Tamron 100-400mm VC | Autofocus and Tracking Review | 4K 

Thank you very much for the informative review. I really appreciate the content you provide on your channel. Keep up the great work.

Seriously Dustin. Please stop giving such great reviews. I keep buying new lenses! JK. I truly appreciate your videos. The most thorough, well thought out, and professional gear reviews on youtube. Thank you!!!

Great review. Always enjoy listening to your reviews. I recently purchased this lenses Tamron 100-400mm and I just love it!!! Thank you!

Thank you for this review, cant wait for the final verdict. This help me so much. Thank you sir.

It's amazing for us here on youtube to get a detailed review for free. You did a great job, mister. When I buy one of these longer lenses, this one will be on my list for sure.

Just what I wanted to know!! Thank you for your review!

Great review thanks for your time and effort 👍

Dustin, your reviews are amazing! Thank you for sharing all your information!

you just earned a sub! great review, that's what I wanna see!

Thank you for another great review. That's my next lens :)

Can’t wait to try it on my new 6D mark II my first full frame thanks for this great review Dustin!!!

thank you for reviewing!

Thank you so much for this review Dustin. I have been looking at this lens since it's announcement, I was really disappointed when the AF tracking of the Sigma didn't live up to scratch, but now it looks as tho I will be investing in the Tamron, as it would be ideal for the amount of Wildlife / Birding that I do each year.

Very helpful and intuitive review. Thanks.

Great review, as always.

Dustin, I was ready to make the jump to buy the Canon but then I heard Tamron announce this lens. I have been waiting to see some reviews of this and was so glad you are doing these. Everything you have shown makes me glad I waited and didn't buy the Canon version. As a hobbyist I just can't justify the price Canon demands so to see this doing so well in your tests I am very impressed. Thanks for all your testing and thoroughness!

Been checking up in your channel since the unveiling of this lens just waiting for your coverage. I'm thinking about getting myself a setup mostly for bird-id shots when I'm out in the field. Seeing that this bested the sigma in terms of autofocus has probably made my mind up of what to get. Thanks!

I’ve been looking for a lens to help me get more into wildlife photography, and have been going back and forth between this and the Sigma. Your reviews, and the lack of a tripod collar convinced me to go with the Tamron. Thank you for your in depth analysis.

Thank you Dustin.

What a nice review. Great job as always. With your didactic skills you should do videos about photography techniques as well.

Great Review !

Top quality review as usual. KBO.

Thanks for the comprehensive test! The AF of this lens is quite decent!

Terrific review job....

Thanks Dustin for the great review. I am seriously thinking to buy one. regards Arindom Bora

was waiting for that AF review... relieved now.. :). thanks... If I'm getting a 100-400, this one would be it.

Ok, now I'll need to start saving again. Thanks for you'r reviews

As always nice and clear

Dustin, its been 3 months I have purchased this lens and its an awesome lens.

Thanks for AF breakdown. Ordered this to capture herds moving at SD safari park. Love rhino moms & babies moving around.

Just such a great channel. Even if I am not really interessted in such lenses (love my 300mm 4L IS), I love to follow you channel to keep upt with the development. Great Reviews! Can't believe how professionally you do it. Cheers, STefan

Hey Dustin, love your vids, imo you're one of the more professionnal reviewer out there. Question for you: In terms of focus tracking, is it the camera doing most of the work, or is it the lens doing the heavy lifting? I was wondering because I have a Canon 6D and always thought that its focus tracking system was bottlenecking that of my Tamron 70-200 G2.. Thanks in advance for the info! Cheers from Montreal

THANKS FOR DOING VIDEO with focus on AF, tracking etc, thanks alot. Any plans for Tamron 70-210 and comparing with Tamron 70-200 G2?

Great video as always, was wondering what you thought of the sharpness of images that this lens produces on a crop body, was it holding up strong? And if so would you recommend this lens to be used on a crop body maybe for some wildlife work? Thank you for the great work as always.

Excellent stuff. Despite owning the Nikkor 70 - 200 f2.8 and 200 - 500 f5.6, I could really see me adding this lens. It's relatively light and compact but seems to give up little in terms of performance.

