Tamron SP 24-70MM Di USD Lens for Sony DSLR Cameras AFA007S700 (Model A007S)

I have been looking for a great lens to keep on my camera a majority of the time. I wanted this as my "kit" carry around lens. The jack-of-all-trades (close). My criteria was that it should be a midrange (between 16 and 80 mm or around this range in the mid-level), have weather sealing if possible, acceptable focus speed, and be a fast (2.8 aperture) lens. Above all of course the IQ (Image Quality) had to be great. Image Stabilization would be a big bonus because I love shooting in low light and am not a big strobe fan. IS (VC, VR, whatever) would allow me to shoot a few stops down if needed and stay within a reasonable ISO range without hauling a tripod or monopod where it was either forbidden or inconvenient.Enter the Tamron 24-70mm f/2.8 VC lens. All I can say is I just received it for the past weekend and so far I love it. Currently I tested it around the house, but most importantly I tested it out in the real world at an amusement park in the dark. I think the bokeh is good, the image quality is great, and the focusing is fantastic. I only missed one shot or so trying to focus in the dark with no assist on some smoke! It is very good and it is fast enough for me. I have not noticed the focus being slow at all. The Ultrasonic Silent Drive (USD) focus is good. And quiet. The VC works as advertised and I could take shots down to 1/10 or 1/4 second shutter speed and I shot on ISO 1600 in manual mode. I shoot RAW or RAW and JPEG.In order to test the VC: What I did was in a darker room at night, I switched the camera to manual mode and set it up so that my ISO was usually around 800 - 1600, Aperture is around 2.8 or so wide open, and then I played with the shutter speed usually around 1/8, 1/10 or so. If you depress the shutter half way to obtain focus, and move the camera back and forth ever so slightly while looking through the viewfinder, you should see VC in action. It looks like the image is slow or stuttering and occasionally freezes. This is VC working and grabbing the image. Works great in the real world testing. Sometimes the lens will click or you'll hear funny noises. Not loud or distracting. This is normal.This lens has vignetting, somewhat heavy wide open and across the focal length when wide. It has some distortion. None of this matters to me. Sometimes i actually like the look depending what I want to accomplish. The majority of the time I select lens correction in Lightroom 4.1 and select the lens make Tamron. The lens is recognized automatically at this point and the proper corrections are applied. Piece of cake!This review has no brick wall images. I don't feed my family through a web site. I don't pixel peep and make comparisons with this corner or that corner. Google this lens and look at these reviews if you wish to get technical. I just shoot real world pictures and decide myself if I like some equipment, and make my images available for others to view to help them decide if they might like the same lens by comparing some photos. YMMV. My images are posted for many reasons and I normally edit them from RAW using lightroom so they are modified in varying degrees but nothing that could not be duplicated within a few minutes. A link to my images taken with this lens can be found in the comment section.I was eyeballing the Nikon 24-70. I couldn't justify the price. Even this lens was expensive but this is the best option for my needs. The build quality on this is great. It is heavy but not overly so, like my Nikon 80-200 f/2.8 D. That lens is a metal boat anchor. The 24-70 Nikon doesn't even have 5 stars and it has a few bad reviews itself. I guess you'll get those reviews everywhere - either from a truly bad copy or I believe more so from some folks who don't know what they are doing. The $600 I save between my Tamron and a Nikon I can purchase another lens like the Nikon 85mm 1.8g or almost have enough for the Tokina 16-28 FX wide.I am an advanced amateur. I shoot a Nikon D700 and a Nikon D90. As of this review I have not tested this lens on my D90, and I consider this more of a FX lens for my D700. I am extremely pleased with the decision I made so far. I would not hesitate to take this lens and shoot anything important including weddings (even my own coming up) ;-) . Don't forget to check the comments section for a link to some photos I shot with this lens.-- UPDATE 2/26/2015 --I'm still shooting with this lens, and it is still a favorite. I have taken thousands of pictures and have at least 700 plus online. I am still shooting with a Nikon D700 and I also now own a Nikon D810. Things I tend to notice as I have used it more (on all cameras): the autofocus is slightly slower than say a Nikon. But no where unusable. The lens is a little soft at wide open (2.8) but again not unusable, just a little soft which can be sharpened up easily in Lightroom or Photoshop, etc. Still working great after two years. I just had it to an indoor car show and the photos were stunningly sharp ... more than I even expected ... at f/4 and smaller on my new D810. Fantastic.I love this Tamron and have purchased two more: the Tamron 70-300 with VC (Sharp and stunning for such a "cheap" lens, and the VC again is remarkable. I also purchased the Tamron 150-600 for sports and wildlife. Beautiful. Again, VC pulls it's weight as I was shooting handheld at 600mm and 1/160 and the photos were acceptably sharp. What a fantastic lens. I would currently recommend any modern Tamron lens. I think the 70-200 VC and 15-30 VC are in my future for next year. I'll have the holy quintrinity (15-30, 24-70, 70-300, 70-200, 150-600) in Tamron. I also own Nikon, but I think value per dollar, Tamron and Sigma are big contenders to their big-brand counterparts and in a lot of ways beat them out in cost and sometimes quality.

