Canon vs Tamron

John Mc

John Mc

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It's a niggling question I've been seriously mulling over for the past couple of weeks. I'm looking to buy a new lens for my 500D and looking at the 17-50/55 2.8's of the above two. Now there's a very big price difference if I buy new (about £400). But I keep reading reviews, Humin and ahhin at what would suit me better, pros and cons etc. I want a lens with a constant aperture of 2.8, so there's a winner in both. What doesn't particularly bother me is image stability (Is & Vc). What I really want to know, is the canon better than the tamron by far, or is it a marginal comparison? It would be great to hear views from folks with either lens, more so from people who have owned both and have switched.

Cheers
 
Read up on photozone.de

In short you will find the main differences will be IS on Canon, price for Canon, USM vs slow and noisy motor, and a bit more distortion on Tamron at 17mm. Only you can tell if thats significant or not
 
hey John, I've currently got the same camera as you and own the Tamron lens. I just bought it a little bit back. Over Christmas, I hired the Canon lens and honestly? I don't notice any difference whatsoever. Both are fantastic lenses. I've got a 5D mkI on the way and I'm very sad I can't transfer the Tamron lens over to that body!

If you're ever over Edinburgh way, you're welcome to come and have a play about with the Tamron.
 
I'm over the Edinburgh way every other day at my girlfriends. So I might just take you up on the offer once this lovely snow shifts! I was thinking of hiring the canon out for a weekend and try it out doing landscapes and portraits. That's still in the pipeline at the moment.
 
At the moment I have both the Canon 17-50mm VC and the Canon 17-55mm IS.
The VC takes a fraction longer to settle down stabilisation wise and is a bit noisier but IQ wise I would be hard pressed to tell you which lens took which photo.
 
I've also owned both of these lens' at the same time having the Tamron non VC first. It was a superb lens but at the time I couldn't convince myself that it would be on par with the Canon 17-55 costing well over twice as much, so I bought one of those shortly after.

I sold the Tamron a few months later as it wasn't getting used and to be honest knowing what I do now, I wish I had just kept that.

The auto-focus on the Canon is slghtly better and much quieter than the whirring motor on the Tamron, but image quality wise I had to pixel peep to see much difference. With my copies of the two lens' I found there was a difference but it certainly wasn't as much as I expected. That difference might be crucial to some users but for what I do, it wasn't.

I'm downsizing my DSLR equipment later on this year and one of the first things I'm planning to do is sell my Canon 17-55 and pick up another Tamron 17-50.
 
Nifty-Fifty said:
I've also owned both of these lens' at the same time having the Tamron non VC first. It was a superb lens but at the time I couldn't convince myself that it would be on par with the Canon 17-55 costing well over twice as much, so I bought one of those shortly after.

I sold the Tamron a few months later as it wasn't getting used and to be honest knowing what I do now, I wish I had just kept that.

The auto-focus on the Canon is slghtly better and much quieter than the whirring motor on the Tamron, but image quality wise I had to pixel peep to see much difference. With my copies of the two lens' I found there was a difference but it certainly wasn't as much as I expected. That difference might be crucial to some users but for what I do, it wasn't.
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I couldn't have put it better myself. I went through the exact same process and came to almost the same conclusion.
I would add that i did love having IS, so the Tamron was going to have to go anyway, but if it hadnt been for that i would have kept the Tamron and sent the Canon back.
The Canon did become my low light lens, due to its IS. Being able to shoot down to around 1/4th mean i didn't have to keep changing to primes. Until i got the Canon i was using my 24-105L as my low light zoom, due to it having IS, but of course thats not ideal, so for me getting the Canon was the logical choice.
 
Motor noise is never going to bother me. It was mainly the IQ and the IS/VC, and even they don't bother me. I'm still on the look to upgrade to FF at the end of the year. So logic is telling me that the Tamron might be the smarter option to go for and save the extra £500 to go towards a Full frame body.
 
I used to use the Tamron 17-50 on a Canon 7D for concert photography. I was sick and tired of it hunting in poor light and regularly missing focus altogether. I replace it with a used Canon 17-55 and couldn't be happier. I wouldn't use Tamron for my purposes again.
 
Cheer's for the heads up about Low light, It's not my main issue, but always good to know if I took it to a gig.
 
John Mc said:
Cheer's for the heads up about Low light, It's not my main issue, but always good to know if I took it to a gig.
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As long as the musicians are well lit you shouldn't have many issues.
Although stages are normally dark there can be a surprising amount of light on the performers.
USM would be my first choice though.
 
I have heard good things about the Tamron 17-50(?) non VC version, especially in terms of image quality. The VC version gets mixed comments.
The one thing I have learned is if you want an excellent lens that will do everything very well, then go for the brand lens ( ie Canon with Canon ), once you use 3rd party lenses you accept that their will be a compromise, and the first compromise seems to always be focus time and focus ability in low light.

I still would seriously consider the Tamron though.
 
I have the Tamron 17-50 non VC. I feel it's an exceptional lens in terms of quality, but the focusing is extremely slow compared to my canon L lenses and the motor makes a lot of noise. Saying this its still the most used lens on my camera
 
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