Thanks again for a nice review. I preordered a copy after your last review on this lens. This confirms I made a good decision by adding to my collection. I am a big Tamron fan.

Hey Dustin, thanks for the detailed review! Noticed on your site that you had a play with this lens on an a6500 with the MC-11 adapter - how did the AF hold up?

Thank you for this great review! Excellent AF performance of this lens. Do you think that the Tamron 70-200 G2 has a similar AF tracking performance?

Hello Dustin, I really like your reviews as you are a great speaker and very well knowledged camera guy. I wish I had half your smarts, ha. I like all 3 of the 100-400mm lenses, the Canon, the Sigma and the Tamron. But I just want to say that I kind of thought the Tamron out performed the Canon on the dog and ball focus review. And I remember the test you did with the Sigma and Canon on the old building as the Sigma's image quality WAS better than the Canon. Wow, I were really impressed. Great test's Dustin.

Excellent videos of the 18-400 mm! I really enjoyed them. Any chance that you can do a comparison to the Tamron 16-300 mm in your summary video or maybe a separate video. Would you upgrade from the 16-300 mm to the 18-400 mm if you owned the former? And what are the pro’s and con’s of these two siblings when using the lenses for shooting wildlife and landscape photography when using them as a travel lens?

Hi Dustin, many thanks for the great review, how would you compare the 100-400 to the 150-600 G2 in terms of build quality?

A category for this focal usually neglected is school graduations in low light. I luckily guessed correctly when I took with me the 80-400 (which I returned for other reasons), and one would be surprised at how important it is to have FAST and RELIABLE autofocus and VR in such events. Your kid walks by rather quickly, light is low, no second chances. You can get many pics at a sport/bird event, but not at graduations - that's where you have one and only chance.

I hope the consumer copies that go out are just as good as the hand picked test lenses you guys receive. This is looking like the birder's lens the the Sigma should have been. Having the option of the collar makes this a winner. Thanks for the test.

As always a great review! I'm seriously thinking about buying this lens and I have two questions about it: 1. Would you say that the build quality of this lens is as good as the lenses in Tamron's SP-line? (I own the 45mm SP) 2. Did you test this lens with the 1.4x Tamron extender and, if yes, how did the AF behave? Keep up the good work!

Wow, so promising. Thank You Dustin.. I'll be buying through your links if I can... Marty from Oz..

Love this review, very thorough and quite what I was looking for for my hobby. I purchased this lens just over a week ago after seeing this review and I must say the copy of my lens is very disappointing. Went to a Pelican Sanctuary and after close to 1000 shots, am certain of the fact that the lens doesn't focus well at all, both for still photos and birds in flight. The AF is really bad even in good daylight and 95% of my images are blurry. I double checked the focus points in DPP and determined I got around 80% of the AF focus correct, but the images suck. I tried AF Adjustment, but somehow that didn't improve, so am guessing the lens is the problem. Just dropped it in the service centre and hopefully Tamron fixes my lens.

