Tamron SP 90mm f/2.8 Di VC USD Macro

Tamron’s 90mm macro lenses are somewhat legendary, and the newest model is the best yet

£649/$649

Compared with the previous ‘gold ring’ edition, the new version has a refined optical layout, including two top-grade XLD (extra Low Dispersion) elements, along with a regular LD element. It also has conventional and nano-structure coatings to keep ghosting and flare to an absolute minimum.

Autofocus is courtesy of a ring-type ultrasonic system which is fast and ultra-quiet, while manual focusing is smooth and precise. Tamron has also added a proprietary hybrid image stabilizer or VC (Vibration Compensation) system. Like in Canon’s stabilized macro lenses, this counteracts x-y shift as well as angular vibration, with four-stop effectiveness in general shooting, dropping off at extremely close range.

Build quality feels good throughout. Weather-seals are featured and a fluorine coating is added to the front element, to repel grease and water and to aid easy cleaning.

Performance

Sharpness proved impressive when shooting our mediumrange lab test charts and remained excellent right down to the minimum focus distance for full 1.0x macro magnification. In short, the Tamron can resolve incredibly fine detail. When using narrow apertures, colour fringing towards the corners of the frame becomes marginally worse than from some other lenses on test, but is still very well controlled. It’s not technically a ‘distortionfree’ lens but it comes very close, beating the Canon 100mm L-series competitor.