Non Expert Photography for Non Expert Photographers

When I bought my Canon 20D Digital Single Lens Reflex camera instead of buying the body alone I bought it as the standard kit. It came equipped with the Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 lens. That lens is commonly referred to as the "kit lens" for obvious reasons. It's the standard issue as part of the kit. When you purchase a SLR camera, your choices are to go with the kit, or to buy the body only and add the lens of your choice. The combination of the camera body and kit lens is a good choice economically for both the beginner SLR user and for someone who knows they want the specific camera body but who has not yet made a decision on which lens they want to finally select to use. That's where I was. I knew the kit lens would be s temporary one and eventually I would end up with a higher performance lens for the shorter focal length range.

My first look was at higher end Canon lenses. Canon has a number of very good choices in the desired range. After looking at several options, I came across the Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 LD XR Di II zoom lens. It had several positive traits which highly recommended it. On some focus comparison charts I saw on another site, the sharpness of this lens compared very favorably with any Canon lens in the same focal length range. When I say "compared very favorably" I mean that the sharpness of the Tamron lens was equal at least the high end Canon L series lens.

There are some things I will compromise when it comes to a lens choice, but sharpness and picture quality is not one of those. The price of the Tamron lens was about half what a comparable (picture quality and lens speed) Canon lens cost. I can not accept the notion that a lesser lens would be acceptable on the basis of cost. I recognize that some things, lenses included, are beyond the reach of most people's budgets. I also recognize that just because something cost more does not mean that it is necessarily better. For the most part the old adage that "you get what you pay for" is true but there are sometimes qualifications to that statement. If I settled for a lens which is not as sharp as the more expensive one and I based my choice on price alone, then I would end up with a lens I would not be satisfied with. I would really have wanted the better lens. Every time I shot a picture with the lens I had purchased I would feel some sense of regret and disappointment. "This lens is ok, but I really wish I could have had the other one." That is no way to achieve any sense of satisfaction with what you have.

Such a choice based on price alone more often than not ends up costing more in the long run. Should I decide on a lesser quality lens, one which is not as sharp and one which does not produce the quality of pictures I want, there is no doubt that I would be in the market for an upgrade within a year or two at most. The old notion that you get what you can afford now and move up later when you can afford more is an expensive one in my estimation. Had I gone for a lens which was, shall we say, $400 when the one I really wanted costs $900, I would be making an invalid argument to say that I'll get what I can afford now because it is the least expensive way to go. It is not. I really wanted the $900 lens and I am going to be dissatisfied with the $400 one. So how long is it going to be before I end up buying the $900 lens. So what has that $900 lens really cost me? Not $900. It really cost me $1,300. I have to add the cost of the cheaper lens to the purchase price. I paid $400 plus I paid $900. I would have been better off cost wise to have bought the $900 lens to start with. It was the one I was satisfied with and now that I have it, I will keep it for as long as it lasts. Even if I end up selling the lesser lens, I am not going to recover what I originally paid for it so my outlay for the lens I really want is still going to be greater than if I had bought that one to start with.

Now pardon the digression there but I wanted to set the stage which better explains why I felt the Tamron lens was a better buy for me. I paid, as I recall, somewhat over $500 for the lens. The Canon lens which compared in sharpness and speed (f/2.8 aperture) was closer to $1,000. Had there been a measurable difference in image quality between the two lenses where the Canon lens was better, I would not have been happy with the Tamron lens. Remember, I said that the Tamron lens even in the critical focus chart tests was at least as sharp as the Canon. By "at least as sharp", in some areas (some aperture settings) it even seemed to have a small edge in sharpness advantage. So consider both lenses effectively equal in sharpness.

The Tamron is a constant aperture f/2.8. That means that all through its zoom range, the maximum aperture size setting is f/2.8. At the shortest focal length of 17 mm it is f/2.8. At its longest focal length of 50 mm, it is f/2.8. Contrast that to the kit lens I was moving away from. That lens was 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6. That meant that at 18 mm the maximum aperture size setting is f/3.5. At a focal length of 55 mm the maximum aperture size is f/5.6. It is a significantly slower lens than one which has a maximum aperture size setting of f/2.8 through its focal length zoom range.

What am I going to sacrifice or compromise on by selecting the Tamron lens which costs about half of what the Canon lens costs? The critical criteria for me were two items. Speed and image sharpness. I was not going to be compromising on either of these. So if I'm not compromising, why bother to pay twice what I have to pay? There must be some difference and yes there are differences between the two lenses. Are those differences areas I consider significant or unacceptable compromises? If they are, then then I am still not making a good choice by going with the lower priced lens.

Canon has, I believe most users will agree, the best Auto Focus performance for their own cameras. If a lens does not have a good Auto Focus (AF) then it's not a good choice. So the question was whether or not the Tamron had an AF which was comparable to the more expensive Canon. It does not have to be the same. It just has to perform as well. When I owned my first Canon SLR which was a 35mm film version, I bought a lens from another lens maker. I will not name that maker since it is not relevant to the discussion here. Though the AF was acceptable, I never felt that I could quite trust it. As a result I tended to use manual focusing more than auto focusing.