Hi Dustin great review, thanks for posting. I am a motorsport shooter as media and weird it could sound I use Pentax as I started buying and getting Pentax Stuff. I do shoot at my local racetrack (Circuit de Catalunya) and rallyes from the WRC season with a K3 + Sigma 100-300mm F4 lens mainly and then I have some other lenses to do paddock and stuff (various Pentax 50mm, the wonderful 50-135mm f2.8, the DA 200mm f2.8 and also the Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 all for Pentax). I did the F1 Belgian Grand Prix a month and a half ago and I did strugled a bit with my combo as F1 cars there are very really fast going so AF was a bit too slow for them. The thing here is I've been told from a pro with decades of experience there to switch to Canon and I almost did. He did suggested getting an 80D and the Canon L 35-350mm. I did bought a 2nd hand 50D and a lens he suggested me, the 20-25 years old Canon L 35-350mm without stabilization, and I have to say I like the lens because of the range and the zoom way but it lacks stabilization. I must admint the 50D + 50mm f1.8 did a great job at the pitlane at night on a 24h race I've been and also last weekend on the grid taking images of the drivers sitting in their cars. The thing here i really liked was the AF speed and how easy it was to track the action compared to what I am used to with Pentax. Anyways I didn't liked the colours it produced (the Canon I mean) and non having stabilization was very bad at trying to pan very low shutter speeds (sorry to say those brands should use a mechanical stabilizator in their bodies). I've been checking now for a while different options in the Canon and Nikon world and to me the Nikon d7200 seems at the same price range, a better option than the Canon 80D (would love to hear your opinion) and I was looking for a lens with that kind of range 100-400mm is just awesome at the racetrack so I was thinking maybe a d7200 + Tamron 100-400mm VC would make the job easier and better but the non constant AF is something i dislike and I wanted to ask you about your thoughts about that. I don't need the Tamron/Sigma 150-600mm at all, it's too big, too heavy and really I believe I do not need the extra reach but this 100-400mm looks like a superb option combined with a 50mm and/or a 17-50mm lens. Can you please give me some help? I am even thinking that maybe I can keep my K3 + 50-135mm lens and the 200mm lens for paddock work tho. Thanks again,

Tank you dustin

Great video! Love the Lens when I saw it first time BTW,Is this 4K video took by 5D4？how doyou deal with the large file size,Thk !

Fine review, as the rest !

Hey Dustin ! Awesome review ,..as usually :) Tamron is a promising glass ! However ,.. I use manual focus/w tripod only and watching your Canon /Sigma and Canon/Tamron comparisons was wondering if the Sigma would actually offer a better IQ ... Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Great review! I was about to order a sigma 100-400 today when i realized that there is one lens from Tamron too! Which of them has the best image quality in APS-C sensor (I own a Nikon D5500)? People are very impressed by Sigma's IQ in every review i read. My main usage will be landscape photography(80%) and airshows (20%). How was the OS between 1/50s and 1/100s at 400mm? I tend towards Sigma because of its excellent IQ and because i own the Sigma 150-600mm lens which performs very well.

Just a request could you do a APS-C and FF performance comparison of this lens like you did with Sigma 100-400mm lens in past? That would certainly be helpful for crop shooters.

Thanks for the review ! I know that at some point you also owned an M3...did you by any chance, try it on there as well ? I’m really curious about its AF speed and ability on there. Because I love to go on hikes and would like a relative small lens, with more reach then my 18-150, to shoot birds and or wildlife (if there even is any ;))

Great review as always! Did I see a Nikon body in the background? I hope I was right.......

Very good review, maybe one tip to show shooting information in the corner of the pictures next time, so we can see what the seetings were, when taking the pictures. Thanks!

Hi Dustin. What I would really like to know about this lens is, between this and the Tamron 150-600mm, which has the best imagine quality at 400mm? I own the Tamron 150-600mm G1 and I only really use it for it's long reach, so wondering whether it's worth changing to then 100-400. I'd also like to know how it fairs in low light. Thanks for all the great videos you do. I reply on them!

At 9:35 wouldn't that be dependent on your AF Servo tracking speed/sensitivity setting in camera? I know it would be a very tedious process, but it would be good to see if using these continous AF settings in the camera can actually overcome some of the problems we see with the tracking using default settings. As I own the 80D I know it has a focus priority setting which prevents the shot from being taken until there is an object fully in focus, and then there is the tracking sensitivity. Thanks for testing this on the 80D by the way!

Thanks for the videos, great one. I am shooting Tamron 70-300 VC . Is It a big difference between them. Which one is sharper ? I shoot sports , do you think its a good decisión to move to this 100-400 ? Thanks very much. I Have a crop camera , Nikon D500

After a yr ownership love to take my Tamron to SanDiego Safari Park to capture wildlife moving around.

Thanks Dustin. I'm surprised you didn't get better tracking results with the Canon and your dog. How many active focus points did you select? Was your camera set to focus priority or speed in the AF menu?. Cheers

Sir wich will be better 70-210 f4 or 100-400 f4.5-6.3 in terms of optical performance.I use canon 80D. please let me know.Thank you!

