Tamron Adaptall-2 80-210mm f/3.8-4 CF Tele Macro (Model 03A, 1979-1982)

Tamron Adaptall-2 80-210mm f/3.8-4 CF Tele Macro
Model 03A (1979-1982)

2019.06.20 - Published

2021.08.12 - Re-written

Tamron produced high quality affordable telephoto zooms throughout the 1980s -- 03A, 103A and the 46A. All of them used plastics particularly on the focusing and aperture rings. The one featured here is a Tamron Adaptall-2 80-210mm f/3.8-4 CF Tele Macro (Model 03A).

The cosmetic appearance of model 03A looks very stylish and beautiful. It puts to shame those plastic lenses produced by Nikon, Canon and Minolta at the time. Plastics give this lens a lightweight feeling and also lowers the price. No wonder this lens became Tamron's most popular and most sold tele-zoom.

The built-in retractable hood has a length of 23mm, too short for telephoto. If you're going to use the lens, you always need to pull out the hood. Otherwise, if you are at 100mm infinity going to 70mm, it gets in the way of the zoom ring.

The zoom design is called 'one-touch', which combines zooming and focusing into a single control ring. This is the preferred design for manual shooters. The 'Continuous Focusing Macro' lets you get as close as 0.9 meters from the subject, at any range, with no extra switches to fiddle with, thus 'Continuous Focusing'. (Most tele zoom of the time had minimum focusing of 2 meters, this was a great convenience for many people.)

It is not macro-lens-sharp, but wide open is decently sharp at any focal length. It does get a bit soft at 210mm, but it helps to stop down. Many people today still love this vintage lens as much as I do, it's super cheap and isn't hard to get. I recommend this as your very first ever vintage/manual tele zoom, you won't regret it!