Tamron 35-150mm VXD vs Sigma 28-105mm DN | Which Lens is Boss?

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today for another one of my head-to-head versus videos between, in this case, the new Sigma, 28 to 105 millimeter F2.8 DNRT series zoom, and then the somewhat older, but still very viable, Tamron 35 to 150, F2 to F2.8
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VXD lens. So Sony shooters, and this is a comparison on Sony e-mail, but Sony shooters
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now have two of these what I would call genre-busting zooms, and that they kind of
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mash up two different kind of zoom, typical zoom ranges and get the most of them into one
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And so they've stretched out further than what your typical, say, for example, 24 to
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70 might go or 28 to 75 Miller in this case, moving all the
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way up to 105 or in the case of the Tamron, starting at 35, but going all the way to 150 millimeters
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And so these lenses do have some definite similarities, but I think in many ways they have more differences than they do similarities
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However, I do think they're going to get cross-shopped because both of them do something fairly unique
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thus making them desirable for those of us that are going to shoot events, maybe for portrait or wedding photographers
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And so let's take a look at which of these makes more sense for your needs
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And so what I'm going to do in this video is I'm going to highlight the few similarities that are there
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I'm going to give you some reasons to choose either one of them. I'm going to give you my summation, my conclusion, and then at the end will be a deep dive into the optical comparison
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For those of you that are really interested in seeing how they perform head to head. So let's dive in today right after a word from our sponsor
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That's FioBoc.com and use code Dustin 20 for 20% off everything. So let's start by talking about some similarities
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Both of these are professional grade lenses with very nice build. I know in the case of the Tamron, I've been using it for three years in a variety of situations
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It's been used more than any other lens in my kit, and it is holding up perfectly well
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Both of them have high degrees of weather ceiling, for example, and so they're designed to be used in professional conditions
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Both of them have an 82-millimeter front filter thread. They are roughly, as you can see, the same size
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The Tamron is a little bit wider. It's 1.5 millimeters, wider in diameter
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But the Sigma is actually a little bit longer. It's 1.9 millimeters longer
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Neither one of these have lens-based image stabilization or optical stabilization. And when it comes to autofocus, both of them have their respective brands highest in focus motors
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And I would say they both focus with similar degrees of speed and confidence
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So they're both very good performers, though. I will also have to note that both of them are going to face Sony's third-party limitation
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of having a maximum burst rate of 15 frames per second, even if you're using one of their sports bodies that's capable of more
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It's an across-the-board limitation that applies to non-Soni lenses. So there, many of the similarities end, however
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So I'm going to start by taking a look at the Sigma and giving you some reasons to choose the Sigma over the Tamron
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Reason number one is price. The Sigma is significantly cheaper. It comes to market at $1,49 US, $1,500, US, whereas the Tamron currently retails for about 1,800
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US dollars. Obviously there might be more variation in your particular market wherever you might be
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but I suspect however it shakes out, the Sigma is probably still going to be the cheaper lens
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The Sigma is also the lighter of the two lenses. Not to say that either one of these lenses are
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light, but Sigma manages to keep it under a kilogram. It is 175 grams lighter than what the Tamron is
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The Sigma also wins when it comes to aperture control. It essentially has the G-master setup
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of controls, whereas there is an aperture ring where you can either choose manual aperture in
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clicked mode. You can declick it for racking. You can put it into automatic mode and there's even
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an iris lock that will help you to lock either in or out of the manual aperture control
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And so it is a much more robust approach than what you can get on the Tamron. The Tamron's approach
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if you want to do Apture Control is actually to use one of the custom switches to set the control
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of this ring to be an aperture ring, but there are no preset markers on it. It's less precise
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than what Sigma's approach is. And after years of using it, even though I like having an aperture
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ring, I don't love the implementation on the Tamron. A lot of times I just do aperture control
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from within the camera. So definitely a win for Sigma on that point. The Sigma also very obviously
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goes wider. It goes as wide as 28 millimeters versus only 35 millimeters on the wide end for the Tamron lens
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And so you can see that does make a noticeable difference when you put them side by side
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The Sigma also takes a win when it comes to its close focus abilities and its ability to get a much higher maximum magnification
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With the Sigma, you can get as high as 0.32 times magnification, whereas the Tamron at best is only capable of 0.18 times magnification
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And so you have near twice the magnification on the Sigma, obviously a win there
