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Taken on a handheld Nikon D300 at ISO800, the shots above were with the Tamron 18-270mm lens at 92mm with a shutter speed of 1/10sec. The shot with VC is on the right. The 18-270mm's macro coverage is very similar to its predecessor's, which is to say perfectly respectable, although it's now soundly beaten by Sigma's latest 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM. Our measured closest focus distance (at full telephoto, in manual focus) is 43cm, slightly shorter than Tamron's specified 0.49m. Note that you won't be able to autofocus quite so close. Tamron's Vibration Compensation system helps a lot with the slow maximum aperture of the lens, improving the sharpness of images taken at low shutter speeds. Tripod detection isn't present though, so this feature will need to be switched off when used with a support.
When it comes to image quality, the Batis is the best of these three. The Batis delivers good sharpness in the corners even at full aperture, and the contrast is beautiful. The Tamron does nearly as well, which is special because the Tamron, like the Samyang, costs about a third of the Zeiss. Compared to these two lenses, we see that the Samyang is almost as good in the center at full aperture but clearly less sharp in the corners. That improves reasonably well when you stop down, so around f/5.6 and f/8, the corners are also fine. Another typical feature of the Samyang is that both the overall contrast and the microcontrast are somewhat low. As a result, the shots look slightly less spicy, and you just don’t get the quality you get with the other two wide angles. 18mm or 20mm, does that make much difference? See for yourself. Above, the Samyang AF 18 mm f/2.8 FE. Below: the Tamron 20 mm f/2.8 Di III OSD We take 10 shots at each shutter speed and visually rate them for sharpness. Shots considered 'sharp' have no visible blur at the pixel level, and are therefore suitable for viewing or printing at the largest sizes, whereas files with 'mild blur' are only slightly soft, and perfectly usable for all but the most critical applications. Chromatic aberration is most pronounced at the two ends of the zoom - there's barely any in the middle of the range (around 100mm). At both 18mm and 270mm it gives visually-objectionable green/magenta fringing. Note that Nikon SLRs will compensate for this in their JPEG processing, but other brands won't.
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. The Google Pixel 6 may not be the latest Google smartphone any more, but it might still be the best value At approx €500 this is the perfect travel lens imho as it is simply very good at what it is designed for. Toss the kit lens and start out with this one if you are an amateur and you will manage most situations. I have even shot a wedding with this lens, both indoors and outside. Very silent AF and much improved build and feel from the Tamron Di-II. The K-3 performs very well with this lens. Examples: I spent far more days than I want to think about trying to create a set of outdoor image quality comparisons to show you in addition to the ISO 12233 Chart Tool results. If I compare side-by-side the DA18-250mm and DA18-270mm, I am very impressed by the AF of the DA18-270mm, its speed, reasonable accuracy and it is almost silent. IMHO, the AF is a major improvement over the DA18-250mm.
Vignetting is certainly clearly visible at full aperture. Fortunately, after stopping down, at f/4, it already gets a lot better, and at f/5.6, you can hardly see any of it anymore. Get the latest photography news straight to your inbox by signing up to our newsletter. Newsletter Signup The Samyang AF 18 mm F2.8 FE has two major competitors: the Zeiss Batis 18 mm f/2.8 and the Tamron 20 mm f/2.8 Di III OSD M1:2. The Batis because it has the same field of view and brightness as the Samyang. The Tamron because it is reasonably in the same price range as the Samyang and hardly weighs any more. There are, of course, differences. For example, the Zeiss is much bigger, heavier and, above all, much more expensive. The Batis costs three times as much as the Samyang. The Tamron only costs a fraction more than the Samyang. For that, you get a good seal against moisture and dust extra but give up 2mm of wide angle. Samyang AF 18mm f/2.8 FE – Tamron 20mm f/2.8 Di III OSD – Zeiss Batis 18mm f/2.8 At 18mm sharpness is impressive right across the frame even wide open, and improves only marginally on stopping down, with best results around F5.6. The lens gets progressively softer on zooming in, however, with the corners of the frame suffering more than the centre. At longer focal lengths it's generally best shot at F8 or even F11 whenever possible. The lens lets you stop down to very small apertures, especially at the long end, but these are generally best avoided as sharpness is poor due to diffraction.
