Third Party Lenses

[I bring my 3rd party lenses with me when I want to travel light]

Many people I know are very loyal to the brand. The two biggest groups, no surprise, are Canon and Nikon. Many people in Taiwan are crazy about Fuji and Olympus. More and more people also join Sony troop these days.

You might have known by now that the photo gears that cost the most are lenses. Generally speaking, each camera should use lenses from the same brand. Take Canon and Nikon as examples, they use different kinds of mounts so their lenses can not be exchanged. But there are some companies who only make lenses for these name brand cameras. Lenses from these companies are called "third party" lenses. The biggest third party lens brands are: Sigma, Tamron, and Tokina.

Talking about brand loyalty, some people never use third party lenses. They only trust lenses from the brand which manufacture the camera they are using. But some people use a lot of third party lenses. The reason? Third party lenses are significantly cheaper. Take Canon's 17-55mm f/2.8 lens as an example, it easily costs you $1000. When you buy Tamron's 17-50mm f/2.8, it only cost you half (maybe even less since Tamron offers a lot of rebate opportunities each year). The next question you might ask is: how about the quality of the photos produced by 3rd party lenses? Take Tamron's 17-50mm f/2.8 as an example, the lens is as sharp as Canon's EF-S flag ship 17-55mm so the picture quality is also very good. I can tell you this from my own experience, I owned both lenses for quite a long time until I sold my Tamron lens last year. And really if not because I had to fund another photo gear, I really didn't want to sell it. It's a very good lens.


[Taken using Tamron 17-50mm f/2.8]


If 3rd party lenses are as good as name brands' why people still spend so much money to buy name brand lenses? Couple of reasons:

1. Build Quality: the high end lenses from name brand normally uses better materials so they last for a long time. So although the initial cost might be high, in the long run, name brand lenses might still have the advantage. We will touch another relevant factor later.

2. Quality Control: when you buy lenses from name brand, you seldom has issue with the new lens you purchase. With 3rd party lens, you might get a bad copy and you have to deal with vendors or manufactures to exchange for a better one. Many people on the internet saying they went back and forth more than 3 times to finally get a very good copy (as sharp as name brands').

3. Resell Value: because of above reasons, name brand lenses hold their values very well. So again, in the long run, name brand lenses have the advantage.

4. Compatibility: Almost all the 3rd party lens manufactures doesn't get the license from name brands. So they don't get tech. support from name brands. All their lenses are made through reverse engineering, meaning that they look at the result and "guess" how those name brands implemented their own lenses, then they simulate the functionality. The problem with the reverse engineering is that, if one day, say Canon, decides to modify their auto focus mechanism, they will take care of the backward compatible issues to make sure old lenses will still work with the new camera which use the new technologies. But since 3rd party companies do not know the secret of the new technologies, the old lenses might not work with the new cameras. This is one of the biggest reasons that some people never buy 3rd party lenses.

3rd lenses sometimes offer less functionality in order to cut the cost so they can be cheaper and compete with name brand lenses. Take Tamron 17-50mm lens as an example, it doesn't offer equivalent feature to Canon's USM, which gives a fast and quiet auto focusing. I really don't think Tamron can not come up a similar mechanism to counter Canon's USM, it's just if they do that, the cost will increase. The end result of not chasing Canon's USM is Tamron's 17-50mm is a bit noisier when focusing.


[Tamron 28-300mm even has macro function to let you take close-up shots]

For me, I don't mind to use 3rd party lenses. I actually love Tamron's lenses very much (never a big fan of Sigma, though). Tamron's 17-50mm is my favorite but I sold it last year, I currently still own a 28-300mm lens. I will buy 3rd party lenses because:
1. If I try to shoot a new topic, say birds. Shooting birds needs at least a 400mm lens. Lenses over 300mm are expensive, so I don't want to buy from Canon, but I really want to try it, so I will buy a 300mm lens from 3rd party and see if I really like birdy photography.

2. If I want to travel light, 3rd party lens' drawback of using cheaper materials becomes an advantage, since it would be lighter. I went back to Taiwan two years ago, I only bring my two Tamron lenses because I wanted to travel light.

The last thing is if you really decided to buy 3rd party lenses, be sure to buy from good vendors (e.g. B&H). This is because you might need to go back and forth in order to get a good copy. But from my own experience, I have purchased 3 Tamron lenses, all of them are good copies. That's why I am quite happy with Tamron. One big plus from 3rd party is the lenses normally come with the lens hood. Not like name brand, unless you buy really expensive lenses, you need to pay extra to get the lens hood. Some 3rd party lens companies also offer longer warranty period (e.g. Tamron's 6 years vs Canon's 1 year).