sharp, especially stopped down to F5.6 and below, not heavy, vignetting and distortions reasonably contolled

Ghosting !!!

The biggest problem with this lens is its extremely bad ghost performance. If you put the sun (or a bright source of light)in your picture you get extremely nasty orange rings in your picture. This happens from 17-24 mm and it even doesn't stop if you stop down to F16 or F22. I take a lot of pictures of landscapes and at 17mm I often can't avoid to have the sun in the image, so the lens is useless for me and I will return it to the dealer to get back my money. Apart from this disappointment the lens is ok, sharpness and contrast are a bit soft wide open but the lens gets quite sharp at F5.6 and below. As I rarely do architecture shots I don't bother too much about distortions, but even at 17mm distortions are no problem for landscape shots. Vignetting is not too bad wide open, it seems to be reasonably controlled. As the Tamron is by far cheaper than the Nikkor AF-S 17-35, I think the built quality is ok, but you might object the heavy use of plastics for the lens barrel and especially the filter thread.

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Similar Products Used:

Nikon AF-D 18mm, Nikon AiS 18mm, Tokina SL 17mm, Tamron SP 24-135mm