Product Review: Tamron 24-70mm

Hi, I'm Ian plant and right now I am traveling in the beautiful country of Ethiopia. I'm here to photograph this country's amazing landscapes and stunning wildlife. And one lens that always works its way into my camera bag is a versatile mid range zoom like a 24 to 70 millimeter zoom. This is a great lens it gives me a lot of versatility. It stands in between my ultra wide angle zoom lens and my short telephoto lenses.

And this is the lens that I reach for when I'm shooting a variety of wildlife landscapes and travel subjects. So it allows me to zoom out to 24 millimeter and capture wide angle landscapes, or to zoom in a little bit when I have close encounters with wildlife. What I really like about the 24 to 70 millimeter lens is that most of the lenses in this class have got a fast, bright, maximum aperture of F 2.8. This allows in a lot of light, meaning that the lens is really useful when you have to handhold, especially in low light situations. So this is the lens I reach for when I have close encounters with wildlife or when I'm shooting travel subjects, because I can shoot handheld and still get really sharp images.

Right now I'm shooting with Tamron second generation 24 to 70 millimeter lens, which I really like because it has vibration compensation, which stabilizes the lens when you're taking photos. So it's particularly useful when you're working in low light and you're hand holding and trying to get sharp photographs. So I can shoot at a slower shutter speed than I would otherwise be able to without the vibration control. So this is really useful for me because I like to shoot on the edge of light. I'm photographing my subjects at twilight sunrise and sunset when there's not a lot of light.

So that fast, maximum 2.8 aperture and the vibration compensation really allowed me to get sharp images, even in low light situation. One of my favorite subjects in Ethiopia are the Gelada monkeys. The Gelada is a really beautiful monkey species that has this thick golden mane of hair. That looks beautiful when it is backlit. They also have this remarkable red marking on their chest, making them a really compelling wildlife subject.

The geladas are very tolerant to people and I've been able to get close to them using my 24 to 70 millimeter lens to photograph sometimes even 24 millimeters. And this is really useful because I can go wide when there are amazing sunset or twilight clouds. And I use just a hint of fill flash to aluminate my subject against the sky. One of Ethiopia's managed fractions is the Erta Ale volcano, which is an active lava Lake, which has magma churning down below, occasional explosions of magma into the air. It's a really fantastic thing to see, and it's best to photograph it at night.

That's where that fast F 2.8 aperture really comes in handy. It gives you a lot of options for shooting with shorter shutter speeds, and that allows you to capture the beauty of this amazing sight. So I recommend that you have a mid range zoom lens like a 24 to 70 millimeter F 2.8 lens in your bag at all times. It is a fantastically versatile lens that allows you to photograph a variety of different types of subjects. I'm Ian Plant and thanks for watching.