Any chance you tried it with an extender? I'm liking what I see from this lens for the price. The biggest question is whether or not it's worth Canon's premium to get the ability to use 27pts with the 1.4xIII extender on my 80D. Tough decisions! Thanks for another great in-depth review.

Hi Dustin I have the Tamron 18-400 which is a very good lens just wondering if the Tamron 100-400 is better in image quality at the 400 end? I mainly shoot birds and wildlife Cheers David

I have been going thru your tests and find them so informative and would like to know your thoughts. I have a Canon M50 with a Canon adapter and would like to know which of the 100-400 ĺens Sigma, Tamron or Canon I will be photograph aircraft and birds and genersl stuff hope you can help me stay safe and please take care

Dustin! Now in 2021, for an Canon EOS R, which one do you recommend? Sigma 100-400 or Tamron 100-400?

Would you say that this lens works well with the canon 80D for wildlife shooting? thanks

great AF & Tracking tests with the cute dog, & your handsome son ! btw, i acquired the Canon EF 85mm f/1.4 L IS USM yesterday ; it is sharp-sharp ; AF speed is good, improved over 85/1.2L, but as expected, still not super-quick as the 100-400L II or 70-200 II etc. The AF motor makes noise while focusing, which i hate.

. To be hounest i think this lense is good deal with this price . Tanks for give us this informathiom🍷🌹

Thanks Dunstan for this review. Now I am looking more at the Tamron 100 to 400. I shoot birds is flight so focus accuracy and speed are paramount. You did not specify what if any focus point number and pattern you used in your action test. I am shooting with a Canon 90D and use the nine point centre cluster points for birds in flight at 10fr/sec. I have two other Tamron the lenses, a 90mm macro and the 18 to 400.

Dustin , did you compare the up close focus distance?

Hi Dustin, how will the Tamron 100-400 perform on Sony body.. any ideas??

Any test on with RF converter For EOS R what you recomend a canon 70 300 USM ii -- or this one ??

I just asked Santa for one, planning to use it (for now) on the 80D and for cars (motorsport, panning mostly). I hope it was the right decision.

Thanks for your work first of all. I am Korean so I can not understand your language fully. So I leave my question here. If you read my Q. please answer me Which one is better than the other in respect of image stabilization among sigma 100-400 & tamron 100-400?

All I can say about Tamron lenses is this (based on my experience). The AF can be snappy, but it can be frustrating at times. In some cases (with my 70-200 G2 lens) it would focus fine (let's say I'm shooting a test target) and for no reason out of 2/10 shots let's say, it would refuse to focus or took longer to acquire focus (nothing changed as I was in doors and on a tripod shooting a test target). I've seen this happen on about 3 copies of the 100-400 as well. Not a bad lens, but one must keep in mind while they are saving a bit of money over the competition (in this case let's say the Nikon 200-500 or Canon 100-400) they are forgoing the AF consistency that comes with a perhaps more expensive lens). If you can live with that, the tamrons can be great bargain lenses. But if you need a lens that can nail focus every time, then I would look elsewhere. I'm still planning on getting this lens but it's something I've noticed. The AF may be fast, but it tends to "hiccup" from time to time, and this is across many Tamron lenses I've shot with over the years.

100-400 f/4.5-5.6 or f/4.5-6.3 ? I heard f/5.6 in the initial part of this video

Hi Dustin, I appriciate your views on Lense and I find them very useful. I'm from India and wanting to buy one telephoto lens for Canon body under budget. Since following lenses cost almost the same in India, I'm now confused between Sigma 150-600mm and this Tamron 100-400mm. Could you please please compare them and let us know which one is better in terms of Image quality and Auto focus tracking? It would mean a lot to me personally... Thank You!

Darn! While I still need to spend time in calibrating my Sigma, I'm wondering if I should just sell it and buy the Tamron instead.

