths are fine for recording stills shots and video clips of sports and wildlife and near-silent operation allows close-up video to be recorded including where the subjects are flighty and easily spooked, such as birds. Close-up shots of flowers and foliage are possible and this lens has potential for use when photographing small animals and medium-to-large birds.
Those who already own a Tamron lens will be glad to find the lens accepts 67 mm filters, which is the same as most other Tamron lenses for mirrorless cameras. It also has a Focus Set Button for assigning camera and a connector port for the dedicated Tamron Lens Utility software plus a Zoom Lock mechanism for preventing unwanted barrel extension when the lens is carried facing down. It is also moisture-resistant.
Build and Ergonomics
Tamron doesn’t specify the materials used in the construction of this lens but, going on appearance and handling we’d say the outer and inner barrels are made mostly of composite polycarbonate on a high-strength aluminium-magnesium alloy mount. The general design of the lens is similar (but not identical) to the 50-300mm f/4.5-6.3 Di III VC VXD lens we reviewed recently as is the build quality.
This diagram shows the locations of the various moisture-excluding seals in the lens. (Source: Tamron.)
The front section of the inner barrel is 12 mm deep, with a filter ring that accepts the same 67 mm filters as a lot of other Tamron lenses. The bayonet mounting for the supplied HA074 lens hood is on the outside of this section of the barrel.
The front element of the lens is roughly 50 mm in diameter and coated with a fluorine compound that repels moisture, dust and grease and helps to keep the lens free from contaminants and fingerprints. The petal-shaped lens hood is 35 mm deep with fine ridging on its inner surface to suppress internal reflections.
The zoom ring is located at the front of the outer barrel. It’s 54 mm wide, with most of its surface clad in rubberised ridging. The zoom ring turns smoothly through a small arc of about 100 degrees between the 28mm and the 300mm positions, extending the two sections of the inner barrel by approximately 75 mm.
A 6 mm wide unridged band around the trailing edge carries engraved markings for the 28-35mm, 50mm, 70mm,100mm, 200mm and 300mm focal length settings. Focal lengths are set by aligning them against a white line on the fixed section of the lens barrel behind the zoom ring.
The outer barrel dips inwards slightly behind the zoom ring forming a fixed 20 mm long band that carries branding information and the lens name plus the focus set button and zoom lock. The zoom lock only works when the inner barrel is fully retracted at the 28mm focal length.
The focus set button is customisable and users can choose which function it operates from the camera’s menu. Alternatively, with the Tamron Lens Utility application, the focus set button can be programmed in the same way as other recent Tamron lenses.
The focusing ring is located just behind this section of the barrel. It’s much narrower than the 50-300mm’s ring and only 12 mm wide. The surface is entirely covered by fine rubber ridges. Since focusing is driven from the camera, this ring turns through 360 degrees when power is not supplied.
Behind the focusing ring is a 6 mm wide flat section of the barrel, which then slopes inwards for about 10 mm before flattening out for about 10 mm which carries a white index mark for aligning the lens with the camera. The USB Type C socket for connecting the lens to a computer is located on the sloped section of the barrel.
The edge of the lens mount, which is indicated by a silver ring just behind this mark, which has a thin rubber gasket to seal the interface against moisture and dust. The metal lens mount is solid and attaches securely to the camera without being difficult to fit and remove.
Performance
We were unable to measure resolution across the entire zoom range using our Imatest system due to a lack of space in our testing area, although we obtained test results from five focal lengths: 28mm, 50mm, 70mm, 100mm and 200mm. The best performance was measured at 50mm with an aperture of f/5.6, where centre resolution in JPEGs exceeded expectations for the test camera’s 24-megapixel sensor and edge resolution fell only slightly short. With raw files, the measured resolution was above expectations from centre through to the edge.
The central resolution remained above 3000 line widths/ picture height through to about f/16 for all focal lengths up to 100mm, which was borderline as shown in the graph of our test results below. As expected, we observed edge and corner softening in JPEG shots taken with wide lens apertures at all focal length settings.
With the built-in optical corrections disabled in the test camera, lateral chromatic aberration varied between the ‘negligible’ and low bands for both JPEG and ARW.RAW files for all focal length and aperture settings, as shown in the graph of our test results for the raw files below. (The red line in the graph marks the border between ‘negligible’ and ‘low’ CA.)
Interestingly, the longer focal lengths had the highest CA measurements between f/10 and f/16, while the aperture settings most people would be likely to use frequently had lower measurements on the whole. However, we found obvious coloured fringing in shots taken at 28mm when the camera’s internal corrections were disabled, as shown in the two samples below.
28mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/80 second at f/6.3.
Obvious purple fringing in the crop taken from the top left corner of the above image, magnified to 100%.
Without the camera’s internal corrections applied, the review lens showed obvious vignetting throughout its entire zoom range, although it was greatest at the 200mm and 300mm focal lengths. As expected, the lens showed obvious barrel distortion at 28mm, which changed to barely noticeable pincushion distortion by 50mm, increasing as the focal length was extended.
Both vignetting and rectilinear distortions are effectively corrected when the camera’s internal corrections were engaged. So, to a substantial degree, is chromatic aberration. These corrections are also easy to apply when converting raw files into editable formats.
