Review by Klaus Schroiff, published February 2011

Special thanks to Alfredo Tollon for providing this lens for testing!

Introduction

Compared to previous Tamron 70-300mm lenses it adds a new optical design with XLD glass ("Extra Low Dispersion"), VC ("Vibration Control", 4 f-stop effectivity) and the new USD ("Ultrasonic Silent Drive"). Price-wise it is on the same level as the Canon EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 USM IS - its primary competitor in Canon EOS land.

The Tamron lens belongs to the SP ("Super Performance") series - Tamron's professional-grade product range. The build quality is not comparable to e.g. Canon's EF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 USM L IS but it's very good nonetheless. The lens body is made of quite high quality plastics based on a metal mount. The inner lens tube extends when zooming towards the long end but there's no wobbling even at 300mm. The focus and zoom control rings operate smoothly. The front element does not rotate during focus operations so using a polarizer remains easily possible. A flower-shaped lens hood is part of the package.

The USD ("Ultrasonic Silent Drive") is a new development by Tamron and used in the AF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 SP Di VC USD for the very first time. It provides fast and near-silent AF operations. FTM, full-time manual focusing, is possible in one-shot AF mode. LiveView-(contrast)-AF is slightly slower than average but that's usually no use-case for such a lens. The AF accuracy of our test sample was good. The Tamron lens offers a VC ("Vibration Control") which is comparable to Canon's IS. It has a claimed efficiency of about 4 f-stops. Based on our field experience it seems closer to 2.5 f-stops though. Canon lenses distinguish between standard IS mode and panning whereas the Tamron detects the situation on-the-fly so you don't have to care. The VC does not offer a tripod detection so you've to switch it off in such a situation.

Let's compare the Tamron lens to its primary competitors now: