Tamron SP 85mm f/1.8 DI VC USD

£750/$750 Advanced features are packed into a sensibly sized package, with premium build quality

Awide f/1.4 aperture is often preferred by photographers, when choosing premium grade primes. Recent top-end Canon and Sigma lenses reinforce this, whereas Tamron has focused on building f/1.8 primes, including its 35mm, 45mm and 85mm lenses. Key advantages in them is the narrower aperture rating enables a compact, lightweight build, and the inclusion of VC to counteract camera-shake in handheld shooting.

The upshot is, with its size and weight, plus the availability of stabilization, this 85mm lens is brilliant for handheld portraiture. The competing Sigma f/1.4 lens is heavier and lacks stabilization, whereas Canon’s stabilized 85mm f/1.4 lens is twice the price.

Like the Tamron 45mm lens on test, this one is beautifully built and has a robust, weathersealed construction. Unlike the smaller lens, it’s compatible with Tamron’s TAP-IN Console straight out of the box, to enable optimization and firmware updates via a USB link to a computer. Again, dual nano-structure and conventional coatings are applied to minimize ghosting and flare, and this time a fluorine coating is also applied to the front element.

Performance

This lens isn’t as sharp as the other Sigma and Tamron on test at its widest aperture, but levels of sharpness remain consistent across the image frame. The effectiveness of stabilization is similar to that of the Canon 85mm f/1.4, enabling shutter speeds of around 1/10th of a second on full-frame cameras, the same as using the Tamron 45mm lens on an APS-C body.