Customers Review Amazon Product

Perfect lens
This is a great step up from the kit lens. Tack sharp, amazing speed, excellent color. Glass is where all upgrades should be made and this is the perfect one.

Great budget lens for upgrading your kit lens, but not as good as Canon's 17-55 IS
Alot of people are choosing between the Tamron 17-50mm and the considerably more expensive Canon 17-55 IS. Canon obviously believes this focal length will appeal to the broadest group of consumers, hence why the 18-55 IS is included with the XSI kit. I personally have both the Canon 17-55IS and the Tamron 17-50 and like them both for very different reasons. There are alot of technical reviews that discuss barrel distortion, vignetting, etc, but my review is focused on how well the lens performs if you're a first time DSLR owner like myself who has barely a clue about photography.

What I like about the Tamron 17-50:
-Very small and lightweight. I have it mounted on my Rebel XT, so it makes for a very compact DSLR with a range great for wide angle shots and portraits of people.
-Images are VERY sharp, pretty comparable to the 17-55IS. I shoot in RAW, so I can't comment on color quality much.
-I like the lens cap; its easier than the Canon lens cap to remove while the hood is on.
-Barrel lock: you can lock the barrel so if the lens is stored facing down, it doesn't extend. My Canon 28-135IS does that, and it is annoying.
-It has a maximum constant aperture of 2.8. It is very difficult to find a zoom lens that is this fast for as price as low as this Tamron (the Tamron 28-75 being the other lens that comes too mind). Definitely, NONE of the fast Canon zoom lenses with a constant aperture are in that price category. I think the closest may be a f/4, of you're looking at consumer grade lenses that have apertures that change with the focal length (i.e. f/3.5-5.6).
-Price: It is less than half the price of the 17-55IS. If you have the skill to coax the best out of the lens, your prudent purchase will reward you handsomely, and you'll have money left over to buy a nice camera body.

What I don't like about the Tamron 17-50 as compared to my 17-55IS:
-Autofocus isn't as precise as with the 17-55IS. I have a higher percentage of blurry photos with the Tamron than I do with the Canon.
-Focus ring turns in the opposite direction of the Canon lenses. This makes removing the lens kind of annoying.
-No IS. Some people say that you don't need IS at this focal range. But I do. Maybe I drink too much coffee, but I love IS. I have less blurry photos of my dogs using the 17-55IS than I do with the Tamron. I do get sharp photos with my Tamron, but you don't want to have to sort through literally hundreds of photos just to find a few sharp ones.
-Low light/indoor performance not as good as the 17-55IS. I've discovered I love photos with great depth of field/bohkeh, so I tend to shoot on wider apertures as often as possible. Even when its wide, the Tamron doesn't perform as well as the 17-55IS in low light situations. It is likely a result of a combination of its autofocus/lack of IS. If you're out and about on a sunny day, or are using a tripod, you will likely not experience this too much. But if you're inside on a rainy day, you'll notice this.

The Tamron 17-50 f/2.8 lens will certainly give you better photos than the kit lenses will. If you have a smaller DSLR like the Rebel XT, XTI, XS, or XSI, you'll appreciate the small size of the Tamron while giving you very sharp photos. However, I believe you need to have some skills in order to reap the benefits of this lens. Price is a considerable factor as well; you could purchase this lens and an XS body for about the price of the 17-55IS lens alone. We actually picked up this lens and highly discounted Rebel XT as our *small* camera because combined it was about the price of a G10. We bring our 40D w/17-55IS out when we want the low light performance, of we know we're going to take photos. We bring the XT/Tamron 17-50 combo out when we want a camera just-in-case, and we want the photos to be really good. We bring our Canon A570IS when we want something that's very small and don't really care about photos.

If you have the funds, or only want one lens, I would recommend the Canon 17-55 over this lens. It is better built (though its a considerably larger lens), has IS, and has the same optics that Canon's "L" series lens has. On average, the photos of family and friends that I take with the 17-55 turn out better and sharper (and I have fewer discards) than with the Tamron. My skill level is mediocre at best, so I need all the help I can get, and the Canon provides, while the Tamron emphasizes how bad I am at holding the camera steady, though it does reward me just enough that I kept it.

You won't go wrong with the Tamron lens, and for the money and size, it is a great lens. It is worth upgrading to this lens if you only have your kit lens. But keep in mind that after purchasing the Tamron, you'll still want the 17-55IS.

This is a very nice lens for a cropped-sensor Canon
For an amateur like me, my Canon prime lense are the gold standard. I compared this against two of my Canon primes using tripod, same scenes with main detailed foreground object in all. I kept apertures the same and double-checked that the speeds were very close and spot-focused at the same point.

First at the 50mm setting, I compared it against my Canon 50mm f1.4 lens at f2.8, f4 and f11. At f2.8 it was a little softer in a portion of the image when zoomed in completely but nothing for me to get upset about.

Then I compared it at the 20mm setting against my Canon 20mm f2.8 which is an expensive piece of glass (mostly because it will really do 20mm on a film or full-sensor body). Also compared at 2.8, 4, and 11. The Tamron was as sharp as the 20mm everywhere, and in fact, looked a little sharper at 2.8 - I think the contrast was slightly higher so maybe that's why it looked slightly sharper.

So I'm very happy with this lens. I have read reviews here and elsewhere with complaints occassionally about getting a bad copy of this lens, and then usually happy afterwards. My copy was made in Japan.

The specs here say that the closest focusing distance is 10 inches. But at 50mm setting on my Canon Rebel XTi it focuses fine at about 4 inches away?

Other things - 1) there is a zoom lock that you can set so that it won't extend while it's around your neck. 2) I don't attach the included hood because it seems to be tight and I don't want to damage the front element. But the hood doesn't bother me. 3) The front element does not rotate during focusing so no problems with polarizer filters. I had to buy a step-down adapter for the expensive filter I use on my 20mm.

(For serious amateurs, I think this lens combined with the Canon 55-250mm IS lens makes a great combination covering any range you need with excellent quality. The 55-250 lens is VERY sharp, and the Image Stabilization is excellent.)

The only dig against this lens, and the Canon 55-250 IS, is that they are for cropped-sensors and you won't be able to use the lens if you upgrade later to a full sensor. But that's part of the reason why these lenses don't cost more. Enjoy the quality.

Great lens! See the results for yourself.
This is a really nice lens. It's almost as sharp as a Canon Compact Macro EF 50mm. Excellent color accuracy. Very little distortion. I used this lens (on a Canon EOS 40D) to shoot most of the product shots for our jewelry catalog.

You can see the results for yourself at http://www.azuliskye.com/Our-Products.html. Just click on "Browse our catalog" to see the hi-res version. The extreme closeups (you'll know what pictures I'm talking about when you see the catalog) were shot with the Canon lens mentioned above.

I'm very happy with the Tamron!

Focus Problems Abound - Had 2 copies, both bad, returned for refund!
Although the lens is fast and built well enough I got two copies with the "front focus" problem. I returned both without hassle from Amazon and am going to buy the 18-200mm Canon lens instead, along with the 50mm f1.4. I found that most of my "portrait" type shooting was done at the 50mm end of the 17-50 anyway so the 50mm prime lens from Canon will fill that niche. Too bad the Tamron had the Front Focus problem b/c I did like the lens. Some, very few, of the autofocus pics were sharp but most were too soft to be acceptable. I found myself sitting in Manual Focus mode almost all the time (any time that an in-focus picture was important, which is "always"). MF was very sharp though.

If Tamron fixes the AF problem then this would be a great lens. Too bad.