>>4154556Sony makes a 70-200 f4 that has internal zooming and focusing (so it doesn't suck in dust/water), a subjectively better look, and is more feature complete than the tamron. The tamron is slightly sharper, but renders shading differently, so you get a more vivid and compressed but less life-like look with slightly lifted shadows and reduced contrast between different shades of the same color. This is noticeable even without a side by side. A cartoony image is the "tamron look", and has been called "flat rendering", and might be related to low quality coatings or a design shortcut that produced a sharper lens for less money. If you said leica made this lens, someone might say it has the "leica look". Sony bases their lenses off zeiss designs.
This sharpness difference is imperceptible in a real photo without a 200-300% crop side by side, and only "slight" instead of "basically nothing" at larger apertures. Lens sharpness, unlike coma and astigmatism, is not important unless a lens is literally twice as sharp.
The tamron has dodgy AF especially closer to the minimum focusing distance, and not AF/MFswitch so you'll want to remap something on your camera for protraits and pseudo-macro. The sony doesn't, but has an AF/MF switch and a focus limiter anyways.
The sony can do horribly if you don't use the lens hood. The tamron has some huge flares, but it's still better if you don't like lens hoods.
Lens stabilization is a very big deal at 200mm. 5 and even 7 stop IBIS gets exponentially less useful as focal length increases.
The tamron has slightly more native distortion, CA, and vignetting.
Sony f4 = Zeiss-like image quality, needs less correction in post, useful switches, not a dust vacuum, hood mandatory
Tamron f2.8 = telling /p/ about your MTF chart while rocking back and forth saying that "rendering" isn't real + but MUH F2.8!, hood optional, dust vacuum
