Distortions
With just short of 0.6% the lens shows a slight amount of barrel type distortion. This is a little more than what one would expected from a fix focal micro lens, however for most usage scenarios this can still be regarded as distortion-free under field conditions (unless for really demanding work like reproduction shots).
Vignetting
Being an APS-C lens, the Tamron is expected to show some vignetting wide open. A light falloff towards the corners of 0.7 is clearly visible in the images, but stopping down helps to reduce vignetting. From f/4 onwards it's no longer field relevant.
MTF (resolution)
Macro lenses usually are very sharp and the Tamron 60 is no exception to this rule. Wide open, center and border show very good sharpness, stopped down to f/4 the resolution figures are excellent. The extreme corners follow one step behind with good resolution wide open and very good sharpness at f/4 and beyond.
Beyond medium aperture settings diffraction is the limiting factor, but the lens manages to maintain a very level of sharpness down to its minimum aperture of f/22.
Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)
The amount of lateral CAs (color shadows at harsh contrast transitions) is higher than one would expect from a prime lens. With values close to 1 pixel at the image borders throughout most of the aperture range they are no show stopper, though. In addition, CAs can easily be removed in post processing and some of the newer Nikon DSLRs already do this in camera (if you shoot JPG).
Bokeh
Given the large aperture, the lens qualifies to be used for portraits or similar shots, where subject separation is required. For this kind of shots the quality of the bokeh (the out of focus areas) is of major interest.
Except some nervousness in front of the focus field (which is not really field relevant) the Tamron shows very smooth bokeh and a pleasing softness in out of focus areas. Background highlights show a cat's eye shape wide open towards the image borders, but are rendered circular from f/4 onwards.
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Verdict
The Tamron SP AF 60mm f/2.8 Di II is a welcome addition to the range of 60mm macro lenses. It shows very high sharpness and pleasing bokeh, with its large aperture allows for nice subject separation and therefor qualifies for many more usages than just macro shots. CAs are a little on the high side, as is vignetting wide open, but that's the price one usually needs to pay for speed. The lens itself seems solid and is rather compact and light weight.
There's not much to criticise about this lens. Many would certainly have preferred a less noisy AF drive as it is available from the competition, but that's about it.
So, in summary, a very nice lens for an affordable price and certainly recommended to anyone considering a macro lens with this focal length.
Usually, the review would end here. In case of the Tamron SP AF 60 though we feel the need to add that our review unit showed significant underexposure at wide open apertures. Consequently, it was sent in to Tamron Europe, and that is where the sad part of the story began.
At the time of the publication of this review, the lens is at Tamron Europe for 11 weeks now. During that time, we have received only one status update from Tamron after 4 weeks, which basically informed us that the lens has not been touched, yet. Any further request for additional information we sent thereafter, including a written complaint to the General Manager of Tamron Europe, remained unanswered.