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Sigma also has a higher aperture blade count in this case 12 versus 9 and as a byproduct of having that even aperture blade arrangement it actually has also has nicer sunburst or sunstar effects where I think the blades are more clearly defined and nicer looking On top of that it also has better flare resistance
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One of the primary optical weaknesses of the Tamron lenses, and then in certain situations, it is a little bit flare prone
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whereas the Sigma seems to be rock solid in my test when it comes to that
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So some definite areas of strength for the Sigma. However, there are also some very significant reasons to choose the Tamron instead
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First of those being the fact that the Tamron boasts a bigger zoom range
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The Sigma zoom ratio is 3.75 times, whereas the Tamron is over 4.28 times
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And so it has more focal links available to you. And obviously, it also has much more telephoto reach as a part of that
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And I will put it also look at this. when I was doing head-to-head comparisons
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I found that even at, say, 105 millimeters on the Tamron, the 105 millimeters on the Tamron was longer at equal focus distances
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than what it was on the Sigma. And so it's not only longer in terms of being able to go to 150 millimeters
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but even at a comparison of 105 millimeters, it's still the longer lens
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And so it definitely can go longer there. When it comes to the control of things
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while there are aspects of Sigma's physical control that I like better
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I also really appreciate the fact that Tamron has more customization ability here
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That includes an additional focus hold or function button, so it's got three rather than two on the Sigma
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But more importantly, because it has this USBC port, which is weather sealed
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and also the access to what Tamron calls their lens utility software
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you have the ability to really customize a lot of things here. You have a three-position custom switch that allows you to set various custom functions in that software
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So you can control there. You can change the behavior of the focus ring from its speed to whether it's linear or not
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even which direction it's going to go. And so you definitely have more ability to customize the lens
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So it really works in the way that works best for you. And so I appreciate that as well
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It also has a faster maximum aperture. It goes on the wide end
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The maximum aperture is F2 rather than F2.8. And in fact, it doesn't hit F2.8 as a maximum aperture until 80 millimeters
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So in comparison, there is a big chunk of the actual zoom range of the Sigma, where the Tamron affords a faster maximum aperture
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and in particular there on the white end, the ability to go as wide as F2 is really going to be useful in certain situations
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So definitely something worthy of appreciation. On the optical side of things, the Tamron has much lower distortion
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It has next to no distortion at 35 millimeters, whereas the Sigma has very significant barrel distortion
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at 28 millimeters. And even when you get towards the telephoto end
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even though both of them have some pretty obvious pincushion distortion, the Tamron has a little bit less
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And in a secondary metric all throughout the zoom range, it also has less vignette
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pretty close to a stop most of the time, and sometimes even more of less vignette
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And so another area where it's a little bit cleaner in the optical performance
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The Tamron also shows more consistent sharpness. So not only is it more consistent in the sharpness across the frame
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whereas the Sigma can be competitive in the center in the midframe, but really drops off on the corners
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the Tamron tends to do a little bit better. In fact, even sharper still in the center, often in the midframe
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And when you get towards the telephoto end, the Tamron's advantage becomes even more significant
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The Tamron also shows more ability to have greater sharpness when you stop it down
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And so not only is it better with wide open performance, it's also better with both lenses stop
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down. I also find that the Tamron has overall nicer rendering, better bouquet, for example
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And you can tell a real difference in the backgrounds, that the backgrounds are softer
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less outlining and hard edges there. And so I just find the overall rendering from the Tamron
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to be a little bit more pleasing. So in conclusion, I have found after years of use that the
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Tamron, when I'm asked the question, if you could only choose one lens. Right now, the answer to that
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for me is the Tamron. I find the combination of the focal range along with the aperture to be incredibly
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useful. The Sigma is obviously also appealing due to having a lower price, higher magnification
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a little bit wider on the wide end. There's not really a bad choice here between these two lenses
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For me, the Tamron Zoom range makes a little bit more sense for what I'm using it for, but of course your mileage may vary
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The great news once again is as Sony shooters, we have so many awesome
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lenses available to us. Now, if you want to go a little bit deeper, you can find in the description
