Sweetgum Spring
Using a lens, a camera, or any other piece of equipment is a relationship, so to speak. I’ve had my Tamron 18-270mm lens since about December 18th. So, it’s been just over 3 months. With it I have shot approximately 2000 photos, I would guess. I cannot be sure because this year I have been doing a lot of deleting of photos that I didn’t like, etc. Clean up, if you will.
During the first month, it was constantly on my camera. After that, it was on my camera most of the time. Now, just slightly more than 50% of the time. The novelty is wearing off. Like in any relationship, you are first attracted, perhaps, for physical reasons. I mean, what’s not to like? It’s somewhat compact, has a range of 18-270mm, and is not all that heavy. As the relationshihp progressed, I noticed that it had a huge amount of lens creep and it was somewhat sticky between the 100mm and 200mm zoom ranges. No problem. I just got used to holding the barrel, lens creep gone, and twisting slightly harder when I felt resistance. These were minor annoyances.
Chromatic Aberration
Most recently, I noticed that the lens has a large amount of chromatic aberration at the long end of the zoom. This is readily apparent if you focus on an object against the sky, as in the above picture. If zoomed to 100%, before the correction, you could see both red/cyan and blue/yellow CA. It was VERY visible. I noticed that CA causes the photo to look less sharp. Correcting it using Lightroom’s tools takes away the CA and restores some of the sharpness.
Lacking “Wow” factor
I tried to judge this lens on its own merits, but it’s hard not to compare. After taking quite a few shots, I started to notice that the images coming forth lacked a certain punch. They had decent contrast and saturation, but something was missing. Sharpness. Each photo had to be sharpened, sometimes quite a bit to look sharp. At first, I blamed the user, thinking that I walk around with the lens a lot and rarely use a tripod with it. Also, I take advantage of the VR and shoot at shutter speeds lower than I would normally shoot.
I had a feeling about it for a while, but didn’t do anything to dispel nor confirm that ‘feeling’. Yesterday, when I was taking pictures of Hobbs, I was using my 90mm Tamron macro lens. When I loaded the photos into Lightroom, my first thought was: “Wow! Those pictures are sharp!”. That is what the 18-270mm lens is lacking. That out of the ‘box’ razor sharpness. The photos of Hobbs, I didn’t have to sharpen at all. I compared them to some of the shots that I had taken with the 18-270mm that I had taken on a tripod, and the 90mm was still sharper off the tripod. Not really scientific, but it works for me as a comparison.
Overall, this is a very competent lens. You will get the shot. It will be of acceptable quality, but you will have to spend some time with the sharpening tools.
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