Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5-4.5 Di II VC HLD
£449/$499 A big zoom range and fine features
ven though many photographers only tend to use ultra-wide zooms at or near their shortest focal length, there’s still something to be said for a generous zoom range. There’s a lot of overlap with a standard zoom lens, but a plus point for landscape shooting is that you won’t need to swap between lenses so often.
A major upgrade over Tamron’s original 10-24mm lens, this one has an HLD (High/low toque-modulated Drive) AF system. It’s faster, quieter and improves handling as the focus ring no longer rotates during AF. Image stabilization is added and better build quality features weather-seals and a fluorine coating on the front element.
EPerformance
Due to the physical size of test charts, lab-tests for ultra-wide-angle lenses need to be carried out at very close range. Results for the Tamron proved pretty lacklustre, however, it was a completely different story in our real-world ‘landscape’ tests, with excellent sharpness at all zoom settings, along with minimal colour fringing and distortions.
Sharpness
Close-range lab-results look pretty poor, but corner-tocorner sharpness is superb in landscape photography.
Fringing Distortion
Short-zoom barrel distortion will generally go unnoticed in landscape shooting.