Review on Tamron 18 270Mm 3 5 6 3 BOO8E Filter by Kevin Greer

I was recently looking for quality components to add to my photography arsenal and was hoping to find a good all-round lens for my A65. I've tried using an 18-55 set and another 55-200 or 70-300 in the past, but it's often been either inconvenient or impossible to swap out the lenses. So I finally broke down and got a lens that should help me capture almost any subject. Well, the Sony lens does NOT have a stabilizer. Since Sony uses sensor bias, I think Tamron decided we didn't need another stabilizer. While that's fine, I wish they had lowered the price a bit to reflect the differences, but oh well. As for the lens in general, if you go to this from, say, 18-55, it's going to look monstrous. . However, the lens is quite small and handy overall. As advertised by Tamron, this is one of the smallest zoom lenses in this spec. Now when you start zooming it certainly zooms quite a bit, but I still find it very easy to handle even without a tripod. Focusing isn't this lens's forte, but certainly not an issue. The piezo drive is very cool. While not as quiet as I expected, it's still a lot quieter than the Sony lenses I've tried (18-55 and 30/2.8). And the focus seems to be there, so no complaints. Now I've seen some people complain that it's slow. Yes, the transition from one extreme to the other takes a little longer than with some lenses, but it usually dies down quickly. And overall speed. Again, this isn't a feature of this lens, but it's not a problem. Most of my photos are taken indoors in relatively low light. Even when zoomed out, the lens is fast enough to capture most handheld shots. Of course, this also depends on your camera, but most modern cameras work quite comfortably in the ISO 800/1600 range. Image quality was good. Even in extreme cases, I don't notice any serious loss of quality. This thing is MILES ahead of my previous cheap Sigma 70-300 lens! Sure, there's some softness at 270, but it's barely noticeable. I can't say I ran fully synthetic tests to see how severe the distortion might be or how sharp the corners are, but I see no reason to be picky. This lens has everything I expected from it and even more. There will be times when you need something faster, maybe something sharper or something that can focus closer. You can get a good prime and/or macro lens to cover those bases. But for 90% of basic photography, this lens delivers everything you could want from your camera.