Tamron 70-180 mm f/2.8 Di III VC VXD G2 review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Tamron 70-180 mm f/2.8 Di III VC VXD G2

8 February 2024

Maciej Latałło

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

The optical construction of the tested Tamron features many elements made of low dispersion glass so you might assume it would correct longitudinal chromatic aberration quite well. Anyway our expectations were pretty high. The Tamron didn't let us down – photos below prove that this kind of aberration isn't bothersome and its influece on image quality remains marginal no matter what focal length you employ. A round of applause!

Tamron 70-180 mm f/2.8 Di III VC VXD G2 - Chromatic and spherical aberration

What about the correction of lateral chromatic aberration? Let two graphs answer this question for us: the first one presents the performance on the edge of the APS-C/DX sensor, the second one shows the performance on the edge of full frame.

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In the middle of the focal range the situation is the most even – no matter what detector you employ, you still land near a very good level below 0.04%. In case of both ends of the focal range the aberration increases with stopping down, quite fast at 70 mm, noticeably slower at 180 mm. The maximum results never exceed 0.07% so we still deal with low values. In this category the Tamron 70-180 mm f/2.8 G2 should certainly be praised.

To be precise it's worth mentioning the fact that the more expensive Sony FE 70-200 mm f/2.8 II model had still better results – all the values in this category were below 0.06%.

A7R IIIa, RAW, 70 mm, f/2.8	A7R IIIa, RAW, 180 mm, f/16.0

Spherical aberration

In case of shorter focal lengths spherical aberration seems to be corrected properly well. We didn't notice any focus shift effect and defocused circles of light before and behind the focus were very similar. Still the situation changed a bit when we passed to the 180 mm focal length. Here, from f/2.8 to f/4.0, a slight shift of DOF towards greater distances is visible and circles of light show much more differences. The one before the focus has a distinctly brighter rim for example.

As you see spherical aberration makes itself felt at the 180 mm focal length, in complete accordance with the results of our resolution test, where this end of the focal range fared the weakest.