My Tamron 28-75mm 2.8 Review and Samples

I got this lense on friday from B&H. It was a tough one to buy but oh was it worth it. I kept checking B&H every now and then to see when it would say "In stock." I always trust Fedex so here's a bit of Irony.

My manager called me and said I could come in 1 hour late because Fedex failed to deliver a new shipment. If it wasn't for this I wouldn't have been home to catch the lense when it became "In stock." I refresh the page and it says "In stock" I order it faster than lightning and 5 minutes later it was "Out of stock." This lense sold out in 10 minutes......

To thank Fedex I made sure to use them as the shipper.

Enough of that here's my little review.

Build:
Like a tank. It has heft to it and feels super solid. The grip for the focus and zoom are awesome and rubber. Love it. The lens hood is awesome as well.

Feel:
The focus is super smooth. The zoom is smooth but doesn't turn easy enough to creep if the lens is hanging. They provided a lock so it doesn't creep...but it doesn't creep without it. This lense makes the XT feel like a whole different camera.

Function:
Focuses pretty damn fast and I see no problem with it hunting in low light. Yesterday I was shooting at 1600 ISO without a flash indoors with a shutter speed of 60 and I got very good non blurry pictures. I could not do this with the kit lense at all. The first thing I did when I got it was take the focus test chart I printed out from that one guy's site and tested it. It was dead on.

Optics:
Blows away the kit lense. My copy is sharp throughout all zoom ranges and aperatures. I think I got lucky....

Now here are some sample pictures. I made some at 2.8 to show the insanely shallow DOF. I love the "bokeh" on this lense.

First lets see how it looks on the XT (sorry for the bad quality pictures of it...Only had one tripod). The front element on this thing is huge. Looks really nice.

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Super shallow DOF on the flower picture.

1/2000 and F2.8 for the flower.

Cat was at F4 and 1/60 with flash

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Random shot of a bottle

F2.8 and about 1/600

100% crop no USM or anything. Looks good to me!

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Jimmy at 2.8

Uncle at 1600 ISO with his point and shoot.

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Overall it's an awesome lense and I haven't been able to let go of the camera since friday.

If you can grab it then go ahead but they're really hard to find for some reason. Especially a good copy?

Its a sweet lens. I can vouch for it being built well too. I've dropped mine from about 5ft. and its still as dead-on as the day I got it. I trust it enough to use for paid work....in fact its used at least some of every paid shoot I get.

-daniel

I'm a huge fan of this lens as well, although I find that it's rarely on my 20D now that I have the 50mm 1.4. Being smack dab in the middle, super sharp and very bright makes it an amazingly versatile lens. Before I bought it had someone told me my 28-75 2.8 would rarely ever touch my camera body again I would have told them they were nuts.

Anyways, nice shots and a great lens. Have fun with it! It's the perfect 'starter' high quality lens for general use.

Adam

I was deciding between the 50 1.4 and this tamron but I just couldn't pass up a good zoom lense. I've had my friends 50mm 1.8 on my camera and while it's a very good lense there's just sometimes where I needed to reach further or zoom out but couldn't.

Yeah zooms are convenient, but don't confuse the 50 1.8 with the 1.4... I've had both and the 1.4 blows the 1.8 away. The 1.8 is a great value, but not one of these 'if I could only take one lens' lenses.

I keep trying to use my Tamron, but it just sits in the bag. When I want wide 28mm isn't wide enough, so I use the 10-22, and when I want long 75mm isn't long enough, so I use the 100-400. Just kind of an evolution of my photography over the last few years (and after a couple big wedding shoots.)

It's worth every penny though. It (the Tamron) even does an awesome job with Macro work.

congrats Jackal! You got a siamese too?

Nope. That's my friend's cat. I'm not a cat person

Whenever I goto his house this cat is so insane and playful that it's funny taking pictures of him.

Congrats with the purchase......... I have been happy with mine too.

Jackal,
Thanks for posting all the shots with the Tamron. Mine is in transit as we speak, and I'm hoping to receive it by Tuesday. Amazon initially said it wasn't in stock, so I wasn't expecting it until late June. Got an email yesterday, however, that said it had been shipped. I'm so excited!

By the way, your friend's cat is really cute. Looks just like my Siamese.

That shot of Jimmy is amazing!

The Tamron is my "default" lens - unless I have a good reason to get a different lens out of my bag the Tamron stays on the camera, whether the photo's for me or i'm being paid for it.