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below a link to the both video and text reviews of both of these lenses, and beyond that
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we'll also go into an optical deep dive and compare them head to head if you want. We'll dive
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into that right now. So for these series of comparisons, I'm going to keep the Sigma on the left
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and the Tamron on the right for consistency sake. Now, on their respective wide ends 28 millimeters
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and 35 millimeters, you can see that the Sigma, has much more distortion to deal with a very strong amount of barrel distortion
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whereas the Tamron is almost neutral, very, very little there. To show you the numbers, to do this correction that I've done here for the Sigma
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that's a plus 26 and then the vignette, a whopping plus 90
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For the Tamron, that's only a minus two to correct the distortion and just a plus 42 to correct the vignette, so a huge difference on the wide end
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Now, on the telephoto ends, they both suffer from some, obvious pincushion distortion. Again, the sigma just slightly more in the amount. The sigma needed
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a minus 10 and then to correct the distortion and then a plus 61 to correct for the vignette
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In the case of the tamron, we needed a minus 9 to correct for the distortion and a plus 44
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to correct for the vignette. So once again, a pretty consistent difference in the amount of vignette
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They're significantly more on the sigma, significantly less on the tamron. Now, when it comes
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comparing sharpness This is on a 61 megapixel Sony A7 R mark 5 And so first of all I going to give you a non to apples comparison And so this is with the Tamron at F2 and the Sigma at F2 which is their respective maximum apertures which by the way gives the Tamron a full stop of additional light gathering And you can see that reflected here 1 320th of a
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second versus one 160th of a second. Now, what you can see is in the center of the frame that
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the Tamron is basically equally sharp with the Sigma, even at F2 versus F2.8. And perhaps contrast
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levels are even a tiny bit better, at least in the center of the frame. Now, if we move to the
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mid-frame, you can see a pretty roughly equal performance between the two lenses. We'll
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pop over to this side. And you can see here that I would say the Sigma looks a little bit better
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down in this zone. They look really roughly the same, not much difference. Now, neither one of them
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are all that impressive down into the corners. And you can see that kind of with equal degrees
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neither one of them resolve the corners super well, though the Tamron is a little better right off
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towards the very edge, whereas the Sigma gets pretty mushy. Tamron is a little bit better
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But of course, Tamron does have the option to get an apples-to-apples comparison of stopping down to F2.8 here
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And you can see now that the corner performance definitely favors the Tamron pretty obviously
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And if we pop back to this zone where the Sigma looked better, it still does look better
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That obviously is a weak place for the Tamron on these particular copies
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However, in this zone, the Tamron is noticeably sharper, going back to this area here
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We can see that the Tamron has definitely got more contrast and a little better detail
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And in the center of the frame, the Tamron is like ridiculously sharp now
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And you can see the noir pattern and the intense contrast that is there
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You can see it even in the writing here. The writing really pops in a greater degree than what you see from the Sigma
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Now, when I tested the Sigma, I found that its strongest place in the zoom range was at 50mm
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So let's see how that compares to the Tamron. both of them set at F2.8 here
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In the center of the frame, they look very, very similar, not really much to distinguish between the two of them
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in terms of contrast or detail. We've seen that this zone at the wide end
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was a little bit better for the Sigma than it was for the Tamron. I would say that's still true here, though
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You can see it is very, very close. The two of them are extremely comparable
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with the Sigma having maybe a very slight edge. In this zone here, which favored the Tamron before
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it continues to favor the tamron that's a little bit sharper. How about down here with Queen Elizabeth
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We can see looking at the two that they're roughly same in terms of detail
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but the contrast is a little bit better for the Tamron. And so you can see they're pretty comparable here with a little bit of give and take across the frame
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But one of the things that I noted previously is that when you stop the lenses down
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the Tamron gets a lot sharper as you stop it down, whereas the Sigma doesn't necessarily improve a whole lot
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So now at 50 millimeters, again, strong point for the sigma, both of them at F5.6, the Tamron is noticeably sharper in the center of the frame, like significantly sharper
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And if we look at the mid-frame zone, it is notably sharper in this area where, you know, historically the sigmas looked a little bit better
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The Tamron is obviously better down here in this zone that we've looked out a few times
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Again, the Tamron is very noticeably better. And if we go right off to the edge here and the corner performance
