I am looking at getting the Tamron 17-50 2.8 lens. There is a VC(Vibration Compensation) lens and a non VC lens. The difference in price is $200. I am curious if anyone can weigh in on the need of the VC on this lens. I have a shoulder mount for handheld shots. Will the VC make a difference in this situation? Should I spend the extra $200 for that feature? Any insight is appreciated.

Andy,

Any lens that provides some sort of image stabilization when shooting video is a good thing. Even with your rig you will have some movement. $200 is a good price compared to what some of the Canon lenses charge for IS.

Daniel Weber

Will the VC make a difference in this situation? Should I spend the extra $200 for that feature? Any insight is appreciated.
Absolutely, 50mm is too long , but still you'll find Tamron's VC very useful and totally worth of $200
Tamron Vibration Compensation Test on Vimeo

It comes down to what you need, the VC version will allow smoother handheld video shooting and a couple extra stops for photo taking, while the non-VC version is supposed to be sharper but you don't get the stabilization, the sharpness difference is probably more noticeable in high res photos than HD video.

I chose the non-VC version for the extra sharpness. However, I never shoot handheld without a rig or stabilisation, and most of my stuff is on a tripod.

$200 is much more of a price difference than when I was looking for mine. Where are you getting your prices from?

When I bought my Canon 600D I went cheap & bought the Tamron 17-50mm F/2.8 VC instead of the Canon 17-55mm F/2.8 IS as it was half the price of the Canon lens. I returned the Tamron the next day as it was so inferior to a decent Canon lens. The IS was really noisy, the AF was slow, the focus & zoom rings rotate the wrong way, you need to slide the switch from AF to MF when manually focusing or you fight the AF motor. There were probably other things that bugged me that I don't recall now but the Canon lens is just so much better that it is easily worth the money even if it did cost more than the camera.