Lens Reviews

While the main body of my work has been with lenses such as the 24mm fixed, wide angles, and mainly my trusty 16-35mm zoom, I have often found myself wanting a long zoom for the scenes that present themselves along the way. It’s not that I am unwilling or just plain lazy to get closer—a long zoom, like the recently released Tamron 100-400mm, simply changes the way I see and helps me explore other visual options.

Tamron just released their new 150-500mm f/5-6.7 zoom and we received one of the first samples for review. Where would you take such a lens? We went to the NJ Audubon Center, a Somerset Patriots baseball game (they’re the NY Yankees’ Double-A minor league farm team), a nearby nature preserve and the patch of bee-attractant flowers in my back yard. Here’s our review and lots of pictures from these four venues.

Tamron recently released a fast, super-compact 28-200mm f/2.8-5.6 zoom lens for Sony mirrorless full-frame E-mount cameras. Unique among all-in-one type zooms because the maximum aperture is f/2.8 (at the wideangle 28mm setting) the lens has other attractive features that we evaluate in this review.

Tamron has a long history of producing versatile, do-everything lenses and the Tamron 35-150mm F/2.8-4 Di VC OSD (Model A043) continues with that heritage. I received the Canon EF-mount version of the lens for testing, but a Nikon F-mount version is also available at the same price. While designed for Canon’s full-frame EF-mount cameras, the Tamron 35-150mm lens can also be used with their APS-C models where it produces a field-of-view equivalent to 56-240mm.

There is nothing more invigorating for a zealous photographer than putting a brand new lens on a familiar, reliable DSLR body. The world looks different through a new lens, and the tableau of photo opportunities hits the reset button, refreshing all of the possibilities. My experience with Tamron’s new Tamron 70-210mm F/4 Di VC USD tele zoom brought this realization into focus, no pun intended.

Tamron has always been a pioneer in the do-everything zoom lens category and their new AF18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD lens is no exception. Don’t be intimidated by those initials—it’s all good stuff—and I’ll get to them shortly. The 18-270mm F/3.5-6.3 is part of Tamron’s Di II family of lenses that are engineered specifically for digital SLRs with image sensors measuring 24x16mm, typically referred to as APS-C. The sensor size of the Canon EOS 50D I tested the lens with measures 22.3x14.9mm so I guess that’s close enough. The 15x zoom range of the lens provides a 35mm focal length equivalency of 28.8-432mm with the Canon EOS 50D’s 1.6x multiplication factor, but that will be slightly different for the Nikon and Sony versions that are also available. Shooting full frame? Check out Tamron’s Di lens series for 35mm film cameras or digital SLRs featuring larger (24x36mm) sensors.