Tamron EF 100-400mm Lens Review

Pros:

  1. Price vs performance

  2. Well built metal lens

  3. Weather sealed

  4. Lightweight (relatively)

  5. Sharp at all focal lengths

  6. Compatible with Tamron Tap in console for firmware upgrades and adjustment to lens

  7. Decent VC / IS (vibration compensation / image stabilization)

Things to keep in mind

  1. If you want the ultimate lens in this focal length, the Canon EF 100-400mm or RF 100-500mm are the ones to get though at a significant premium price and a slight increase in weight

  2. Future compatibility with mirrorless camera models

  3. I had to adjust the VC to shutter priority, and the Limiter switch to 8 feet to one notch below infinity otherwise lens was hunting a lot. This is mainly with mirrorless camera. With DSLR it behaves well.

  4. I had to switch-off in camera corrections such as DLO, peripheral illumination, CA, etc. Even in C-raw file, there seems to be loss of fine resolution when these in camera corrections are switched-on. Observed this on both cameras I own i.e. EOS-M6 and EOS RP) . This is mainly with mirrorless camera. With DSLR it behaves well.

  5. Using my default Canon RAW editor DPP4 wouldn't bring out as much resolution in fine details. I guess due to missing DLO. DXO Photolab 4 did an excellent job to bring the fine details