I want to go to a few air shows in California. I have a Canon 7D Mark II and I can use either the Tamron 70-200 f/2.8 or the Tamron 100-400 f/4.5-6.3. I like the additional reach of the 100-400. Will it keep up with focus tracking? Should I select a single focus point or a cluster? I'm thinking a cluster since I'm shooting planes against a sky background. Also, since the planes will be coming from different directions, I'm thinking of hand holding. I will be practicing bird tracking leading up to the air show events to perfect my panning skills. Lastly, I know this YT is 15 months old, I'm wondering if you are still getting these comments, or responding. SETTINGS - AI Servo, Continuous Shooting, Shutter priority for jets (1/2500 sec), Aperture priority for prop planes (1/60 sec).

You say, at the very beginning of the review, this is an f/4.5 - 5.6 lens.. oops! Thanks for the review. Are you going to mention the VC as well?

I realise this does not have reach of a 600mm but would this be suitable for airshows ? fast jets etc ? apologies if stupid question

Hm, I'm also considering between this one and sigma, and although everyone says IS and AF are worse on sigma, I'm still intuitively leaning towards it.. Maybe since tamron's colours look a bit washed out to me..

On a price/performance ratio it seems like the Tamron is clearly a winner. Maybe Canon is slightly better in some areas, but does the performance justify the massive price difference?

Comments are made 1 year ago but because of this video I bought this lense. The lense is just 3months old with me and im having a problem with it. The lense just won't focus anymore. Any help? Tnx.😭

Hello iam from nepal Which camera is the best camera for tamront 100-400 lense

Would this be good for motorsport photography?

You said this lens is a 4.5 to a 5.6 (instead of 6.3) at the beginning of this video, just wanted to let you know....

Thanks... Which one I have to get... Tamron or sigma 100-400.. In my home I found sigma and there is no tamron 100-400..

Waiting for that 10 - 600mm lol. Hey i can dream

How would this lens perform on an EOS RP..?

Lol, Put the video at 1.5x speed and it sounds awesome. English is my 2nd Language but cant stand that very slow and chewing talking. Great Review btw. The Canon is out of my League. But the Tamron looks Great, its 1/3 of the Canon in my Country too... Currently rocking a Tamron 70-300 VC USD

What about that Nikon on your table?? 😏 Nice review as always by the way 🙂👌

i wonder how good is the sony 100-400 gm compared to this

is it a full frame lens? or a apsc

Is the autofocus fast for flying birds?

Somehow this lens must function differently depending on whether it's a Canon or Nikon mount. On my D500, focus accuracy is unacceptable as soon as I zoom out further than 200mm. Past that it's slow to focus, hunts all the time and even when it says it's locked in, it misses a lot. And no, that's not a tweaking issue. I've spent hours calibrating it with the console, just like my other tamron glass (which focusses fine after that), but with this one the problems remain. Got myself a 300pf instead yesterday - absolute day and night sort of difference. The prime cropped to 400mm is about as sharp as the Tamron when zoomed all the way, but the focus performance isn't even close. I tried the Tamron for hours over a period of several months now because I really wanted to love it as much as the internet. By now I've come to the conclusion that there must be a difference between how Canon and Nikon copies operate. On Nikon, it's not a lens I'd recommend to anyone (unlike Tamron's 24-70, 70-200 and 85 g2, which I all love). Edit: It was cameralabs. Here's the quote: 'Repeatability (the accuracy of focus on the same subject after repeated focus-acquisition) of this lens at standard settings and 400mm focal length was not up there with the competition: it measured only 91.1% in Reikan FoCal and produced 5 mild outliers over a series of 40 shots. Plus there is some performance variation whether the lens focuses from infinity or from a closer distance. This variability also showed up in real life and led me to inspect every shot for pinpoint focus accuracy: not good!' Did you not encounter this on Canon at all?

Dustin I came here to Tokyo on an official trip and had a chance to hand hold both Sigma and Tamron 100-400... Really Tamron was really good out of the two, but i have noticed one thing, the Tamron LENS is only DESIGNED in Japan and made in China, Sigma, its made in Japan....

if you could only buy 1...which one would you get. 18-400 or 100-400?

If you have a option to choose .."sigma 100-400mm" or " tamron 100-400mm".. Which one will you choose ...???