When I purchased the Canon 20D digital SLR, it came with the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 "kit" lens. I found that the AF on that lens was very good. I began to trust and rely on AF a lot more and never had a problem with auto focusing the lens. Canon's better lenses use USM autofocus which is stated as faster and more accurate. The kit lens did not have USM Auto Focus, but I still found it to be very good. It worked well for me. I did not experience AF inaccuracy nor problems with it being too slow for my use. It worked fine for me. It was not a point of dissatisfaction such as the sharpness or aperture speed issue would have been. The Canon kit lens AF was good enough for me. When I say "good enough" I don't mean, "it's really not that good but I can live with it". I mean that I never gave it a second thought as being a matter of dissatisfaction.

When I read the reviews for the Tamron lens, I found that the opinion was that the Tamron AF was very good. At least as good, if not better than the Canon non-USM AF. That mean that if I had been quite satisfied with the AF on the Canon kit lens then I would have no gripes at all about the Tamron AF. Chances are it is very close to the performance of the Canon USM AF. It may not be an exact match - it most likely is not - but in my estimation it was no point of compromise. So for an additional $500 or so purchase price, I could not see the added benefit to me of the difference between the two AF systems.

There was one little thing often mentioned regarding the Tamron AF. The reviewers said that it was not quiet like the Canon USM AF. That is true. It makes a small sound during operation. A very tiny whine sound. For anyone who is picky it might be an issue. For everyone else, after a few uses you will not even notice it. You won't pay attention to it so in affect you won't hear it. It was in my opinion a non issue.

The Canon lens also had Image Stabilization (IS) and the Tamron did not. Now had I been looking at telephoto lenses, that would have been a deal breaker. I am firmly in the pro-IS camp when it comes to long focal length lenses. For a lens which has a maximum focal length of 50 mm, I just could not see it being an important consideration at all. I would not reject a short focal length lens just because it came with IS but I could not accept that the addition of it would be worth the extra $500 or so for me. So here again, another feature which if it can be considered a compromise is not one in a crucial area for me. The bottom line was the Tamron had sharpness and image quality on par with the Canon lens and it had the same aperture speed characteristics and those were the crucial criteria for me and the Tamron cost about half what the Canon did.

I have had the Tamron since the summer of 2008 and have shot several thousand pictures with it. I am completely satisfied with it. I have absolutely no regrets over making the decision to go with this lens. The decision was in no way a compromise.

Canon 20D Digital SLR with the Tamron 17-50mm lens and its included lens hood attaached.

The mark of a high quality lens compared to a lesser lens is how sharp it is with the aperture wide open compared to the sharpness of the lens stopped down a few f-stops. Though all lenses are sharper stopped down a little, the better lenses will still be very sharp wide open. This lens is sharp wide open. The following two 100% crop image charts show the difference between the wide open position at f/2.8 and closed down to f/5.6. Yes, there is a little increase in sharpness at f/5.6 but at f/2.8, it is still very sharp.

A short note on other features of this lens. It comes with a lens hood. Not so with many Canon lenses. With those you have to buy the lens hood separate. The Tamron lens has a metal mount. The better Canon lenses do as well. The kit lens had a plastic mount. Obviously the metal mount is going to be more sturdy and last longer. The build quality of the Tamron lens is significantly better than the Canon kit lens. That lens looks "cheap" by comparison and the Tamron does not. That's as far as I will go with a technical or feature review of the lens. There are enough other sites on the Web offering technical reviews and listing all of the specifications that I don't need to duplicate that here.

There is one thing to be very aware of when considering this lens. Like Canon's EF-S series lenses, it is designed for the APS-C (1.5x/1.6x FOVCF) sized digital SLRs sensors. That means it will work properly on the Digital Rebel series, the 20D, 30D, 40D, 50D and others in that series. It is not designed for the so-called "full frame" bodies such as the 1D and 5D series. If you have any thoughts about soon going to a full frame format, it is best to go with one of the Canon lenses which works with that format. If you are not considering moving away from the APS-C format, this lens will do the trick quite nicely.

Tamron has just released a new version of this lens. The model Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8 XR Di II VC which is the same lens but with the addition of their version of Image Stabilization. The "VC" signifies the new feature. That should be excellent news for anyone torn between the Tamron lens and a Canon lens because of the Image Stabilization issue. In my previous paragraphs I stated that IS was not a factor for me, or enough of a reason to justify the extra several hundred dollars required to buy the Canon lens. That statement stands but were I to be in the buying market today, with this new version of the lens, I would consider that a happy addition to the feature list. The new lens looks to sell for about $600 so it will end up to be about $100 or so more than the version I bought. I'd pay that.

By the way, Tamron makes this lens in both Canon and Nikon mounts so though my review has been from a Canon user perspective, Nikon users can benefit as well.

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