Over a month ago I told you that the new Tamron 15-30 f/2.8 lens was the first lens designed by Tamron that is capable of resolving the future Sony (and Canon) FulL Frame 50 megapixel sensor resolution. It’s rumored that both Sony and Canon will launch those cameras this year. And starting from today the Tamron lens can be preordered for the first time for Sony A-mount at Adorama (Click here).
Now let’s hope it wont take to long until we get a proper A-mount camera to take advantage of that lens 🙂
115 Responses
… something is going toward announcement of a mirrorless A mount (longer flange=not astigmatic) 5axis IBIS 50mpx camera … ? It’s a joke, sorry.
Tamron must have ‘inside’ info that the A mount will continue, otherwise they wouldn’t even bother to offer this lens in A mount at all.
Sony owns Tamron with a smaller percentage. They would not be stressing this capability just like that. Finally good news for a-mount users.
We hope… Maybe we’ll see an a7rii (or whatever they’re calling it) and an a99ii double whammy?
no sony does not “own” parts of tamron.
but sony is a 11% shareholder.
Which means that they own part of Tamron. “Share is an indivisible unit of capital, expressing the ownership relationship between the company and the shareholder”
Thank you.
EXACTLY
The Return of The Alpha: MegaPixel War
It’s one of the few wars Sony can actually win. Don’t take that away from them!
for an old 24mp horse?
I really want the new Tamron SP set, but… I checked out both 24-70/2.8 and 70-200/2.8 Tammy SP’s for Canon in my local store, and they unfortunately focus in the opposite direction from Canon and Sony.
Can anyone verify what direction these new Tammy’s focus in for Sony? I really can’t have mismatched lenses in my kit, some focusing in different directions than others. That would drive me batty.
Tamron used to match the focus direction to the manufacturers OEM. Why not now?
The photo above looks like it focuses in the proper Alpha/Canon direction. The photo is probably for the Canon version, but hopefully it’s the same for A-Mount too.
This could be good!
It would be better to have 14-28 2.8 rather than 15-30 2.8…….in uww every mm counts and has a huge impact on perspective…..;) but gladly it has VC….VC is missing admin…;)
You know, VC is not provided for A-mount, just like always.
50MP!! Who really, but REALLY, needs that!! Are you concerned about printing sharp wall size pictures?! I can’t imagine shooting Raw with a 50MP camera, using many fast 64Go (even more, maybe) SD cards, facing from time to time storage issues. I already own a Nikon D800 and yet faced buffer issues when shooting sport or wildlife in continuous mode…
Do you even crop, bro?
50Mpx is awesome
http://r3.whistleout.com.au/public/images/articles/2014/09/SanDisk-Extreme-PRO-512GB-feature.jpg
You know you can always downsize the files in-camera, right?
You don’t suppose camera processors could have got more than 38% faster in the three years since the D800 has been around do you?
That’s likely a conservative estimate, perhaps closer to 100% – 200% faster.
Actually, Nikon itself only claims a 30% increase in speed between the Expeed 3 (used in the D800), and Expeed 4 (used in the D810).
If you combine this with an SRaw mode, combining 4 pixels into one (48MP camera), you could get several interesting combinations: 12MP high DR and S/N ratio mode, 32MP APSC-Crop-mode, 1/1 and 16/9 modes with high MP and full resolution for tripods and landscape.
Actually 8K output from an A7x when downscaled to 4K (if done as well as the A7S does to HD) would give us the perfect hybrid-camera. Beautiful stills output and crop-able 4K video for solo-event shooters. It’d be pretty close to 48mp and probably 5-10 years off.
I need it, if you don’t that’s ok too.
Of course 50MP+ is coming. Why do people think this is just talk? It may not be next week, but it certainly won’t be far off. I mean 8K is coming for goodness sake!
But watch it be 55MP…just to throw off Tamron’s 50MP marketing. Dang, falling just short.
A-mount?! WTF? Does this mean Sony is starting yet ANOTHER mount?!
No. This means there is a new FF a-mount camera coming this year. Most likely an a99 successor. 3-4 year cycle like Canon/Nikon.
Oh. I feel stupid now.
I guess I didnt realize there WAS an A-mount. I just looked up A99 and now I understand. That’s been hiding in the woodwork, huh? I’ve been shooting the A7 for almost 6 months now and that’s the first I’ve heard of A-mount.
Really??? I thought you were just being tongue in cheek with your original post!
