Tamron 35-135mm f3.5-4.5
It's one of the strangest Tamron lenses I have used. The two focusing methods
can be very confusing at first but once you remember to turn off the Macro focusing mode, everything works as it should.
Page Last Edited : Sunday, 7th of September 2025.
© Dave Rowlands. All Rights Reserved.
I've not had this lens long, and I've always wanted to try one as the reports and images I had seen about it were very favourable. I had it on my search list, and it just popped up one day, so I took a look. It was going for £4.99 with postage costs of £4.35, so for less than ten pounds I could try out this lens, and if I didn't like it, I could just sell it on again.
It arrived before the end of the week, and I was quite surprised at how clean it looked, except for some sellotape that had been placed onto the lens where the focus and aperture indicators were. After a warm-up and a clean, I found a spare Adaptall 2 to Canon FD adapter and went about taking a few test shots. It was late January, and things didn't go as planned so I ended up putting all the testing on the back boiler for a while, basically, I forgot all about it until a few weeks ago, when I was sorting some of my camera gear out.
I just weighed the combination of the lens attached to my E-M1 II with the battery grip, and it comes in at 1.64 Kg (Around 3.6 Lbs), which is a lot of gear to be carrying around all day.
I started by taking a Panoramic Photograph taken using this lens, composed of the 3 photographs shown below and stitched together using an old favourite program from Microsoft called ICE (Image Composite Editor). It's easy to use, just pick the images you want stitching together and tell the program to do its job. I think it has now finally been discontinued, but it's quite possible to find it somewhere. Just make sure it's from a place you trust and scan it for malicious software before installing it.
Standing on my front door step and looking right.
Moving a couple of inches further right and clouds have already changed.
The weather here changes the scene quicker than expected.
The final result of a quick lens test.
The resulting panoramic image is quite large at 30.7 MB with a dimension of 10918 x 3508 pixels. At my default printing resolution of 300 DPI, it would produce an image that is just over 36" x 11.5" or at Windows standard resolution of 96 DPI the resulting printout would be just over 137.5" x 36.5" (11' x 3').
THe same point of view as a 70mm lens on the M43 cameras. The 35mm focal length doesn't seem to suffer from not having a lens hood.
THe same point of view as a 270mm lens on the M43 cameras. This lens would benefit from a lens hood as the front element is large at 1.75" (4.45 cm) and prone to catching any stray light.
100% Crop Of the image above.
100% Crop Of the image above.
It's obvious from the 100% crop at 135mm that the lens would benefit from a lens hood. When the weather gets good enough to be able to go out for more than an hour without rain, I'll be adding my FotoDioX Pro Canon FD - M43 EXCELL + 1 to it and taking a few test shots at some of the most popular focal lengths.
With the focal reducer added it looks the part, the weight though comes in at 776g (Around 27 Ounces, wow, just over 1.7 Lbs), so it's quite an additional weight to add to the front of the camera. I often wonder what weight these cameras are designed to hold on their mounts as most modern lenses weigh much less and are mostly made of plastic unless they are of the "Pro" category.
When I have one of my older Tamron lenses attached to either camera, I always pick the combination up by holding the lens first. I just can't imagine the stress placed on the camera side of the mount while using these steel and glass remnants of a time gone by, especially without some kind of support for the lens.
And on my E-M1 II without the battery grip. So, if I take my focal reducer and my Canon 2x teleconverter out with me, I could have a combination of:
35-135mm f3.5-4.5 Zoom
70-270mm f7-9 Zoom with the 2x TC
25-97mm f2.5-3.2 Zoom with the FR
Or, to be silly a 50-195mm f5-6.5 Zoom with the TC and FR.
