My journey to decide and buy a 70-200mm f2.8 lens for my Sony A73 has been interesting!
From the start, I had to discount the Sony versions: their GM 70-200mm f2.8 lens lists an eye-watering recommended retail price of SGD3,899. That’s a monstrous sum of money to pay, and remarkably higher than the Nikon and Canon equivalents too. Sony of course also offers the 70-200mm f4.0 – the fourth in the series of standard focal length f4.0 zooms (e.g. 16-35mm, 24-70mm, 24-105mm) – at the more respectable price of SGD2,099. But it was still quite a bit of money to pay for a f4.0 lens. And when you’re shooting at long focal lengths, every bit of additional light advantage helps.
So, unless I strike a lottery before we head out to Bali, first party lenses from Sony were out solely on cost. Third party adapted lenses then, and specifically those for the Canon EF mount that I can use with the Sigma MC-11 adapter. After a lot of the usual checking around on the A73 enthusiast sites, DPReview, FredMiranda and YouTube, I had my list of Canon EF mount lenses that should work with the MC-11. These included the two Canon EF 70-200mm f/2.8L (the earlier generation one listed at SGD2,259 here in Singapore), the Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG HSM (around SGD2,388 here), and three generations of Tamrons: Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 Di LD (IF) Macro (out of production I think), Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 SP Di VC USD (superseded by its newer brother, but there are still plenty of new stock around that’s being cleared), and finally the Tamron SP 70-200mm f/2.8 Di VC USD G2. The Tamron is reputed to work quite well with the MC-11, and there was a fairly significant price difference between the second and third generation lens without huge differences. So, the second generation Tamron it will be then.
I got the Tamron 70-200mm f/2.8 SP Di VC USD at a crazy bargain. How so? Here’s the initial list of prices I put together with delivery:
Local retail price with five year manufacturer’s support: SGD1,888
Local retail price with one year seller’s support: SGD1,699
Lazada: international seller with one year international seller’s support: SGD1,235
Amazon: SGD1,204 – does not ship to Singapore though
TecoBuy: SGD1,199 – international seller support.
The Hong Kong-based reseller, TecoBuy, was offering the lowest price I found initially. So I placed an order for it. Unfortunately, the experience with this reseller thereafter was anything but pleasant. After the promised order turnaround of five days to shipping passed with nothing happening, I wrote TecoBuy requesting an update, only to be told then that the item was actually out of stock (?!?! but your item lists says it’s available). But the reseller assured that stock should be arriving the next week. So, I inquired again one week later. And this time, the reseller tells me it’s still not arrived and now they do not have firm dates on when it’ll come.
That was just unacceptable by any reasonable measure. A reseller who lists an item as ‘available’, confirms a placed order and deducts payment when the item actually isn’t available is terrifically irresponsible – and I told them so again. TecoBuy promptly cancelled my order and refunded the amount. I was back to square one with two weeks wasted. Interestingly, that item has since disappeared from their web site so that no other potential buyers can be similarly misled. I guess all my complaining did indeed result in some good!
More searching resulted, and that’s when I stumbled on a Taiwan-based eBay reseller that was offering the item for SGD925. Easily the new cheapest listed price I’ve found for the item. In comparison, the lowest listed price for local support would be SGD1,699 – a whopping SGD774 difference. No contest at all. At these price savings, I’ll happily accept the risk of challenges for warranty support if it comes to that later. Interestingly, about a week after my parcel from this eBay reseller was sent on its way, the seller revised the price of their remaining stock to SGD1,330.
How this lens arrived here is also not entirely incident-free, though also less dramatic than my experience with TecoBuy. The lens was ordered on 7 May, arrived in Singapore with delivery scheduled for 12 May. The delivery attempt was unsuccessful, but SpeedPost neglected to leave a missed delivery advisory – so I had no clue where the item was. After some checking around, I found where it was, and finally collected the lens on 16 May.
The two (mis)adventures aside, my first out of the box initial impression is great. This is also my first Tamron lens, and I had to read up to understand its abbreviation-choked name. According the company’s Wiki entry:
SP – ‘Super Performance’, professional lenses
DI – ‘Digitally Integrated’, featuring coating optimized for digital SLRs
VC – ‘Vibration Compensation’ – in-lens image stabilization
USD – ‘Ultrasonic Silent Drive’
The lens is dense and exterior feels cool to the touch. The lens does not extend when zooming in and out, so its physical length stays constant. The zoom ring offers suitable resistance, and a short twist will result in focal length change from 70 to 200mm.