No, I’m just living under a rock I guess. I had assumed “A-mount” was a joke! Now I read wikipedia and I see what I’ve been missing! OOps…
I thought you were just being sarcastic lol.
BTW “A-mount” is a joke :P.
It’s okay 🙂
I guess you’re new to the imaging world 😉
At least I don’t think you’re trolling with “what the heck is a-mount” because most people do that by thinking it’s dead 😉 hehe
And that is how effective Sony marketing has been….
What was confusing to me is I just assumed all Sony was E-mount. I mean… the A7 and A6000 is E-mount but the A99 is A-mount? WTF! haha Makes absolutely no sense at all…
It is / was a very odd move from sony to make the alpha-nex series just alpha e-mount and keeping the alpha a-mount it, well I guess bought from/with Minolta. The FS100 and FS700 are probably to blame for the rise of the e-mount because we discovered (the video bitches, people like me) you could mount practically anything on the e-mount. After a couple of pretty stupid but strangely interesting video attempts they jumped in with the FF. So yes it’s funny you didn’t know because the a-mount is ancient minolta tech and the e-mount, well it is nex / handycam territory 🙂
You lived in a cave during last 8 years? lol. Before 2012 you could quite easily stumble upon A-mount cameras, pretty much every major photography-related magazine and website got some reviews of either A-mount cameras or various different gear.
This whole E-mount focus from Sony begun pretty much in 2013. So you must be very new here if that’s the only thin you heard about from Sony.
Now do you see what A-Mount owners have been complaining about?
I’m surprised A-Mount is even capable of covering R&D costs, with such horrible marketing.
Yes, I understand now! I’ve never even seen anything A-mount. None of my local camera shops, Best Buy, Walmart, Costco, etc. But all have E-mount. So I guess i would absolutely livid if I were an A-mount customer. How can sony expect A-mount to survive and thrive if they dont market it or put it in stores?! Yea, that’s crazy. 🙁
Yep, now how about this.
Back in 2010 I bought A55 because i felt it was better than Canon or Nikon equivalents at the time. I sold it in 2012 and bought A65, which I still have today. In 2012 Sony had a complete SLT camera lineup – A37, A57, A65, A77 and A99
Then in 2013, Sony releases A58 with a plastic mount, with feature set that is more like A48, and then 2014, they discontinued A3x, A5x and A6x cameras altogether. Now with only A77II and A99 left, they are complaining about sales. As much as I hate to admit this, it looks like they are purposefully killing A-Mount. And the reason is unknown to most of us.
On a side note, here’s a list of all A and E mount Sony cameras. Some here are excellent old school DSLRs, such as A580, A700, A850 and A900.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Sony_Alpha_cameras
“I’m surprised A-Mount is even capable of covering R&D costs, with such horrible marketing.”
I’m pretty sure A mount is barely breaking even.
Only 2,187 A77II’s have been sold (whether body only, or with a version of the 18-135 or 16-50 kit lens) total from Amazon, worldwide as of today. During the same period, 23,839 Canon 7D (original version, 4+ years old) were sold. Just in the last 2 weeks, over 2,000 7DII’s have been ordered.
If that’s not pathetic, I dont know what is.
A-Mount is not dying. It’s already dead.
A-mount exist since Minolta AF, nothing new here
You’re all getting trolled so hard I’m wetting my pants.
Since the op seems to understand that another mount would be ridiculous, I’m assuming you’re right.
that claim about resolving is pretty much nonsense…..
Explain your opinion, thanks.
I’m not sure what 4567854 means but it might be that the “50 megapixel capable” is just a marketing buzz word because there are many lenses that can resolve a lot more. Go to the link and scroll about half way down the front page and you find a short article about resolving power of lenses called “High resolution sensors: are lenses up to the task?”
http://www.lenscore.org/
There is no standardized or traceable test to prove the statement “50 megapixel capable”
Plenty of lenses resolve APSC 24mp. Scale it to FF and you’ve got yourself 54mp.
Don’t see anything problematic here. Mount a lens on APSC camera and you’ve got yourself a 54mp FF resolution test for 2/3 of the frame.
Funny math you have there. Please explain your lens scaling voodoo.
24mpix APSC with 1.5x crop factor. Making it 1.5x vertical by 1.5x horizantal, which is 2.25x.
24×2.25 = 54
Don’t forget that it’s the area that you have to account for and not simply a 1.5x. No Voodoo here, just simple math.