Tamron welcome to the club. I have been a Nikon brand loyalist since 20 years and never brought any other 3rd party lens, so what made me look at this one? The answer is VR. As a young parent I always wanted to shoot videos of my young one, who is always on the constant move. Getting pictures of toddlers is a bit challenging, but with a fast lens like Nikon 17-55, which I have been using for 2 years now served me well, but when it comes to taking videos the lack of VR on it was hurting the performance. Too many people say that you don't need a VR for a mid range lens like 24-70 or in my case 17-55, but boy they are wrong. The 17-55 is a stellar performer for taking pictures and low light photography, but it will soon lose its spot to Tamron 24-70. Pros will be flocking to get the Tamron 24-70 for the fusion style photography that everyone is demanding lately.Areas where Nikon shines: On a direct head to head comparison between Nikon 17-55 and Tamron 24-70, the Nikon 17-55 focuses a tiny bit faster than the Tamron 24-70. The Nikon 17-55 has a solid tank like feel when holding it, unlike the Tamron which has more plasticky feel. Nikon takes a 77mm filter while the Tamron takes an 82mm filter, I personally hate putting anything in front of the lens except for ND's to freeze motion etc.., some say you need UV filter for protection which is understandable. The image quality of pictures is pretty close, but Nikon produces more life like ones and has more vibrance and contrast to the pictures without any retouching. Nikon's lens hood is defenitely way better than the Tamron, but I leave my lens hood in the box. When detaching the Tamron from the body extra caution is required, the rear element is almost out there, and you can pretty much see all the VR circuits and wires at the bottom of the lens, there is no felt/room for protection like you see in other high end Nikon lens e.g 70-200 VR2, so the next time you are changing lens out in the elements out there keep this in mind. Nikon has the 7mm focal length advantage on the wider side of things i.e 17mm compared to 24mm for those landscape shots.Areas where Tamron shines: Ofcourse VR VR & VR, I was able to get some great keepers shooting at 1/15 or even lower shutter speeds hand holding in shutter priority mod, I could never go below 1/30 on my Nikon. If you are into shooting videos with your DSLR, boy you'll fall in love with this lens. Low light performance is stellar for this lens, I got better images at the same ISO with my new Tamron compared to Nikon, which was a decent surprise. Everyone who used Nikon lens has that one common complaint the zoom ring is small and is very near to the camera body, Tamron has a big, generous ring and is very smooth. Tamron has a lock switch to stop lens creep, but I doubt it'll have any creep at all in the first place, they engineered this lens perfectly. Bokeh is very pleasing compared to Nikon for those portraitures, the added 15mm when you completely zoom out i.e. 70mm over 55mm is a plus, for the crop sensor camera's the 70mm over 55mm becomes 105mm over 82.5. This lens will stay on my camera 90% of the time.Final thoughts: The new Tamron lens is perfectly engineered and will be much sought after lens, it has a current wait time of 3 months in some websites for obvious reasons. This lens will takeover the midrange lens market from Nikon just for the VR functionality, but add the price difference for a 24-70 mm lens we have a clear winner. Nikon got lazy with no plans to upgrade their mid range lenses and the loyalists always pretended to be content with no VR saying things like you don't need VR if you know what you are doing etc.....but we know that it hurts for those people in fusion photography and the new DSLR videography trend that is on rise. Tamron entered the big boys club with a bang and they did everything right this time from pricing, engineering and technology, thereby gaining my respect for them. If you are in the market for a new midrange lens, look no further.