The Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD will help keep you sane if you photograph birds.

Tamron’s lenses are usually some of my favorites. Admittedly though, I lean a lot more towards their primes and their constant aperture zooms. But the Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD is a little bit of this and a little bit of that. The image quality could be better. But the reliability is fantastic. You’ll essentially be relying a lot on Sony’s fantastic image sensors to create stellar images. But no matter what, know that you can do them in pretty much any condition you throw at this lens. The Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD will help keep you sane if you photograph birds.

Editor’s Note: This review was updated in January 2023.

Table of Contents

Pros and Cons

Pros

Cons

Gear Used

Tech Specs

Ergonomics

Build Quality

Ease of Use

Autofocus

On the Nikon Z9

Image Quality

Bokeh

Chromatic Aberration

Color Rendition

Sharpness

Extra Image Samples

Conclusions

Likes

Dislikes

Pros and Cons

Pros

Impressively sharp for the price point

Weather sealed

Speedy autofocus performance

Lightweight

Very, very affordable at $549

Cons

I wish it had a zoom lock

I also wish it had a focus limiter

Gear Used

We used the Sony a7r III with this lens. At a later point, we tested it with the Nikon Z9 as well.

Tech Specs

Tech specs are taken from the summarizing on LensRentals.

Weather sealing

Sony FE Mount

Works with Sony AI with Animal AF

5.8 inches in diameter

67mm filter thread

15 elements in 10 groups

3 inches in length

2.6 feet minimum focusing

1.2 lbs

Ergonomics

The Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD is a pretty standard zoom for the Sony camera system. It’s designed to be one of the simplest lenses to use. And in many ways, it really is. The only control that matters on this lens is the zoom ring. That’s it. Said ring is also where you’ll place your hand most of the time.

The lens almost doubles in size when it’s fully zoomed in and has the lens hood on. But if you’re photographing birds, then you’ll be fine. You’ll more or less be far enough. If you put this lens on an APS-C camera, you’ll be in even better shape.

The front of this lens also has a small 62mm filter. Indeed, this is a compact lens. With enough room, you can put it in a camera bag while attached to a camera.

At the rear is the manual focus ring. But I really doubt anyone will ever use it. I didn’t.

Build Quality

The Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD is said to be weather sealed. Indeed, we took it out once or twice in the rain. However, it’s a tough lens to use in the rain since it tends to be darker.

Weather sealing aside, this lens is incredibly lightweight. Tamron has been doing this for a long time, and they need to be commended for it. They’re a company that really understands mirrorless cameras. They were originally designed to be smaller and lightweight. This lens adheres to that concept.

Ease of Use

The Tamron 70-300mm f4.5-6.3 Di III RXD has no real controls on the lens. The only big one is the zoom ring. So you’re basically just zooming in and out. Some would wonder if it should have a focus limiter. And at times, I really thought that it should. However, I don’t think I lost that many shots with this lens.

What’s more, this lens should have a zoom lock. That helps keep it a bit more compact when it’s stored away. But I’m nitpicking here a bit.

When photographing birds, use the large tracking focus setting with continuous AF. You’re much better off setting the focusing point yourself unless you have a clear shot at a bird feeder or something.

Update January 2023

In 2022, an odd tree of Nikon’s took grafted branches from Tamron — and started to bear some odd fruit. In some cases, the lenses took Nikon’s exterior and pricing. In other cases, Tamron took the exterior and Nikon’s Z mount. In this case, the Tamron 70-300mm is available for Nikon Z mount.

In Janaury 2023, we tested it on the Nikon Z9 for birding photography. And overall, it did a good job. But there are some weird...