On the other hand, the placement of the focusing ring is problematic. Not only is it rather far off from where you’ll likely hand-hold the lens, the relative positions of the focusing ring and zoom ring are the opposite of Sony FE lenses. The first couple of times I tried the lens, I accidentally kept turning the focus ring and not the zoom ring I intended. Oddly too, the Sigma MC-11 adapter did not correctly work with the lens on the first try. But a quick dismount and remount of the lens and adapter, the problem went away on its own and hasn’t resurfaced again.
I reckon I’m also a little spoiled by the reach I get on the Olympus 40-150mm f2.8. Compared to this Tamron and the standard 70-200mm f2.8s on full-frames, the Olympus is a little less wide i.e. 80mm @ 35mm focal length equivalent but reaches significantly more on the long end i.e. 300mm vs 200mm. The Olympus 40-150mm is feather-light @ 880g compared to this Tamron @ 1,470g. And notwithstanding that physically length-wise, the Tamron with the MC-11 is also 216mm from mount to the front compared to the Olympus’ 160mm.
Not all the AF modes are available on this Tamron when coupled with the A73: just Wide-AF/Center-AF/Spot-AF/Eye-
Pictures!
In all, the Tamron SP 70-200MM F/2.8 DI VC USD +MC-11 on the A73 isn’t a perfect combo. It’s obviously soft corner-wise when wide-open at the longest focal length, and a couple of AF-modes are missing for users who want the full experience. The girth and weight of a f2.8 telephoto zoom lens is also something that will take some serious getting used to, especially coming out of my fairly long stay with m4/3s. Still, I guess I can’t complain too much considering the price I paid for this Tamron – almost half what I’d pay if I’d bought if off the shelf here.
That concludes this series of posts on the first six lenses I picked up for the Sony A73. There’s a seventh lens coming in a week or so: a crazily inexpensive Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6 DG Macro which I’ll also try adapting with the MC-11! The other posts in this series:
Tamron 70-200mm f2.8
Hi Dr Foo!!! How are you? Sam here! :D I just got a A7M3 body at Comex 2019 just yesterday (cuz i didnt want to pay extra for kit lens lol) Browsing the webs on whether i should get the Sigma MC-11 or Metabones V then I saw your domain name! :D If you can vouch for the MC-11, I will purchase it soon as i’m on a tight budget hehe.
Hi Samuel! Yep – the MC-11 works quite well on my Tamron 70-200mm f2.8 – but that’s the only Canon lens I’ve used the MC-11 on. There’s a bunch of videos and also a lot of discussion online regarding how well the MC-11 works with various Canon EF mount lenses though, so you should check those out.
One point of consideration: if you’re getting the MC-11 specifically to work with the Tamron 70-200mm f2.8, you might want to hang-tight then: because Tamron has been going all out to produce a range of affordable native Sony FE lenses. They’ve already put out the 17-28mm f2.8 and the 28-75mm f2.8; and there’s also a rumored 70-200mm f2.8 in the works too.
Ooooooo I’m intending to use Canon lenses with the MC-11 too, watching alot of videos on these adapters haha. Will check out the Tamron options too :D Thank you!!
That’s great! Now that Canon has got its own mirrorless mount, there’s been a lot of buying and selling of pre-loved Canon EF mount lenses on ClubSnap. You just missed Amazon’s accidental discount on the Sony FE 85mm f1.8 lens too just a few days ago. They apparently incorrectly tagged a USD550+ lens to USD250, and a lot of people all placed orders for them.
I was hoping to acquire the Canon 24-70 f2.8 lens one day, hopefully a good deal on Clubsnap will comeby but not so soon. Got lots to save up for haha. I’m never lucky in ordering accidentally priced items, I always find out about them too late :/
Ah; if you’re seriously looking into the 24-70mm f2.8 range and don’t want to fork out the money for the Sony FE version, then take a serious look at this one:
https://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews/Tamron-28-75mm-f-2.8-Di-III-RXD-Lens.aspx
It costs a fraction of what you’d pay for the Sony FE version, and it’s a native-mount lens. I doubt even used copies of a non-native lens like the Canon L is going to be anywhere near the Tamron’s asking price. I don’t have one, as I prefer a longer reach (I have the Sony FE 24-105mm instead), but if I was looking for a standard 24-70mm f2.8 zoom here and now, the Tamron is what I’d get.