Way of testing. To push the limits of what is possible with the new Tamron 28-75mm F/2.8, I set the camera so that everything was far from "easy" for the lens. I paid attention to ISO, way of focusing, exposure, aperture and shutter speed and shot in either RAW or JPG. Below are the settings I used:

• Aperture as often and as long as possible at the full aperture of F/2.8. This gives a good indication of image sharpness, bokeh and vignetting. When a smaller aperture is used, many lens and focusing errors disappear.
• Pictures not only with the sun in the back, but also a lot with backlight. How will the sharpness and contrast be maintained? And what about flare and ghosting?
• ISO as low as possible for optimal image sharpness, for the Aikido indoor recording I did use ISO 1600. It's great that the F/2.8 is fixed over the entire zoom range, so that the shutter speed remains the same up to the telephoto position.
• The image stabilisation of the Sony camera was always on, because I only shot from the hand. It could have been turned off in the sun, but not indoors, so for convenience just leave it on. The Tamron 28-75mm has no stabilisation itself, because this is built-in to the Sony bodies.
• I put the Sony A7 mk2 camera in 1 point AF mode. The camera only focuses on a very small point that can be moved with the button next to the LCD. With standard Multi AF, the camera focuses on countless points over the entire image. The big disadvantage is that the camera often focuses on the foreground in wide-angle modes, because that is the closest point.
• Matrix measurement plus DNR correction were set to normal so that the shadows were automatically brightened slightly.
• For the JPG files I selected the ViVid mode, so afterwards only sharpness and contrast had to be increased a bit. The colours of the Tamron 28-75mm on Sony are very nice and natural.
• For macro photos I often set a small correction of -0.7 in order not to make the main subject stand out from the often dark background. I also occasionally used a slightly smaller aperture of F/4.0 or F/5.6 for slightly more depth of field without making the background too restless.

For this practical test I made two rounds over the very busy Japanese Market in Leiden. This is organized every year by the Siebolt House, a beautiful museum, at the Rapenburg. Besides the market outside, there were also martial arts demonstrations inside the museum of antiquities. Luckily you could take pictures up close and personal. Unfortunately, the Japanese market cannot continue this year because of the Coronavirus, but hopefully there will be an opportunity to do so later this year.

During the very intensive street photography shoot at the Japanese Market, the 28-75mm really came into its own. The autofocus worked fast and accurate, even in Spot AF mode which I always use myself. I only had a few times on hundreds of photos that the camera could not focus for a moment. This was always the case when I took a macro shot, and immediately afterwards wanted to capture a wildly dressed figure at a distance of about five meters. Because of the extremely large difference in focus distance from 19 centimeters to 500cm, this is also to be expected. I have yet to come across the first lens that could do that.

For me the 28mm position was a pleasant focal length for photographing people. With a 24mm you have to take into account that you don't get too close or put people at the edge of the image. The 75mm is a nice focal length for portraits, but as far as I'm concerned it could have been a bit longer. But then the telephoto wouldn't be F/2.8 anymore, but more a. f/4.5 f even F/5.6.