Tamron Announces New 28-300mm AF Zoom Lens

Just in time for PMA, which officially kicks off tomorrow in Las Vegas, NV., Tamron has announced the the AF28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di VC LD Aspherical (IF) MACRO zoom lens, a high power zoom lens designed for SLR cameras with full-size format(Model A20), now equipped with a Vibration Compensation (VC) mechanism. The AF28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di VC is the ultimate high power zoom lens that covers everything from wide-angle to telephoto and macro according to the company press release.

The proprietary VC (Vibration Compensation) mechanism developed by Tamron features a triaxial configuration using three pairs of driving coils and slide balls around the compensator group of the lens’ optical system. Since the compensator lenses are supported with rolling friction of the balls, the response performance is enhanced and the construction is simple, which results in the compactness of the lens. The lens incorporate a highly accurate gyro sensor for detecting hand-shake, which, combined with a 32-bit RISC CPU, offers comfortable anti-vibration effects.

The zoom lock prevents unwanted barrel extension when carrying the lens/camera combination over the shoulder. A flower-shaped lens hood is included as a standard accessory. The special hood provides optimum shading of superfluous light rays that enter from the rectangular frame outside the image field. When the AF28-300mm F/3.5-6.3 XR Di VC is used with a full size format SLR camera, it covers the tremendous focal length range from 28mm in wide angle to 300mm ultra telephoto. When mounted on a DSLR with an APS-C sized imager, the lens covers a 43mm wide angle to 465mm equivalent ultra telephoto.

The optical system uses a number of lens elements made from special optical glass materials including XR (high refraction index) glass elements, GM (glass-molded aspherical lens) elements, hybrid aspherical elements, LD (low dispersion) glass elements to compensate for on-axis and lateral chromatic aberrations and AD (anomalous dispersion) glass element. The lens offers high contrast, high resolution performance and flatness of the image field as a one-does-it-all zoom lens designed to match the characteristics of DSLR cameras.
Image provided by Tamron.