Review by Klaus Schroiff, published August 2021

Introduction

For this amount of money, you can't expect professional-grade build quality. The chassis is made of average quality plastics based on a metal mount. The rubberized focus ring operates smoothly but there is a cheap feel to it. Surprisingly, the lens has some seals making it moisture resistant albeit there isn't a word about dust protection. While the length of the lens doesn't change during focusing, there's a moving inner lens tube. It isn't fully clear why Tamron designed the lens to be relatively long because this tube is quite deeply recessed by about 1.5cm. One aspect that differs from the 35mm f/2.8 is the petal-shaped lens hood - which in turn is the same as the one used for the Tamron 20mm f/2.8 Di III OSD M1:2.

The AF system uses a linear extension system. Typical for this focusing type, the AF speed is on the slow side but it's at least noiseless. The same can't be said about the aperture mechanism. When stopped down, you can hear that the camera is opening/closing the aperture during focusing operations. Once again, this has a cheap feel to it. As usual, manual focusing works "by-wire". A specialty of the lens is its close-focusing capability. It can focus down to a max object magnification of 1:2 (hence the M1:2 in the lens name). An image stabilizer has not been implemented which is hardly surprising given the price point.

Below is a family picture showing the 20mm f/2.8, 24mm f/2.8 and 35mm f/2.8.