Tamron has brought their 11-20mm f2.8 lens to Fujifilm cameras recently. For many, this provides the perfect lightweight yet small wide-angle zoom lens that they’ve been asking for. Bundle that with the fact that it’s affordable and has more weather resistance than Sigma’s closest offerings, and you’ve got a great reason to get it. So we’ve updated our review, and you can see our findings below.
For years, I truly wasn’t the biggest fan of Tamron’s lenses. But after they became more serious about lens making, I started to warm up to them. Who else does lightweight, fully weather resistant, and fast to focus lenses? More importantly, who does them affordably?
In the past few years, I’ve bought around three Tamron lenses for my Sony cameras, and I would truly consider getting them for Fujifilm as well. They offer a variety of focal lengths that Fujifilm doesn’t have. And arguably, they’re making the best zoom lenses for Fujifilm’s cameras right now.
I own a ton of Fujifilm prime lenses because of how they feel, the image quality, and the performance. But I understand that I need to step down a little bit if I want a zoom lens. Tamron’s lenses aren’t a holistic step down: just in terms of them using plastic exteriors and the inherent nature of a zoom being worse than a prime lens. However, just because they have a plastic exterior doesn’t mean that they’re not weather resistant. In fact, they’ve got in their stable some of the most durable lenses that we’ve ever tested.
Here’s the update from our review.
Ease of Use Updated
On Fujifilm’s cameras, one has to consider how this lens will work if it doesn’t have an aperture ring. But you can set one of your camera’s dials to act accordingly. Otherwise, the Tamron 11-20mm f2.8 is pretty simple to use. You zoom in or out and control what focus mode you’re using from the camera.
With the X Pro 3 and OVF on Fujifilm cameras, it’s too wide. But it will show you a preview of what’s in focus if you enable the picture-in-picture feature.
Image Quality Update May 2023 on Fujifilm
The very fun thing about the Fujifilm system is that there are film simulations. So I spent some time using the film simulations with the new Tamron lens and locked the white balance to 5500K. I really liked what I got, and the lens doesn’t show a whole lot of distortion that’s worth crying over. With that said, it can focus very closely and you can get some nice bokeh in various situations. It’s an excellent lens for photographers that want to shoot travel work, journalism, food, and products.
Considering that this is Fujifilm though, I don’t think people will worry too much about any flaws this lens exhibits. We used it with a lower-megapixel camera. We can see if we’re looking at 100% that this isn’t Tamron’s sharpest lens — and that’s perfect. It means that if you’re photographing people, you don’t need to do extra retouching. But if you use a flash, you’re bound to get an absurd amount of details. Some film simulations are sharper than others, so keep that in mind when you’re shooting.
Conclusions Update May 2023
If you’re looking for a wide-angle lens that’s very affordable for the Fujifilm camera system, this is probably one of your best bets. It’s more affordable than the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R WR, which is around $1,000. The Tamron option is much more affordable.