Autofocusing was mostly fast and accurate, although there were occasions when taking our test shots of sports action that we found focusing to slow down a bit when the lens focal length was changed substantially. There were a couple of ’misses’ in our test shots where the AF system didn’t quite keep pace with the changing location of the action. This is to be expected in a lens with such a long zoom range.
Focusing was generally very quiet and while we found some evidence of focus breathing, it was most evident with big changes in focus and wasn’t particularly severe. The focus lock on the lens worked well at 28mm but was unusable at other focal lengths, which is a pity as the lens barrel was affected by gravity when it was held pointing upwards. The slide was quite inconvenient when trying to photograph birds in flight, which is why we haven’t provided any samples.
Like we found with the 50-300mm lens, the stabilisation system performed well, including at high magnifications where we found no instances of camera shake, even at quite slow shutter speeds. Backlit subject were also handled quite well.
Sunstars shot at 28mm were well-defined and sharp. However, they lost their definition as the focal length was extended and we found traces of flare artefacts appearing from 100mm on. The softening would probably be due to diffraction, particularly at 300mm where the minimum aperture is f/40.
Bokeh was much as you’d expect from an extended range zoom lens, as shown in the sample images below. It was quite choppy and unattractive in shots where there were bright highlights in the background, regardless of the focal length setting. However, in uniformly-lit backgrounds the disruption was dramatically reduced.
One significant improvement Tamron has made is to reduce the minimum focusing distance from 49 mm in the 2014 lens to 19 cm in this new lens. It may not seem much but significantly expanding the types of subjects it can be used for. Interestingly, Tamron didn’t specify the focal length for that 49 mm MFD for the older lens, although we assume that implies for most (if not all) of the zoom range.
The new lens is somewhat different, with a MFD ranging from 19 cm at 28 mm to 99 cm at 300mm. The reproduction ratio also changes from 1:2.8 at 28 mm to 1:3.8, which is a little better than the 1:3.5 maximum reproduction ratio for the older lens at 300mm.
Conclusion
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SPECS
Picture angle: 75 degrees 23′ minutes to 8 degrees 15minutes diagonal
Minimum aperture: f/22-f/40
Lens construction: 20 elements in 13 groups (including 3 moulded glass aspherical, 1 XLD and 1 LD elements) coatings plus BBAR-G2 coating
Lens mounts: Sony E-mount
Diaphragm Blades: 9 (circular aperture)
Weather resistance: Moisture-resistant construction with a fluorine coating on the front element
Focus drive: VXD linear motor focus mechanism
Stabilisation: Yes (VC)
Minimum focus: 19 cm at 28mm, 99 cm at 300mm
Maximum magnification: 1:2.8 at 28mm; 1:3.8 at 300mm
Filter size: 67 mm
Dimensions (Diameter x L): 77 x 126 mm
Weight: 610 grams
Standard Accessories: Front and rear caps, petal-shaped lens hood
Distributor: Blonde Robot Pty Ltd
TESTS
Based on JPEG files taken with the Sony α7 II camera.
Based on ARW.RAW files recorded simultaneously and converted into 16-bit TIFF format with Adobe Camera Raw.
SAMPLES
Vignetting at 28mm f/4.
Vignetting at 50mm f/5.
Vignetting at 70mm f/5.6.
Vignetting at 100mm f/6.3.
Vignetting at 200mm f/7.1.
Vignetting at 300mm f/7.1.
Rectilinear distortion at 28mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 50mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 70mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 100mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 200mm.
Rectilinear distortion at 300mm.
Close-up at 28mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/250 second at f/4..
Close-up at 70mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/160 second at f/5.6.
Close-up at 100mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/100 second at f/6.3.
Close-up at 200mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/100 second at f/7.1.
Close-up at 300mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/50 second at f/7.1.
28mm ISO 100, 1/125 second at f/9.
300mm focal length, ISO 320, 1/60 second at f/7.1.
28mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/80 second at f/6.3. In-camera corrections disabled.
The same image with distortions corrected in Adobe Camera Raw.
The same subject captured from the same place with the 300mm focal length, ISO 5000, 1/320 second at f/7.1.
28mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/60 second at f/4.5.
220mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/25 second at f/7.1.
203mm focal length, ISO 500, 1/250 second at f/7.1.
82mm focal length, ISO 200, 1/100 second at f/6.3.
Choppy bokeh in shot taken at 300mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/400 second at f/8.
Sunstar at 28mm, ISO 100, 1/160 second at f/22.
Sunstar with faint flare artefacts at 100mm, ISO 100, 1/60 second at f/32.
Sunstar with diffused flare artefacts at 300mm, ISO 100, 1/80 second at f/40.
91mm focal length, ISO 320, 1/100 second at f/6.3.
Action shot; 150mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/200 second at f/8.
Bird photo at 300mm focal length, ISO 160, 1/320 second at f/6.3.
240mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/80 second at f/7.1.
Action shot; 300mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/500 second at f/10.
Action shot; 300mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/400 second at f/8.
Action shot; 300mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/200 second at f/7.1.
Moving subject at 290mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/640 second at f/9.
Moving subject at 217mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/250 second at f/7.1.
66mm focal length, ISO 100, 1/200 second at f/9.
Rating
RRP: AU$1649
- Build: 8.9
- Handling: 9.0
- Image quality JPEG: 8.9
- Image quality RAW: 9.0
- Autofocusing: 8.9
- Versatility: 9.0
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