Tamron AF18-250mm
02 NOV 2007
Launch price
£400.00
Stuff says
Not the highest quality lens you’ll ever buy but the Tamron is by far the most convenient and the best in its class
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Stuff.tv hot buy
Much as we'd never like to leave the house without our trusty DSLR, a collection of razor sharp prime lenses, some wide angle glasswear and a sports-pap-worthy telephoto barrel, we find that carting the whole caboodle around, and swapping between lenses for every shot, can be a tad impractical.
Thank Tamron, then, for its new superzoom that covers the whole gamut from respectable-wide-angle to close-up-zoom in one tidy piece of glass that can stay on all day.
Superzoom returns
This new model turns the superzoom dial up to 11, going 50mm further than the old Tamron. It starts at the same 18mm as its Sigma and Nikon rivals but while they stop extending at 200mm, this baby goes all the way to 250mm.
Strap it on your DSLR and, thanks to the added zoom effect of digital, it'll translate to the equivalent of a satisfyingly wide 27mm to a massive 375mm zoom in old 35mm film money.
By tailoring it to the smaller sensor sizes of digital SLRs, size has been kept to a minimum but it means it won't work with any of your older film cameras or any DSLRs with full-frame sensors such as the Canon EOS 5D. Being a Tamron, though, you can buy a version to fit every camera make, excluding Olympus, that is – sorry Four Thirds fans.