I've had this lens for 18 month now, and even with a bag full of lenses (I'm not pro enough to call them 'glass' yet) this is still my go to lens for most situations.
When I bought my Canon T1i, it was my first DSLR, before that I had a Powershot. But I didn't want to waste the extra $100 for the kit lens, I wanted to come out of the gate strong, with a 'real' lens - not just the cheapest thing that fits. A photographer friend of mine said, "Never buy a lens smaller than f2.8". So I asked him for suggestions in the $500 range to get me started, something that would work for most situations. Indoor, outdoor, wide and close, low light and sun. I didn't know what my niche would be yet, but I just wanted something that could take advantage of what the camera could offer.
This Tamron 17-50 f2.8 lens is what he suggested. I read the reviews and I bought it. Since then I've bought the Canon 55-250 telephoto, the Tokina 11-16 f2.8 Ultra Wide angle and the 50mm f1.8 and the old Canon 100mm macro. The Tokina is great for indoor room shots and weird close-up shots and panoramic vistas, but its just too wide for every day use. The 50mm is amazing for indoor shots with low light, and for great depth of field, but its a little too zoomed in for most indoor stuff on the cropped sensor of my camera. The telephoto is good for zooming, but I didn't heed my friends f2.8 or better warning, and it really suffers in anything by direct sun. The macro is a very fun lens for the hobbyist like me, but its short depth of field at 2.8 is way too hard to focus for me. This tamron can do most of the stuff these other lenses can do, but some how makes it a lot prettier.
The first thing I notice different from every other lens I own, the Tamron just makes everything more colorful. Flowers are more vibrant. Skies are bluer. skin tones are truer to life, trees and grass look like something from an allergy medicine commercial, during the good parts. If you zoom to 50mm, you won't get the crazy shallow depth of field that the prime lens offers, but there's still plenty for some great portrait effects, or to feature only a small patch of something in a large group, like plants, or kids. All the way out at 17mm, is wider than most point and shoot cameras can offer. Great for taking pics of your holiday decorations from the sidewalk, without stepping back into traffic, or taking a group photo, while still being close enough to tell people when to scoot over without yelling from 50 feet back.
The manual focusing is very smooth and easy to adjust with a pinky. Zooming is a little stiff, but it never creeps by itself. The zoom lock to keep it shot while in a bag is nice but doesn't seem necessary. Everything about it feels very solid, but its not too heavy. The filter won't spin when you focus, unlike the kit lens, so its great for a polarizer, or any graduated or effects filters. The lens hood is very easy to line up and snap on. I'm a total amateur but I always feel like a pro when I pop that thing on. My only really complaint is a minor one. The included back cap is annoying because it only works on direction. And it only works on EF lenses, not EF-S. So if I take of my telephoto lens and want to go wider with the Tamron, I can't just take the Tamron cap off and put in on the lens I removed from the body. I suggest picking up an extra Canon back cap to make things easier if you own more than just this lens and like to switch them in the field. The front cap is the best design by far of all my lenses. Huge thumb and finger grips inside the rim, so you never get your greasy fingers near the outer elements.
The warranty is great. I forget the exact terms, but its at least 5 years. If you buy this lens from a certified retailer, like Amazon 1st party, they will fix it for you for free if it breaks down. I shoot a lot of time lapse videos. This can be very hard on the inner working of lenses and camera bodies. Sometimes a sequence can include 1000 shots or more to make a smooth looking final video. Well, I think I took a few too many thousands of pictures, something most people, would never do in the normal use of a lens. I don't have an exact count, but if I had to guess is was over 75000 shots. One day, I clicked on my camera and the lens made this weird grinding noise. Everything still worked fine, auto focus, zoom, everything, until I took a picture. I could only take one picture, then the camera would send back an error about something with the lens. I was bummed. I had a big whole now in my focal range that none of my other lenses overlapped. I started to really appreciate the quality of the shots this lens produced once I didn't have it any longer.
