We mentioned a few days ago that Tamron may be announcing a new lens here this week and we were correct. Earlier today Tamron announced their latest edition to their lens lineup, the Tamron 150-600mm F/5-6.3 Di VC USD.

Tamron-SP-150-600mm-F5-6.3-Di-VC-USD-lens

The new lens has an insane range of 150mm to 600mm, on a crop sensor body like the Canon 7D or Nikon D7100 this lens would produce a field of view of essentially 233mm to 930mm. That is just plain nuts. Throw in that the lens has image stabilization, Tamron’s VC is one of the better implementations in my opinion, and the fact that this lens is a variable 5-6.3 aperture means less and less (especially if you are on a newer full frame body like the Canon 6D with their crazy good high ISO performance).

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When you start getting into the “Super Zoom” category like this you always have to wonder about the image quality. That will definitely be a concern for this lens, but that is something we will have to wait and see about one the lens is actually out in the wild.

Product highlights

  • 4x ultra-telephoto zoom lens with a focal length range of 150mm to 600mm
  • World class image quality
  • Achieves a 600mm focal length in a compact easy-to-handle package
  • Beautiful background blur effects
  • VC (Vibration Compensation) mechanism creates greater opportunities for sharper handheld photography
  • Comfortable autofocus
  • New elegant, high-class external finish
  • Easy-to-use tripod mount
  • Comes with “SILKYPIX Developer Studio for Tamron”, RAW image development processing software for Tamron’s SP lenses
  • 95mm Filter Size
  • 20 elements in 13 groups

tamron_70-300_vc_details

So who is this lens for?

I don’t know many professionals – or even advanced hobbyists – that would consider this lens an option for them. The variable aperture and huge zoom range are major turnoffs to most photographers in those categories. This lens is for the weekend warriors, the people who want increased range and don’t mind the aperture variations.

I can see this being a popular lens for bird and wildlife photographers who need to have lots of range and where depth of field is not so critical. This could also be a great lens for parents of kids who play daytime sports like baseball or softball. A lens like this would give you the range needed to shoot your kid out in the outfield.

No price or availability for the lens was released, so I guess we will need to wait and see when it drops. The current 200-500mm runs for about $1,000, so I would expect this lens to be in that neighborhood as well. If I had to guess I would say $1,200 or so.