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Tamron is very obviously better with the two lenses stopped down. And so that's going to include even going into the corner corners
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where neither one of them are super strong, but the Tamron is able to sharpen up to where it is significantly sharper here in the corner
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Now, we can compare them at the end of the Sigma's range, 105 millimeters
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The Tamron I got it as close as I could. That ended up being 101 millimeters
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We can look in the center of the frame and find out that the Tamron is very, very slightly sharper and better contrast there and see it in the text that it's just better delineated
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with the tamron in the mid-frame zone the tamron is crisper in terms of the details that are there
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and just a little bit better contrast if we pop into some of these other zones here we're going to
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find that the tamron continues to be sharper here in this zone with superior contrast up in this
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area we're going to find that they're roughly equal but the tamron gives a little bit brighter
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a little bit better contrast in some of those key areas and down into this zone
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Pretty close between the two of them. But again, the brighter areas are just a little bit brighter
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just a little bit superior contrast that we're going to see on the Tamron
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You can see here in the bright of the word pounds, how that it just stands out a little bit more for the Tamron
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Then once again, as we stop them down to F5.6, you can see again that that advantage for the Tamron actually grows
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to where it becomes very, very crisp, very high detail in contrast, whereas the Sigma only very mildly improves
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Now, I noted that one of the areas of advantage for the Sigma is when it comes to flare resistance
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And so in this shot, with both of them wide open, the results are a little less dramatic
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And so you can see that both them are faring pretty well here. However, if we look down in this zone right here
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you can see that there's a little bit of a ghosting artifact here on the Tamron that is not there on the Sigma
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The flare issues become more notable, however, if you start to stop the lenses down
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And so here we can see in this same position that the Sigma has remained nice and clean
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But now if we look down into this particular zone for the Tamron side
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we can see that there is some fairly significant ghosting artifacts that have come here
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There's some loss of contrast in this area and then also these kind of prismatic patterns
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of blobs of color that have come onto there. So definitely an area that favors the Sigma
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So obviously the fact that the Tamron has a, brighter maximum aperture means that there's going to be plenty of situations where it's able to
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have a larger maximum aperture and thus not just a faster shutter speed as we're going to see here
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but you can also see that the tamron just looks softer in general and that's that because it has a
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wider maximum aperture it has you know more separation of the subject from the background thus
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the background looks softer here you can see on the sigma side that things just look a little bit
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busy whereas the Tamron looks comparatively much softer The other thing they going to notice is that the specular highlights are going to be bigger and softer for the Tamron Now here what interesting with lenses that have larger maximum apertures available Even when I stop the Tamron down to F2 nothing is moved here as far as the position You can see that the specular highlights for the Tamron side are still bigger and softer even with the same aperture selected than what they are on the Sigma And I noticed this many many times
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If there is a larger maximum aperture available, it just means that the specular highlights behave
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differently. They're bigger, they're softer. And so this is going to be a baked in advantage
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for the Tamron, regardless if you're shooting at the same focal length or not. You can just see
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as a byproduct that the boca is just has more outlining. It's smaller. It's smaller. It's
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a little bit more in focus. It's softer and smoother on the Tamron compared to the Sigma
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Now, I found this interesting. When I was trying to get the equal framing, I found that I actually
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had to, even to get roughly similar framing. With the Tamron, I actually had to go less than
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105 millimeters. And you can see here that it still has a slightly higher level of magnification
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even at 103 versus 105 millimeters. So I would need to get to the Tamron down to 101, 102 millimeter range
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to equate the sigma. And so, you know, make of that what you want. But again, what I've mentioned
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as being kind of an observation about the size of the specular highlights remains true here. And so
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you can see that the highlights are just a little bit bigger, a little bit softer on the Tamron
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than what they're going to be on the Sigma. And so as a byproduct, the overall background is
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just a little bit softer and smoother. You can see here looking at the tree that it's just a little
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bit more defocused and so a little bit smoother looking on the Tamron side of things
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Then, of course, the reality is having that extra 45 millimeters of focal length allows you to
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really even much more strongly blur out the background. And so here's where the Tamron's biggest
