This is the second in a mini series of short reviews to clear a backlog of lenses I’ve been using and reviewing. These have all been purchased at full price and I am under no pressure or inducement. I bouth this one at a great price from Cotswold Cameras who in addition to being very competitively priced were exemplary in their service. The lens arrived exactly on time and every stage of the process was outstanding.

For me, a 70-200/2.8 is a circle that can't be squared. For both landscape and woodland, I've always found a niche for a lens of 135mm + with an f2.8 aperture and a wish for a variable focal length and the weight penalty rules out a set of primes.

Size and weight is the price to pay for a fast Tele zoom. I've tried to balance this by using the 24-200mm most of the time but there are occasions when the look of the wider aperture is unique. I've owned a number of options over the years. 80-200/2.8, 70-200/2.8, 180/2.8, 135/2.8, 135/1.8, 100/2, 70-200/4.

I recently decided to give another alternative a go, namely the 70-180mm f2.8. This Z lens is, as is widely acknowledged, a Tamron design and may well be Tamron built. It gained decent reviews from the few online sources I have time for - Thom Hogan and Photography Life. Despite the budget price tag and design, I thought it might give the aperture, reach and weight saving at a sensible price tag.

The pictures with this mini review were made over a couple of hours on one morning. That's all it took for me to decide that I didn't like it. The various lens test graphs show it to be a reasonable performer but even looking through the EVF at 100% I felt there was something lacking. To some extent there was a lack of sharpness (or perhaps some micro contrast) but I didn't like the ‘look’ of the images produced. Despite the passing of at least 10 years of lens design, I much prefer the look of images made with the 70-200mm f2.8 VRii.

A lens which has had two significant updates and is over 10 years old still produces images that I find immeasurably preferable. If I want f2.8, for now I accept that I’ll have to carry a zoom of that kind of weight.

As can be seen from the ttached jpgs, this lens isn’t exactly soft and it certainly improves stopping down a little. However I’ve mostly included images and only judged it at f2.8 as if you’re not going to use it as f2.8, you might as well save the weight and carry the 70-200/4 or the 24-200mm. Both of these produce more pleasing images in my opinion. I’ve rarely disliked a lens quite this quickly and it took only a morning to formulate that view. By the end of the week, I’d sold it.