It’s much more difficult to design lenses for larger formats and keep CA low, for example. Lens resolution depends strongly on aperture. Most FF lenses are not capable to resolve down to the pixel pitch of 24MP APSC sensors (at their time of construction 16MP was the average). The Zeiss Oti and 135 APO or some teles get close. http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml
Why don’t you grab an even more outdated article? This one talks about an ancient Canon 1Ds mkIII and some non-existent Sony 25mp sensor, which clearly was based on rumors before A900 came out.
My A-Mount converted Minolta MC 58/1.4 outresolves in the center, my APSC 24mp A65 at F4. Didn’t check corners though. Sure, every other aspect of this lens sucks, except for construction and wide arpeture, but this is a lens from 1968, and it was also considered not that good back then as well
Unfortunately you didn’t read it, right (at least you read the first sentences)? This article looks from a physical and theoretical point of view on resolution criteria independent of specific cameras. The tables show data of diffraction limited lenses (you can’t get better than this in reality). Every real lens is worse than this. It shows how your resolution depends on diffraction and therefore aperture. It is certainly possible that some lenses are able to outresolve lenses, especially at lower f-stops (theoretically you could have resolution for a 52MP sensor on APSC at f4 (diffraction limited at f4)). But no lens is perfect. How do you know, that yours is? Did you check it with details being projected on the sensor at a separation of the order of the pixel pitch? Look at Erwin Puts Leica compendium and read what resolution the very best Leica lenses are able to achieve. If they hardly achieve some of these numbers, I doubt the Minolta will.
Yes, I read the first bit and then glanced through the rest. The point that i’m trying to make is that if you don’t have something to test the resolution with, it’s all theoretical. Back in the days of 8 and 12mp sensors, we were talking about lenses not being able to resolve more than that. We have been proven wrong time and time again with 14mp, 16mp, 20mp, 24mp and 36mp sensors, and whatever else fell in between. Every resolution increase has shown us that a given lens resolves more than initially thought.
I never said my Minolta lens is perfect, in fact i said exactly the opposite, that it’s bad in every way, except construction, arpeture and resolution. This tells me that you didn’t read, or didn’t read right what I wrote.
You don’t need crazy mathematical formulas and testing rigs to figure out if a current lens outresolves the sensor at a given arpeture. All you need is a very fine detail, with a very high contrast, far enough but not too far. Then at 500% to 1000% magnification if you are able to see individual pixels, then the lens outresolves the sensor. If you see gradient like transition(mush) then its the other way around. My 70-300 Tamron does exactly that. At 70/4 it outresoves the sensor in the center. At 300/5.6 it’s the other way around.
The point is that i’m not testing exactly how many megapixels the lens is able to resolve, my tests conclude that either yes, it is able to resolve or no, it is not.
It’s quite possible what you see, F4 usually being a sweet spot of most lenses. My wish would be that lenses were able to show this behaviour wide open, too. At least getting to an effective 36MP at f1.4 or f1.8. But it is hard to get rid of CA and other errors. Some, do (Otus, 135/2 APO), but are very expensive. The good thing though is that the Zeiss document shows clearly that you benefit with higher resolution (to draw a picture, like a boat being raised with incoming flood), even when using lesser lenses. Personally, I would love to have a 48MP sensor with the ability for 12MP SRAW (4 pixel binning). You can decide according to the shooting situation whether to go with detail and huger files, or high pixel level S/N ratio. Have a nice day.
Now that i completely agree on. High resolution wide open would be very nice to have, although it’s uses would be very limited. 4 pixel binning would also be awesome for video, since that leaves you with 12mp 3:2, which is 10mp 16:9. Making it just right for 4k video after a very small crop.
Tamron give us the same for Sony E-Mount please! Why not in both mount?
Of course Zeiss zoom 16-35/f4.0. But 15-30/f2.8 is awesome!! Hm, …..
Get the adapter then. This is an SLR design. no luck getting E-mount dedicated lens design for now.
Tamron makes lens for Canon and Nikon, then makes the same lens for the Sony SLT. They just don’t have the technology to make the same lens for the mirrorless system.
It’s strange. All rumors said the new high megapixel camera will be an E-mount ???
This 50mp Capable doesn’t mean Sony has a 50mp camera. It just means it can resolve detail up to 50 megapixel. As this lens is also made for Canon and Nikon. As far as 50 megapixels goes, it will be by Canon. Not Sony. 🙂
Correct. And Nikon, using a Sony 50 MP sensor. But…like you said, not Sony.
