Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 Di III VXD Review

Focus Speed and Performance

The Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 autofocuses in a way that I would call steady. It isn’t instantaneous, but it gets there pretty quickly, and it was never an issue for the subjects that I shot. Accuracy was excellent – in line with first-party lenses.

Typical event photographers have no need to worry about the lens’s focus speed at all. Sports and wildlife photographers may prefer the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it speed of a 70-200mm f/2.8, but even then, you can get a very high keeper rate with the Tamron so long as you start out focused within the range of your subject’s distance.

In dark conditions, I was worried that this lens would fall behind my Nikon-brand mirrorless lenses in focus acquisition, but I had no reason to be concerned. It focused just as accurately as any first-party lens in low light – actually, better than most, thanks to the wide maximum aperture!

One small issue I noticed is the odd manual focus behavior when using the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 on my Nikon Z6 and Z7. When the lens was set to “non-linear” in Tamron Lens Utility (which is the default setting), spinning the manual focus ring quickly – or even at a medium speed – would cause the lens to essentially jump from one focus distance to another, rather than smoothly racking focus. I’m not sure what causes this, but it made it more annoying to focus manually. The good news is that it was easy to fix – all I had to do was connect the lens to my computer via USB and change the manual focus setting to “linear” in Tamron Lens Utility.

Lastly, the close-focusing capabilities of the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 are decent but not spectacular. The maximum magnification is 1:5.7 when you’re at 35mm, and essentially the same with 1:5.9 when you’re at 150mm. This is enough to fill your composition with a subject that is approximately 21 cm / 8.3 inches wide (assuming a full-frame camera).

Distortion

The Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 has moderate levels of pincushion distortion throughout most of the zoom range. Here’s how I measured it in the lab:

Most wide-to-telephoto zooms have barrel distortion on the wide end and pincushion distortion on the long end. That makes the Tamron a bit unusual – it has essentially no distortion at 35mm, but roughly 3% pincushion distortion at every focal length from 50mm and up.

A small thing to note is that Nikon and Sony do not have in-camera distortion profiles for this lens. So, if your subject has a lot of straight lines that will require distortion corrections later, I recommend framing your composition a bit on the wide side. This compensates for the small crop that will occur when you fix distortion in post-processing.

For context, here is a simulated view of 3.34% pincushion distortion, which is the highest level that I measured on the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8:

Vignetting

In uncorrected images, the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 has reasonably good vignetting performance, though it depends on your focal length and focusing distance. Here’s how it measures at close and far focus:

The maximum of 1.94 stops of vignetting occurs at 35mm, f/2, infinity focus. Zooming into 50mm and 70mm is enough to make vignetting shrink substantially, even wide open. It picks back up as you zoom into 105mm and longer, with 150mm having almost as much vignetting as 35mm. At all focal lengths, you can substantially reduce the vignetting by stopping down just one stop.

Although 1.94 stops of vignetting is pretty high, I consider it totally acceptable given the design of this lens. Fast zoom lenses almost always have a lot of vignetting, especially at their widest focal length. Since the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 is one of very few zooms with an f/2 maximum aperture, my expectations were worse than this.

Lateral Chromatic Aberration

There is a small amount of lateral chromatic aberration on the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8. It’s a bit higher at the extremes (35mm and 150mm) but never bad. Here’s the chart:

Anything under about one pixel is almost impossible to notice in real-world images, even with chromatic aberration corrections turned off. Even when the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 has more than that, it’s not by much. The maximum of 1.37 pixels of CA (at 150mm and f/16) is low enough that you will rarely see it in your photos. Even if you do, chromatic aberration corrections in post-processing will eliminate it without any lingering artifacts.

Sharpness

The Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 surprised me with its relatively high sharpness. Given the highly complex nature of the lens, I thought there would be more compromises here. You can see below how it measures in the lab from 35mm to 150mm:

You’ll see some more context on the next page of this review, but this is impressive performance for a zoom. It’s strongest in the 35-70mm range, but even at its weakest focal length of 150mm, it’s never bad by any stretch. This affirms the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8’s purpose as a “do-it-all” lens – the sharpness is high enough that I would be perfectly comfortable shooting it at any focal length and aperture.

In terms of other sharpness issues, there is a small amount of field curvature on the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 at infinity focus and a bit more as you focus more closely. Also, there is fairly significant focus shift on this lens at every focal length. This means you’ll get sharper results by setting your aperture first and focusing second rather than the other way around. To put it another way, any time that you change aperture with this lens, it’s best to re-focus.

Bokeh

Bokeh is another word for the qualities of the background blur in a photo. “Good” bokeh is completely subjective, since different photographers have their own preferences for how the background blur looks. That said, photographers commonly want their background blur to be soft, not distracting. Out-of-focus highlights that are round, uniform, and soft-edged are usually considered favorable.

Given the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8’s large maximum aperture, it’s very common that you’ll get out-of-focus backgrounds with this lens. I found that typical backgrounds looked perfectly fine, like this:

Unfortunately, specular highlights in the background can look pretty bad with the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8, taking on a distinct onion-ring pattern if they’re bright enough:

Sunstars and Flare

The highly complex design of the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 does not do it any favors in the flare and ghosting department. This lens has relatively high flare, especially at narrow apertures. Here’s a very typical example:

It stays high throughout the zoom range, although it’s meaningfully better if you’re shooting at wide apertures. The strongest flare occurs when the sun is in the frame, but I did occasionally get flare when the sun was out of the frame, even when using the lens hood.

The worst-case scenario occurs when the sun is near the middle of the frame (just off-center). Depending upon your composition, you will occasionally see a dramatic, circular pattern of flare appear through the photo:

If you’re trying to create highly stylized photos, perhaps you won’t mind this flare, or may even like it. But if you prefer to minimize flare, it’s best to be careful where you point this lens.

On the other hand, the sunstars on the Tamron 35-150mm f/2-2.8 are quite nice, with sharp, 18-point stars any time that you shoot bright lights at a narrow aperture and 35mm. And even when the sun is in the frame and causing flare, the level of contrast in the rest of the photo remains high.

The next page of this review dives into the sharpness numbers a bit more, with some comparisons against other lenses that Nikon users may be considering. So, click the menu below to go to “Lens Comparisons”: