Review: Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 Di III RXD
This lens has been out for over a year and you will find many reviews on YouTube with a lot better information on it than I will provide here. The goal here is to answer your question of whether or not you should buy this lens if you are a hobbyist. The short answer is ‘yes’, as is the long answer.
Here are some pictures of the lens, and for you gearheads that need to know I took these with my Sony A7III w/Sigma MC-11 + Canon 50mm f/1.8
The lens has been out for over a year now, and we are now in the season of Tamron’s next offering of the 75mm-180mm version of this, which I will be getting probably end of this year.
I cannot stress how much I love this lens. One of the things I was ready to struggle with when switching from Canon to Sony, was the more expensive glass that would be arguably up to par at best with Canon glass. I even tried to sell my 24-70, and in the end decided to adapt instead. It remains my most favorite lens of all time, but… then I learned about this Tamron.
The Tamron 28-75 f/2.8 Di III RXD lens was at the time I got it, was half the cost of the Canon, and nearly a third of the cost of the Sony G-Master version. That’s a lot of money for someone who is not offsetting equipment cost by being a professional shooter. I have very rarely, and only for fun, used my Canon 24-70 since getting the Tamron.
Here’s a non-adapted Canon 24-70 f/2.8ii (Canon body) example, followed by an adapted version (Sony A7III + Sigma MC-11):
Here’s a sample of some of my favorite pictures taken during quarantine with the Tamron, with some tweaking done using Lightroom (and on mobile):
All in all, if you are a hobby photographer and you are in it entirely for the fun and the gear, I absolutely recommend taking the Tamron 28-75 over the Sony G-Master 24-70. Autofocus is fast, silent, and tack sharp. I have yet to experience blur issues where the fault was not 100% mine. Now this doesn’t necessarily speak only to the lens, but as the world goes — glass ultimately matters in bringing out the best that the body can process/offer.
Again, you can see reviews upon reviews about the Tamron vs. Sony, and let’s be really honest — the real value in the G-Master is the build itself (if you are in the bush, or do combat photography you want the tough steel bodies), and yes, the overall picture quality at some pretty significant detail are probably going to be better, but these are elements that as a hobbyist we can’t really care about. Does it bother me at 28mm, that the corners of my photos might show some edge distortion (think fisheye)? No, because I’m likely cropping that out anyways.
Bottom line, as a hobbyist who is not going having their livelihood depend on top of the line gear, the Tamron more than gets the job done. You might even find a few professionals that prefer it over the Sony G-Master just because the quality is so very close.
Finally, a disclaimer:
I’m only showing edited pictures, because the RAWs won’t really tell you anything meaningful. Even in the Canon days, I shot entirely in neutral so that software can do all of the work. I do think that given the right lighting, and some tweaked presets (hint hint) that the Sony with the right glass can produce the fabled Canon color science, whatever that may be. As hobbyists, these things are somewhat fun to talk about, but not really part of our practice.