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advantage is, is that you're able to get a much creamier looking background from the same shooting
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position because of that extra zoom range. Of course, the flip side of this is that the Sigma is going
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to allow you to get a lot more in the frame at 28 millimeters versus 35 millimeters. And you can see that
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that framing difference is really, really significant. And this is the way that things work on the
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wide end. That extra few millimeters, seven millimeters here on the wide end makes in some ways nearly as
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much difference as the 45 millimeter difference on the telephoto end. And obviously there's different
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applications where one's going to be more useful than the others. But there is some give and take here
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I mean, obviously this is a much tighter framing than what this is, but it looked viewed like this. It really doesn't look any more dramatic than what the
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28 versus 35 millimeters looked. Another thing that we have highlighted is the fact that the maximum
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magnification is much higher on the sigma. Now, to be fair, Tamron does have one advantage
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and that is that it is able to produce a sharper image at its minimum focus distance than what
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the sigma does. And you can also see there's a little bit more fringing in some of these things on
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the sigma. The Tamron actually achieves its highest result, though by only
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only one percentage point on the wide end rather than the telephoto end
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But it also is a little bit sharper and more contrasty at that close focus distance
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than what the sigma is. And so, again, some give and take, but I think that most people are going to say that
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this amount of magnification is going to be more useful than what that is
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So finally, let's take a look at a few portrait comparisons. So first of all, if we are looking at achieving similar levels of distance framing here
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so I tried to get around 70 millimeters for these shots. But it's just going to give you an idea of how the two lenses behave here
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So as far as the detail on my face and the skin textures, I would say that I don't really see a radical difference between the two
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I would say here at 70 millimeters in this particular shot, I think that maybe the Sigma is showing ever so slightly more contrast on the face textures
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but both of them are extremely sharp, not really a lot to differentiate them
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and I will note that the Tamron is wide open at F2.5
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So if you stop that down to F2.8, it probably would give you similar levels of contrast and detail
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However, obviously, again, the area that's going to really favor the Tamron is the fact that the background is going to be softer
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You look at them at large. You can see the different skin tones
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Nothing looks radically different to me. Overall, color temperature doesn't really look all that different
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Overall levels of contrast, kind of the different. the global contrast, again, I don't see them as being significantly different. And so here I would
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say the biggest difference is going to be that the Sigma tends to boards a little bit more
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business, jitteriness in the background, whereas the Tamron stays a little bit smoother. Now, once again
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here, if we shoot in and around the limit of the Sigma, so 105 millimeters, the Tamron's only at
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99mm, so a very, very slight difference, but not enough to really change things significantly
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Now, as far as the overall skin tones and textures of the face, again, these two look really, really similar here
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Now, both them are at F2.8, so it's true apples to apples comparison
24:43
I like the Sigma's contrast around the eyes, just a hair better
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But as far as the overall look and skin tones, without them side by side, you really wouldn't notice much of a difference
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Likewise, in this particular case, I think that the background blur looks a little bit more similar than different
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The sigma, I think, has improved a little bit here at this particular focal length
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And so I think the Tamron is very slightly, you can see that, again, even though the magnification
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level should be a bit higher on the sigma, if you'll look at this zone here, it actually is a little
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bit bigger and softer for the Tamron, even though the magnification level is maybe very slightly lower
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And so, you know, just another area where that kind of larger maximum aperture capability does
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pay off in other ways. But again, looking at them side by side, the results are not radically
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different. And again, the one way where it can be radically different is that there's definitely
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more flexibility for portrait shots with the Tamron lens here, I should say. Just again, the ability
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to, from that same shooting position, to zoom in further and to get a much more blurred out
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background, much more subject separation, obviously is going to be very advantageous
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So thanks for sticking around to the end. And I hope that the head-to-head comparison maybe gives
25:59
you a little bit more insight into which one of these lenses makes more sense to you or looks
26:03
better to you. And you can tell me about it in the description down below. As always, thanks for
26:08
watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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