When I finally got around to looking up the warranty info, I found Tamron's service page, where you type in what lens you have, what cameras you use it on and what is wrong with it. You fill it all in, and they give you a shipping label to print out, all paid for. If your lens is still under warranty, that's all you have to do. They get the package, read what's wrong, and if its covered by the warranty, they fix it up and mail it back for free again. I was about 6-8 business days to turn it around. No questions asked, no nonsense, they even cleaned it for me. With normal use, I doubt the average user would ever need this service, but having had to use it, I can vouch for it.
The last thing I want to mention is the auto focus. It works great, but it is very noisy. Its just makes a bad sound, like its breaking or something. In the video mode of the T1i, you have to hit a button to focus, and its so loud it will drown out most of the other audio in your shot while focusing. Stick to manual for video. For still, its very fast, but the noise just seems to cheapen it a little. If you can get past that, its great.
Bottom Line, if you want to buy a DSLR and need a good first lens, you'd be hard pressed to find better bang for your buck in terms of color reproduction, zoom range and clarity. If you've already got a few lenses in your stable, but need a good or better every day walkaround lens that can go pretty wide, this one is very versatile, without sacrificing picture quality.
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 | Tamron SP 17-50mm F/2.8 XR Di-II VC LD Aspherical for Canon APS-C Digital SLR Cameras (6 Year Tamron Limited USA Warranty) | Sigma 17-70mm f/2.8-4 DC Macro OS HSM Lens for Canon Mount Digital SLR Cameras | Canon EF-S 24mm f/2.8 STM Lens | Tokina Opera AF 16-28MM FX F/2.8 (Canon Mount) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Customer Rating | (292) | (151) | (391) | (5470) | (185) |
| Price | $392.49 | $229.99 | $298.00 | $149.00 | $589.99 |
| Sold By | Electronics Basket | Peacock Store | SKR camera store | Norman Camera & Video | TheCameraBox |
| Item Dimensions | 5.77 x 4.29 x 4.17 inches | 3.74 x 3.15 x 3.15 inches | 3.5 x 3.11 x 3.11 inches | 0.91 x 2.68 x 2.68 inches | 5.35 x 31.5 x 28.35 inches |
| Item Weight | 1.43 lbs | 1.26 lbs | 1.15 lbs | 4.41 ounces | 2.07 lbs |
| Lens Type | Wide Angle | Wide Angle | Standard | Wide Angle | Wide Angle |
| Maximum Aperture | f/2.8 | 2.8 | 2.8 | 2.8 millimeters | 2.8 millimeters |
| Maximum Focal Length | 50 millimeters | 50 millimeters | 70 millimeters | 24 millimeters | 28 millimeters |
| Maximum Format Size | APS-C | APS-C / DX | APS-C / DX | APS-C / DX | Full Frame |
| Minimum Aperture | f/32 | — | 32 | 22 | 22 |
| Minimum Focal Length | 17 millimeters | 17 millimeters | 17 millimeters | 24 millimeters | 16 millimeters |
| Photo Filter Thread Size | 82.0 millimeters | 62.00 millimeters | 72 millimeters | 52 millimeters | — |
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Great budget lens for upgrading your kit lens, but not as good as Canon's 17-55 IS
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2008
Alot of people are choosing between the Tamron 17-50mm and the considerably more expensive Canon 17-55 IS. Canon obviously believes this focal length will appeal to the broadest group of consumers, hence why the 18-55 IS is included with the XSI kit. I personally have both the Canon 17-55IS and the Tamron 17-50 and like them both for very different reasons. There are alot of technical reviews that discuss barrel distortion, vignetting, etc, but my review is focused on how well the lens performs if you're a first time DSLR owner like myself who has barely a clue about photography.What I like about the Tamron 17-50:-Very small and lightweight. I have it mounted on my Rebel XT, so it makes for a very compact DSLR with a range great for wide angle shots and portraits of people.-Images are VERY sharp, pretty comparable to the 17-55IS. I shoot in RAW, so I can't comment on color quality much.-I like the lens cap; its easier than the Canon lens cap to remove while the hood is on.-Barrel lock: you can lock the barrel so if the lens is stored facing down, it doesn't extend. My Canon 28-135IS does that, and it is annoying.