Tamron 14-150 lens for Micro Four-Thirds Cameras
As mentioned in my "about" pages, I use Olympus Micro Four-Thirds (MFT) cameras and, for the most part, Olympus lenses. When Tamron announced a long range zoom for MFT in the fall of 2014 I purchased the lens and wrote the following review. Since then Olympus has announced a replacement for their 14-150 although at the time of this writing it was not yet available. After publishing this review I did have a chance to look at the Olympus lens. My opinions are here.
To start off, the Tamron 14-150 Micro Four-Thirds lens is a very good lens for such a long range zoom. It is extremely sharp and has a beautiful bokeh. At f/3.5-f/5.8 it is not an extremely fast lens, but it is adequate for many situations. Focusing is quick and accurate.
The 14-150 MFT lens is almost the same size and weight as the Olympus 14-150. The Olympus design is quite old. It was one of the first few MFT lenses available and it has some issues. I was hoping that the Tamron 14-150 addressed them. I have been using it on my OM-D EM-5. The lens has met my expectations. I use it whenever I take only one lens.
The lens data supplied to the camera is good. It makes almost all jpegs look as though there were no issues. Updates to the lens data are available from the Olympus site which was a pleasent surprise.
Looking at the raw files I can see a few things: The lens is not quite perfect. At 14 mm there is some distortion common to wide angle lenses. It is completely corrected in the jpeg and is easy to correct in the raw file. At the other end the lens shows some chromatic aberration and vignetting. The chromatic aberration is nearly non-existent and can be ignored in most photos. Vignetting is moderate and is easy to correct if desired. All are less than the Olympus 14-150.
So, in the end the lens feels good, focuses quickly, and provides sharp clear high contrast images. I has become my main walk-about lens. If you want to have only one lens for an OM-D or Pen, this is it.