Fujifilm recently included Tamron in a round table X Talk and it was a very cordial talk. I wish they would include official subtitles because translation is a bit of a mess, but it was an interesting talk all around. Below is a summary of the talk.
- Tamron was invited to talk about the 18-300mm development
- The 18-300mm has surprisingly good optical performance
- Equipment diversity is an advantage
- You used to buy a lens for life but that has changed with digital
- Lenses development during the digital age can benefit from a lot of design tweaks
- It’s getting harder to sell lenses that do not stand out
- You used to spend 10 years designing a lens
- The 18mm 15cm focus distance could have been 5cm but you end up hitting the lens a lot which would require a lens filter to protect the lens
- The 18-300mm is the first time Tamron designed for multiple mirrorless mounts
- If you do not modify your lens design for digital mirrorless then you cannot achieve 100% performance
- Tamron plans to develop 3 lenses for mirrorless cameras, standard, telephoto zoom, and wide-angle zoom
- There is a lot of hope from users
- When you change your lens colors change, and bokeh changes
- It’s often said Fujifilm X mount is a closed mount and it kind of was in the beginning, but that is not the case today X mount is wide open
- Since Fujifilm opened its mount they are enjoying the collaboration in a neighborly way
Currently, Tamron makes 2 APS-C lenses for E-mount in addition to the Tamron 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD super zoom so we can speculate that this might be 2 of the lenses Tamron is talking about and both are solid from my experience with them. Both lenses are around $800 USD.
- Tamron 11-20mm f/2.8 DI III-A RXD (Wide Zoom)
- Tamron 17-70mm f/ 2.8 Di III-A VC RXD (Standard Zoom)
- Telephoto Zoom?
Tamron 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD:
B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