-It has a maximum constant aperture of 2.8. It is very difficult to find a zoom lens that is this fast for as price as low as this Tamron (the Tamron 28-75 being the other lens that comes too mind). Definitely, NONE of the fast Canon zoom lenses with a constant aperture are in that price category. I think the closest may be a f/4, of you're looking at consumer grade lenses that have apertures that change with the focal length (i.e. f/3.5-5.6).-Price: It is less than half the price of the 17-55IS. If you have the skill to coax the best out of the lens, your prudent purchase will reward you handsomely, and you'll have money left over to buy a nice camera body.What I don't like about the Tamron 17-50 as compared to my 17-55IS:-Autofocus isn't as precise as with the 17-55IS. I have a higher percentage of blurry photos with the Tamron than I do with the Canon.-Focus ring turns in the opposite direction of the Canon lenses. This makes removing the lens kind of annoying.-No IS. Some people say that you don't need IS at this focal range. But I do. Maybe I drink too much coffee, but I love IS. I have less blurry photos of my dogs using the 17-55IS than I do with the Tamron. I do get sharp photos with my Tamron, but you don't want to have to sort through literally hundreds of photos just to find a few sharp ones.-Low light/indoor performance not as good as the 17-55IS. I've discovered I love photos with great depth of field/bohkeh, so I tend to shoot on wider apertures as often as possible. Even when its wide, the Tamron doesn't perform as well as the 17-55IS in low light situations. It is likely a result of a combination of its autofocus/lack of IS. If you're out and about on a sunny day, or are using a tripod, you will likely not experience this too much. But if you're inside on a rainy day, you'll notice this.The Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 lens will certainly give you better photos than the kit lenses will. If you have a smaller DSLR like the Rebel XT, XTI, XS, or XSI, you'll appreciate the small size of the Tamron while giving you very sharp photos. However, I believe you need to have some skills in order to reap the benefits of this lens. Price is a considerable factor as well; you could purchase this lens and an XS body for about the price of the 17-55IS lens alone. We actually picked up this lens and highly discounted Rebel XT as our *small* camera because combined it was about the price of a G10. We bring our 40D w/17-55IS out when we want the low light performance, of we know we're going to take photos. We bring the XT/Tamron 17-50 combo out when we want a camera just-in-case, and we want the photos to be really good. We bring our Canon A570IS when we want something that's very small and don't really care about photos.If you have the funds, or only want one lens, I would recommend the Canon 17-55 over this lens. It is better built (though its a considerably larger lens), has IS, and has the same optics that Canon's "L" series lens has. On average, the photos of family and friends that I take with the 17-55 turn out better and sharper (and I have fewer discards) than with the Tamron. My skill level is mediocre at best, so I need all the help I can get, and the Canon provides, while the Tamron emphasizes how bad I am at holding the camera steady, though it does reward me just enough that I kept it.You won't go wrong with the Tamron lens, and for the money and size, it is a great lens. It is worth upgrading to this lens if you only have your kit lens. But keep in mind that after purchasing the Tamron, you'll still want the 17-55IS.EDIT 12/9/11: I want to point out that Tamron seems to have recognized the consumer's preference for image stabilization (IS) or vibration control (VC), which I stated was one of the reasons I preferred the 17-55IS over the Tamron 17-50. Tamron now has a VC version of this lens.I have not purchased it and still own both my 17-55IS and the 17-50, and I know there are plenty of reviews out there for it for those who are interested.I have purchased a Tamron 18-250 that I've been using for a year now, and will hopefully post a review sometime this Christmas season.
Reviewed in the United States on December 24, 2008
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