Specifications
Diverse werken uit het oeuvre van de Fine Art fotograaf Frank van Driel (Leiden, 1966) worden tentoongesteld in Galerie Persoon. […] When I first had my K3 I went up to the local country park and pointed the lens towards Canary Wharf which was 13 miles away from where I was standing. I took a handheld shot and when I enlarged just a small section of the frame up, I could count the windows on the buildings. This shot was through all the mist and air pollution. I was amazed at the result, especially as it was handheld. Here is a link to my section of the frame on Facebook (if it works) https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10202244890700773&l=9912f3d9e3 Tamron doesn't make a Pentax-fit model, but the recently-announced Pentax smc DA 18-270mm F3.5-6.3 ED SDM is in all probability essentially the same lens, again without the VC module. There’s also fairly strong barrel distortion at wideangle, turning to pincushion across most of the remainder of the range. At the two extremes of the zoom, strong green and magenta colour fringing is visible in the corners of the image due to lateral chromatic aberration, along with very noticeable vignetting at maximum aperture. These are archetypal characteristics of long-range zooms. Some shots are straight out of the camera, while others are edited via In-Camera Raw Processing and Adobe Lightroom Classic.
Distortion begins at 18mm as rather strong barrel distortion (moderately bulged-in-the-middle / wavy) Just Arriving Used Gear at B&H: EOS R5, R5 C, RF 16, Sony a7C R, a7C II, FE 12-24, 16-35 II, 200-600, 135, 100-400, 70-200 F4 II, RRS Ascend-14 Long Integrated The difference between 200mm and 250/270mm is noticeable, but not dramatic when looking at the overall range covered by these lenses. Two chunky, positive switches on the side of the lens barrel set the focus and image stabilization modes. You can't adjust focus manually when the lens is set to AF (or at least, you shouldn't try). Chromatic aberrations are not bad but can be found at full aperture in the corners. That decreases with a bit of stopping down. The contrast of the Samyang AF 18mm F2.8 FE is a fraction lower than we see with other wide-angles for Sony. The color reproduction is also a little warmer. Whether you like that or not is of course a matter of taste, and if necessary you can easily adjust it in post-processing. COMPARED TO THE COMPETITION
Sharpness
It is a plastic lens body with a metal rear mount bayonet. To be honest, the experience is not as good as the metal-constructed lenses, but it still feels solid and does not feel cheap on my hand. Rotating the zoom ring is smooth while giving you some little friction. Do note that when the lens zooms to 300mm, the physical length of the lens does extend to almost 3/4 times its original length. Sharpness is measured at the centre and edge of the frame and across the aperture range. Levels of sharpness across the frame are good for a superzoom lens The Xiaomi 12T Pro offers a whopping 200MP main camera, but how does this perform, and do the other cameras deliver? Joshua Waller puts it through its paces. Another thing that I like about this lens and I think it is worth mentioning. If I want to change the focal length from 18mm to 300mm, all it takes is to rotate the zoom ring 45°, and I have arrived at 300mm.
The 18-270mm uses Tamron's Piezo Drive (PZD) motor for autofocus. When shooting with the optical viewfinder our Canon mount sample was near-silent in use, and decisive even at full telephoto. But it's not the fastest around, and noticeably slower than the Sigma 18-250mm HSM used on the same (Canon) body. As always, though, it must be noted that focus speed and accuracy is dependent upon a number of variables, including the camera body used, subject contrast, and light levels. CA (Chromatic Aberration) is somewhat strong in the mid and corner portions of the frame at 18mm, improves until CA is essentially gone at 50mm. The Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC Lens' CA characteristics are in-line with the other currently available super zooms. In this case, I carefully shot 651 shots handheld as motionless as possible - and then evaluated the results.
Overall conclusion
Tamron’s new AF 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD superzoom is all about speed. The introduction of a Piezo Drive (PZD) motor means the AF system should perform much faster and more silently than the previous Tamron 18-270mm model.
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