Idiots.
Sony sensor in Canon body. Fixed that for You.
how many people use cameras beyond 24 mpix anyway. D800 and A7R users are a minority anyway. Now, concerning pixel pitch, 50 mpix on FF is eaqual to 25 mpix on apsc, and almost all lenses resolve 24 mpix aps-c without any problems.
That’s what people said about 5MP back on the day…
This will look great on my A99II by the end of the year. Serious glass for a serious camera. Start saving your pennies folks.
P.S. – The price is just icing on the cake. Sony 16-35mm F4 FE…what is that?
Sony Zeiss 16-35 2.8 M II whats that?!
😉
It’s 1 degrees away from perfection in what.
One day you’re complaining about A-mount and that you’re giving up, and the next you’re all happy again. Are you bi-polar? WTF.
Maaaaaybe………
WHAT??? do you mean e-mount is not serious????
Well said mate 🙂
What is A-mount?
It’s the camera mount Sony dropped on it’s head as a child.
In Hebrew, the letter A, or Aleph symbolizes air, thus nothing.
“Fluorine coating on the front element, Tamron’s first
Due to the large diameter and the prominent convex profile of the front element,it is not practical to deploy a protective filter. For the first time, a fluorine coating is applied to the front element, which repels water or any typeof dirt, while making it easier to remove such smudge when contaminated.”
Anybody have any thoughts on this?
Nope.
http://www.tamron.co.jp/lineup/a012/technology2/
Rain-X ?
“Fascinating background “bokeh” with the fast maximum aperture of F/2.8 “- Giggitty!
Trollin trollin trollin…keep that troll a postin. Postin postin postin…galore!
Don’t try to understand them…just troll em, roast em and brand them. Keep them trollin raw hide!
Picture samples:
http://www.tamron.co.jp/lineup/a012/technology3/
I am sorry but I am missing a point. Does this mean that every lens out there by Canon, Nikon, Sony, Pentax, Sony / Zeiss will not take advantage of the higher megapixel cameras coming? So being told that invest in your lenses first as they will last a life time is wrong. Where is the evidence that the likes of the Sony 16-35mm ZA and 24-70mm ZA or any of the G series will not work beyound 24 / 36 megapixels????? Comfused.com Si
All lenses will show improved performance (resolution) with a higher megapixel sensor.
I thought this I just think the post lacks clarity and is misleading. Si
Older designs won’t necessarily resolve that much detail, no. It doesn’t render them obsolete though. As for lenses lasting a lifetime, that was when lenses were purely mechanical. The lead-free solder used in the electronics of modern lenses won’t last that long. Most modern lenses have the ’10 year recycle’ mark printed on them.
I used the term lifetime losey but thanks for the clarification. The point I was trying to say is that I think that the title of the post was being a bit tabloid media’ish. I have read other reports about the Tamron and they do not take this stance. It is almost as if it was feel the frenzy rather than being factual. Si
Total MTF is lens_MTF * sensor_MTF, so as Soldier said, you gain at certain apertures. Nevertheless, most FF lenses aren’t made up to the MP size of 36 or higher MP. A nice article showing what is theoretically possible is http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml. Most newer APSC- or m43 lenses need to resolve higher to account for the smaller sensor size (lp/ph = lp/mm x sensor length) and accordingly often lower pixel pitch.
Thank you very much. Si
Have you ever heard something about “religion”. The trick is simple ……. believe. If you don’t you can’t get sanctified. The same was told once about conventional ancient glass with digital. for sure, some coating on modern lenses reduce flare and CA, but I would no change my Minolta glass for anything else, and, they cost between 25 and 100$ only on e-bay.
Now what about the camera that this lens is suppose to work with? Sony will short change the A-mount camera in comparison to the E-mount counterpart because Sony wants to distance itself from the Minolta mount. Sony will expect us to get an adapter to use this lens on their e-mount camera. I highly expect to see the higher mpix camera in the e- mount long before the A- mount. I don’t trust Sony to produce a great A mount any longer. I think they want it to fail just to be rid of it.
85% of Sony slaes are e-mount cameras. A-mount will soon disappear, so Tamron and Sigma are total idiots if they continue building a-mount lenses. There are, in exception of A99 and coming A99-2, and A77 no a-mount cameras on the market anymore. This marketing strategy from Tamron is totally stupid. Building such a good glass one can’t use on e-mount without adapter is senseless.
