HEAD TO HEAD

Most of us use a standard zoom for the majority of our shooting, but which gives you the most bang for your buck?

We pit the Tamron SP 24-70mm against the Sigma 24-70mm in a battle of the standard zooms

Everybody loves a bargain, but that’s something you don’t usually get with camera manufacturers’ own-brand lenses, and standard zooms are no exception. The latest Canon and Nikon 24-70mm f2.8 lenses certainly don’t come cheap, with RRPs of £2,000/$2,000 or more, and the Canon doesn’t even feature image stabilisation.

You could argue that you don’t need stabilisation with a relatively ‘fast’ f2.8 lens, but we disagree. For everyday shooting that often includes dull or interior lighting, a little stabilisation goes a long way. After all, you’ll often want to shoot with medium or even narrow apertures, to extend your depth of field without pushing your camera’s ISO setting through the roof.

High-quality, fast standard zooms represent a big opportunity in the marketplace for independents like Sigma and Tamron. Indeed, both manufacturers have new 24-70mm f2.8 lenses on their books. The Sigma ‘Art’ class lens and Tamron G2 (Generation 2) both represent major upgrades over previous designs, while undercutting own-brand Canon and Nikon lenses for price. And both lenses have similarly impressive specifications, features and build quality.

The previous edition of Sigma’s 24-70mm f2.8 lens wasn’t stabilised but the new version adds this, along with a host of other upgrades. The original Tamron lens did include the company’s proprietary VC (Vibration Compensation) system, but stabilisation has been revamped in the new lens, amongst other notable improvements. Let’s take a closer look at how these competing lenses perform in practice.