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Home >> Digital Camera Accessories >> Lenses
Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di-II LD SP ZL Aspherical (IF) Zoom Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras | List Price: $763.95
Discount Price: Too low to display
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Brand: Tamron
Binding: Electronics
Release Date: 2006-03-08
Features: - 17-50mm aspherical zoom lens with f/2.8 maximum aperture for Canon DSLR cameras
- Delivers fast shutter speeds and natural soft-focus effect to produce sophisticated results
- 3 elements of XR glass, 2 hybrid aspherical lens elements, and 1 element of LD glass
- Minimum focus distance of 10.6 inches; internal coatings eliminate ghosting and flare
- Measures 2.9 inches in diameter and 3.3 inches long; weighs 15.2 ounces; 6-year warranty
Excellent standard zoom [Posted on 2008-06-29]
Very nice lens. Tack sharp wide open, light weight for a f/2,8, nice color and contrast. I considered this or the Canon 17-55IS. I picked this one because of the price, and I'm thrilled with it. The only downside is AF. It's noisy and slow compared to USM lenses from Canon, but the thing I miss the most is the FTM you get with USM/HSM lenses.
Handles well. The zoom ring is nice. However, the MF ring is not too good, but with the lack of FTM, I find myself not using it so much.
Construction quality is decent, but it's certainly not a Canon L or Sigma EX.
Apart from some minor downsides, it's a great lens capable of delivering amazing IQ. I don't give it a 5 star rating because of the AF.
Replacement for the Canon 18-55mm kit lens [Posted on 2008-07-24]
Never having had my hands on a Canon L lens, I can't make any valid comparisons. I will say this though, if this lens is noticably lacking in the "feel" of a more expensive L lens, then those lenses must be wonders indeed. It is not lacking in the area of feel and quality at all. I'm not sure it is even fair to compare it to the cheap feeling kit lens which this one replaced on my 20D. There is no comparision at all.
I shoot 100% RAW and in my post processing (Canon DPP and Photoshop CS2) I have not seen any evidence of CA, flare or vignetting. I have looked but even blown up, I do not see those problems even on the many shots I have made at lower f-stops down to and including f/2.8. If they're there, they're not enough to consider if you can't see them. Just might be slight differences in different copies of the lens. Who knows.
I have never had the pleasure of experiencing Canon's USM AF but I know that the AF in the original Canon kit lens I had was better than some lenses I had used on my previous film EOS SLR and this Tamron is noticably better than the kit lens at speed and accuracy. Yes, it is a little noisy but I can live with that. After a few shots, you tend to forget about the sound. At least I have so it's not noticable. Perhaps to my photo subjects, but not to me.
I did some focus tests (the 45 deg angled calibrated chart test) looking for any signs of front or back focus and this lens focuses right on the target line consistantly. I also did some test comparing the sharpness with that of the kit lens (fair test or not?) and as expected, this one is sharper at f/2.8 than the EF-S 18-55mm kit lens is stepped down a couple of stops. No news there. That's what I expected and wanted. I also now shoot with the 20D Set to Parameter 2 (all neutral) and my needed adjustments in post processing the RAW image are fairly minimal and more for taste than technical corrections.
Shortly after getting this lens I took it with me on a trip to Quebec City and ended up photographing a lot of the same scenery I had photographed a couple of years ago using the Canon kit lens. Now perhaps I just becoming a better photographer, but the dramatic difference in the quality of the shots this trip vs. the previous one speaks for the differences between the lenses used.
Negatives for this lens? From my point of view, nothing I can come up with yet.
Sharp lens, iffy focus [Posted on 2008-07-29]
From the first shots I took with this lens I was amazed by the sharpness. To my eye it looked much better than my 28-135 lens -- when it's in focus, it's great. But the focus is the problem, for my copy at least, on a 40D, the autofocus was all over the map. In normal shooting I was noticing that the focus was way off way too often, my subject would be out of focus or just barely in focus, and the ground close to me or stuff in the background would be perfectly sharp. So I did some controlled tests and found that even in ideal conditions it was missing the correct focus on more than 1 in 3 shots. As in focus bad enough that the correct focus point was just on the edge of or outside the in focus DoF more than 1/3rd of the time. It looked like there was a tendency to front focus at the 50 end (which was what I was noticing in real world shooting) and back focus at the 17 end (which was just making landscapes soft), but overall I'd say it just tended to be really inconsistent, missing in either direction from one shot to the next. I also had a lot of exposure problems with this lens, but it's the widest lens I've shot with so I don't know if that's the lens or the camera.
If you're willing to take multiple shots of everything, or manually focus, or if you get a better copy or if it works better on other bodies . . . as I say, when it's in focus it's a really nice, sharp lens. It hooked me on the first shots, enough so that I was willing to overlook the misfocused ones as flukes or user error. When it kept happening I started thinking, it's a bargain lens, when it does get it right it gets it really right. But after a couple weeks worth of looking at missed shots it wasn't worth it to me any more.
Tamron 17-50 Lens - Alright if you don't use it much. [Posted on 2008-08-18]
I am not impressed by this lens. I, once again, should have waited until I could afford the Nikon 17-55 f/2.8 before I bought this lens. I shoot NASCAR Whelen All American Series races at a local short track on Saturday nights. On the average night I shoot approximately 400-600 shots. I didn't use this lens for very much else, but within 2 months it already went downhill. Hopefully I might be getting it back from Tamron soon. At the point where I sent it back, the lens was vignetting where it hadn't before and every now and then the aperture failed to open.
As far as sharpness goes, I think it's wonderful. This lens is definitely not made for lots of shooting. It's built very light as compared to the Nikon variant. I compared the photos from this lens to the photos from the Nikon and they were very close as far as sharpness goes. In my opinion this is the best lens Tamron has produced. But, that isn't saying much.
If you're a casual shooter, this lens is for you. If you like to shoot a few hundred frames a week, I would not recommend it. After it gets back from being repaired I will update this if things get better. I'm not expecting much, though.
Not So Great Lens [Posted on 2008-08-23]
Own this lens but very disappointed with the image quality. My cheap Canon 50mm f1.8 lens produced much superior images. Would probably trade-in for Canon 16-35mm or 17-40mm lens in the near future.
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