Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD LD Aspherical IF Macro Zoom Lens with Built in Motor for Canon DSLR Cameras

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Tamron 18-270 VC images are sharp in the center at 18mm with a wide open aperture. Stopping down does not improve center-of-the-frame sharpness. The Samyang AF 18mm F2.8 FE is the lightest and smallest super wide-angle with autofocus that you can buy for full-frame cameras. It is also extremely cheap. Is it worth anything? Absolutely. The Samyang AF 18mm F2.8 FE performs well. ePHOTOzine lens expert, Gary Wolstenholme casts his keen eye over the 15x Tamron AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di VCLDAspherical (IF). The Sigma has less distortion than the Tamron, but the Tamron has less flare and at least as good or better f/8 image quality.

Distortion is always a major issue for superzoom lenses, and the Tamron 18-270mm is not an exception to the rule. 5.62% barrel distortion was recorded at 18mm, which will be highly noticeable as buildings bow out fro the centre of the image. At 270mm distortion is present, but the 1% pincushion isn't overly disturbing. Here is a table showing the focal length ranges for the max aperture of various 18-something mm zoom lenses. The pictures below illustrate the focal length range from wide to telephoto (on Canon APS-C, 1.6x).

Unlike Canon EF-S Lenses, the Tamron 18-270 will actually mount to a full frame body, but there is significant vignetting. Image quality here is acceptable, but not great. The image is very soft overall at F6.3, with low contrast and blurring that's a signature of spherical aberration. But the centre sharpens up dramatically on stopping down to F8, beyond which it gradually degrades again due to diffraction. With our flat test chart the corners are very soft wide open, and while they improve on stopping down, they never really sharpen up fully. This most likely reflects curvature of field. Full Frame Coverage Like all SLR superzooms the 18-270mm suffers from pretty pronounced distortion. At wideangle there's quite strong barrel distortion (3.2%), with recorrection towards the corners. This turns to pincushion across the rest of the range, which is worst around 50mm (a rather severe -3.3%).

This VC implementation is audible and not as well behaved as most of the recent lens stabilization systems I've been using - Special thanks to Cles Distribution of Tamron Singapore for giving me the opportunity to loan the Tamron 18-300mm F3.5-6.3 Di III-A VC VXD (Model B061) for Fuji mount for a review. At the time of releasing this review, I have returned the loan unit to Cles Distribution. Autofocus is near-silent, but on the Canon-mount version we tested not especially fast - this is one area where it lags behind similar lenses from Sigma, Nikon or Canon. But the PZD motor is at least faster than the sometimes painfully-slow micromotor used in the older Tamron AF 18-270mm F/3.5-5.6 Di II VC. The image stabilization system works quite well too, although we've found it to be slightly less effective than its predecessor's, it's still good for letting you use shutter speeds a couple of stops slower than you'd otherwise be able to hand-hold without blur. Even on a small entry-level SLR such as the Canon EOS 650D shown here, the Tamron 18-270mm F3.6-6.3 PZD feels nicely balanced, which isn't something that can be said of all superzoom lenses. It's notably smaller than either the Canon or Nikon 18-200mm F3.5-5.6 superzooms, and much the same size as the Sony 18-250mm F3.5-6.3 and Pentax 18-270mm F3.5-6.3 models. It's relatively light in weight too, and won't put too much strain on your shoulder if you carry it around on the camera all day. Flash shadowingI have mentioned the MOD earlier. But what I want to mention here is how impressive the MOD is. If you want to shoot at 18mm, basically your lens is very close to the subject. It is surprisingly a fun perspective to shoot with.