“Wait, what?” is literally what I said this morning as I got the announcement of the Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.7 Di III VC VXD coming to Fujifilm X mount. We reviewed this lens a while back, and according to our affiliate sales it’s very popular with folks in Sony E mount. However, it’s a full-frame lens, so that means Fujifilm is adapting a full-frame lens to APS-C cameras. What that translates to is some insanely good image quality potential.
Tech Specs on the Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.7 Di III VC VXD
We reviewed the Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.7 Di III VC VXD, and here are our tech specs:
- Focal Length: 150-500mm
- Maximum Aperture: F5-6.7
- Angle of View: (diagonal) 16°25â-4°57â² (for full-frame mirrorless format)
- Optical Construction: 25 elements in 16 groups
- Minimum Object Distance: 0.6m (23.6 in) (WIDE) / 1.8m (70.9 in) (TELE)
- Maximum Magnification Ratio: 1:3.1 (WIDE) / 1:3.7 (TELE)
- Filter Size: Ï82mm
- Maximum Diameter: Ï93mm
- Length: 209.6mm / 8.3 in (front tip of the lens to the lens mount face)
- Weight: 1,725g (60.8 oz) (without tripod mount included) / tripod mount 155g (5.5 oz)
- Aperture Blades: 7 (circular diaphragm, the circular diaphragm stays almost perfectly circular up to two stops down from maximum aperture)
- Minimum Aperture: F22-32
- Standard Accessory: Round-shaped hood, Lens caps, Tripod mount
- Compatible Mounts: Sony E-mount and Fujifilm X mount
- On sale in October for $1,299
Below are sample images from our review of the lens on Sony E Mount.
The Growth of Fujifilm 3rd Party Support
People, it’s finally happening! Fujifilm only worked with 3rd parties on flash support for many years. But now, lenses are coming into their own here. Sigma has also made lenses for Fujifilm X series, but Tamron is really doing what X-series needs: zoom lenses. Sure, Fujifilm has made some good zooms over the years, but they didn’t have magic or soul to them. At least, it wasn’t anything like the prime lenses. But Tamron’s lenses are affordable, weather resistant, lightweight, and pack unique image quality. Honestly, a lot of us on the site are sick of lens manufacturers chasing clinical perfection. Tamron, we feel, throws that out the window and adds a look that’s uniquely theirs.
We plan on calling this one in to update our review. We’ve done that already with the Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 and the Tamron 18-300mm lenses.
So who is this new Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.7 Di III VC VXD for? Well, you can guess by the title that it’s for wildlife and bird photographers. Additionally, we’ve used it to shoot sports and it performed pretty well. But now, combined with the AI autofocusing on the Fujifilm XH2 and Fujifilm XH2s, it can potentially deliver photos like you’ve seen in the magazines growing up. Fujifilm has nothing like this in their current lineup, so Tamron is working to complement rather than compete with Fujifilm. And in my mind, that provides a lot more value than what Sigma does with creating confusion over lenses.
With the Tamron 150-500mm f5-6.7 Di III VC VXD as large as it is, it’s going to pair better with the XH2s and XH2 than it will with the XT4 or X Pro 3.Â
Considering all this new support, I wonder about the future. As we’ve seen, Canon doesn’t play well with 3rd parties, while Sony plays exceptionally well. OMDS and Panasonic say they don’t try to screw each other over with the same mount, but I’ve got doubts. The L mount alliance doesn’t screw each other over all that much, the individual manufacturers just use different components instead. With this new Fujifilm and Tamron partnership, I hope Tamron doesn’t get its autofocus performance tampered with. And that’s why Tamron built USB-C ports into many of their lenses: so that they could update them directly with new firmware.
Let’s see how this plays out. But I’m excited, are you?
