Photographing Extreme Sports with the TAMRON 35-150mm F2-2.8

Soon after I got my hands on the Tamron 35-150m F/2-2.8 Di III VXD (Model A058), I gave it a try at the Extreme Sports Competition. Although my first impression was its solid heft, I was reassured by its astonishing compactness for such a monstrous lens, which was 35-150mm with a maximum aperture of F2. This is my impression of photographing extreme sports with the Tamron 35-150mm F2-2.8.

Highlights

• Exceptional versatility: Delivers stellar image quality from wide 35mm F2 to tight 150mm F2.8, rivaling prime lenses across the range.
• Optimized for action: Handled fast-moving subjects like skateboarders and BMX riders with clarity, speed, and precision.
• Customization via TAMRON Lens Utility: Personalized controls improved usability and let you focus on capturing the moment.
• Comfortable for long shoots: Despite its solid build, the lens felt balanced and practical even after hours of handheld use.
• Replaces multiple primes: Covered key focal lengths (50mm, 85mm, 100mm) in one lens—making gear-light setups for dynamic shoots possible.

Images and Shooting Impression by Noriyuki Watabe

Performance at Both Ends of the Zoom Range

The first thing that stood out was the lens’s excellence at both the 35mm and 150mm ends. At 35mm F2, the image was in no way inferior to fixed focal lenses, which gave me a rush of adrenaline. At 150mm F2.8, although it is common for lenses with superior wide-angle performance to make sacrifices on the telephoto end, this lens was impeccable both in resolution and colors, which was a pleasure. As I had many opportunities to shoot portraits during the event, I was able to capture portraits of the athletes in the competition.

Capturing Multiple Extreme Sports Styles

This lens made me so happy that I wanted to gather people representing all of the styles for a shoot: skateboarding, BMX and inline skating, and I took action to make it happen at the skate park on a different day. Each style is unique and has a different speed, distance to the subject and moving style, and I tested how well I could take images with this lens.

Customization with TAMRON Lens Utility

Before shooting, I customized the lens with TAMRON’s new function, TAMRON Lens Utility, which was spot-on: As was written in several TAMRON reviews, this lens can be personally customized to make it easier to use and allows the photographer to focus more on shooting.

Usability and Focal Length Exploration

When I was photographing extreme sports images at each event, I’ve held this lens in my hands an average of about five hours. I thought I would certainly get used to the weight of the lens as I used it more. After discovering the lens’s superiority at 35mm and 150mm, the next advantage I encountered was its medium focal lengths. I tried focal lengths of the standard fixed focal lenses: 50mm, 85mm, 90mm and 100mm. Then I used all the focal lengths close to these, honestly, everything was ideal.

Breathtaking Image Quality and Ergonomics

The lens produced breathtaking image quality across the whole range. Lines were clear at every focal length, which enabled the lens to be used flexibly and with confidence at shoots. It was comfortable to use, and there were no problems in terms of the feel of the materials or the position of buttons while taking photos. Moreover, although this is a zoom lens with wide range of focal lengths, it also permits close-up photos. I certainly felt that this was a lens that TAMRON put a huge amount of effort into.

A Two-Lens Solution for Versatile Shoots

In addition, this zoom lens eliminated the need to have multiple fixed focal lenses, giving the user a sense of security even when using just this single lens. In my case, I was able to handle all situations using two lenses: the 17-28mm F/2.8 Di III RXD (Model A046) and this 35-150mm F2-2.8. This is totally amazing. In practice when photographing extreme sports, a lot of equipment is often required, so many people must want to reduce this as much as possible. This lens will help for realizing this.
I recommend that you give it a try.

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