Because they make these lenses for Canon and Nikon and throw in A-Mount for good measure? These aren’t ‘designed for A-Mount’.
You think that Tamron and Sigma are idiots because you fail at logic.
Both companies release lenses for this mount which offers them most profit. There’s by far more A-mount photographers than E-mount. Sure, gap is shrinking, but it’ll take years for 3rd party manufacturers to become feasible designing high-end lenses like this one for E-mount or that matter: any mirrorless camera. Money is in DSLRs, whatever E-mount club wants to accept it or not.
All lenses resolve 50 mpix FF, what corresponds to 25 mpix APS-C. Now, ask all online users of 24 mpix APS-C cameras if, until now, they has any problems to get correct resolution on their shots. I use Minolta glass on 24 mpix APS-C and never missed one detail, some Minolta lenses are very close to such things like Touit and even Otus, or does anyone thinks that on a picture reduced to correct printing size, anyone will see a difference between both. Lenses can be soft or hard drawing, Otus are hard and sharp, while some elder lenses are soft and smooth, all depends here once more what your goals are. Too much sharpness is not always welcome ether. One can make a religion out of just anything anyway.
Pixel pitch is smaller on APSC. So lenses designed for FF cameras don’t necessarily resolve to the potential of the smaller sensor (lens dependent). Resolution is based on aperture and is reduced by aberrations, for example. Wide open or closed down you usually never get the potential out of the higher MP sensors, around f4-f5.6 you do. To “never miss one detai”l is highly subjective. How do you know it is a detail on the order of the pixel pitch on your image side projection? Nevertheless, high MP always improve the resolution figure since MTFs of sensor and lens are multiplied (see Zeiss MTF documents).
“So lenses designed for FF cameras don’t necessarily resolve to the potential of the smaller sensor” – that’s purely theoretical problem. In practice every single modern day lens designed for FF camera resolves more than enough details on APS-C, and actually: Full Frame lenses tend to be better on APS-C cameras than dedicated APS-C lenses are.
There are many discussions on this very topic. But most lenses don’t resolve as much as required for APSC 24MP sensors, for example, (pixel pitch of a 54MP FF sensor) at certain apertures. It is not true that they are better on APSC in general. Look at http://www.camerastuffreview.com or photozone.de and pick the 85/1.8g on DX and FF. Although you use only the central part of the frame the FF edges still provide better lp/ph than the same lens mounted on APSC in the center (the lp/mm is fixed on the 85mm lens. Total lp/ph is 1.5 times lp/mm. So to get better results you need to outresolve the FF sensor by crop-factor times maximum sensor resolution). Furthermore, the diffraction limit limits the resolution. The luminous-landscape article I cited on this forum discusses the maximum possible resolution of a lens at certain apertures. A lens can definitely outresolve a sensor, but this usually happens at certain apertures only (only few lenses have extremely low CAs, for example. If they are designed for this, they are expensive (Zeiss and Leica) ) and is easier for smaller formats. See the links http://www.graphic-fusion.com/fullframe.htm#resolution
http://collectiblend.com/Library/Leica_Lens_Compendium_Content.php
http://www.zeiss.com/content/dam/Photography/new/pdf/en/cln_archiv/cln31_en_web_special_mtf_02.pdf
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/resolution.shtml
So current lenses are not capable of 50MP?
I don’t get how the lens can affect the MP.
In this sense, it means how sharp the lens is, how many megapixels lens it can resolve. A 36 megapixel sensor is worthless if all you have is lenses that only resolve 8 out of 36 megapixels.
If only there was a Sony camera to put this on…
http://cs621820.vk.me/v621820055/9ec7/NvJdDv5VWVI.jpg
Hmm. The word rugged I’m assuming…probably doesn’t apply here.
They once made real photographers camera called a900, but that was it.
What was wrong with A850 and what is wrong with A99?
Use an adapter, you ought to be used to that with E-mount cameras, as Sony doesn’t want autofocus on third-party E-mount lenses, or just wait for an equivalent lens made by Overpreiss.
Worst case of shutter shock yet.
Zeiss 85mm Otus on Nikon D810. The Sony A7r resolves about 30% less.
Another comp
Well you said you had both, do some test shoots? Would be nice to see what it means IRL.
Numbers on a page man….numbers on a page. Got some comparison prints?
Looks delicious.
A single 50mp capable lens, when we really need 5 F2.8 36mp capable lenses. Did sony forget to send Tamron the memo again??