Final Impressions: Tamron AF18-270MM F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD

I recently went to my local wildlife park to do some final testing of the Tamron AF18-270MM F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD lens. I previously published an optical resolution review of the lens, as well as my first impressions. As I have alredy mentioned, I am being compensated by Tamron to test, review, and write about this lens. For my final review, I was hoping to do a lot of wildlife shooting to test the lens’ auto focus and image stabilization. Unfortunately, the local fauna didn’t get the memo, and mostly failed to show up for the event. So I wasn’t able to do as comprehensive a review as I had intended, but I did manage to snap a few shots and come to a few conclusions.

I decided to use the lens as it was intended—as an all-in-one walk around lens. So, unburdened with a tripod and other gear, I wandered around the park’s boardwalk looking for interesting subjects to photograph. It was quite a liberating experience, but unfortunately there wasn’t much to shoot (it’s winter here in Virginia, although with the 60°+ degree weather we’ve been having, you might think it was spring, except without any flowers—everything is fairly brown and uninteresting at the moment). Although the wildlife was scarce, I managed to find some ducks and an egret to photograph. The 18-270mm gave me a fair amount of reach, allowing me to zoom in and capture wildlife that was twenty or thirty feet away.

I’m used to using specialized, expensive, high quality telephoto prime and zoom lenses for my wildlife work, so I wasn’t expecting the Tamron 18-270mm to perform on the same level. That said, it seemed to do the job more than adequately. The lens’ auto focus worked reasonably well in full light conditions, and it was relatively quiet (I didn’t get a chance to test the lens in low light conditions, but the lens did handle tricky backlighting about as well as most of my other lenses). Below is a 100% crop of the above shot. The lens shows very good resolution, even when zoomed out to 270mm, although I did stop down to f/11 for this shot. As I demonstrated in my previous review, this lens benefits from a little bit of stopping down in the higher part of its zoom range.

The auto focus performed admirably when trying to capture an egret in flight, as shown in the sharp capture below. The lens does not have a focus limiter, which is a useful feature common with high-end telephoto lenses, so if the Tamron couldn’t find focus it would hunt through its range, often getting stuck in the macro end. This is not uncommon with lenses of this type, and by no means a black mark, but it is something to consider if you plan on doing a lot of wildlife work.

The image stabilization also seemed to work well. I even managed corner to corner sharp images in low light at 1/15th of a second handheld (when the lens was at 18mm). I didn’t do much comprehensive testing of the image stabilization, however, but I didn’t notice any glaring problems.

Overall, I find this lens to be a surprisingly strong performer. This lens does exactly what it is supposed to do: it covers a wide range of focal lengths, with very good overall optical performance, all in a compact package and with a relatively inexpensive price. For the general enthusiast with a crop-sensor camera looking for a single walk-around lens for travel, nature, and the occasional wildlife photography, the Tamron 18-270mm is a good buy.

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About Ian Plant (275 Posts)

Ian Plant's photographs and instructional articles have appeared in a number of books, calendars, and magazines, including Outdoor Photographer and Popular Photography. Ian writes a regular blog column for Outdoor Photographer online, and he is the author of numerous instructional eBooks and digital processing tutorials. Ian leads several photo tours each year.

Tags: tamron 18-270mm, Tamron AF18-270MM F/3.5-6.3 Di II VC PZD

5 Comments

Derek Lyons January 31, 2012 at 11:09 am

“if the Tamron couldn’t find focus it would hunt through its range”

Hmm? Autofocus calculations are performed in the camera, not the lens. The lens is more-or-less inert and dependent on drive commands from the camera.
Ian Plant January 31, 2012 at 11:15 am

Hi Derek, you are correct that the camera controls autofocus. However, the lens is not completely inert in this: the lens’ maximum aperture will affect how well the camera’s auto focus performs (especially in low light), as will the speed of its auto focus motor. Of course, whether the lens has a focus limiter or not will also affect performance. I guess I was being somewhat imprecise in my language, what I really meant to say was that the “lens handled the camera’s autofocus commands in the following ways” but for simplicity’s sake I talked about it the way I did. The bottom line is that some lenses are quick and responsive to the camera’s auto focus commands, some are not – this lens seems to land in the former territory rather than the latter. It is not umcommon for lens reviewers to talk about a lens’ auto focus characteristics, but of course you are correct that the lens is the “junior partner” in the whole autofocus business.
Lance Warley January 31, 2012 at 3:44 pm

That’s some sweet backlighting on the last shot, Ian. Yummy!
Matt Hansen February 2, 2012 at 12:43 am

Interesting info about the lens, and nice Tamron is shelling out for your opinion! The convenience factor is something to be weighed, especially for situations where a 500mm+/tripod could be overkill. There’s always a market I suppose.

Looks like you were at Huntley Meadows? I don’t visit there often as water-level angles are taken out of the equation with the boardwalk being so high, but I actually went today. Other than the Pintail’s being 4-billion feet away I had the same experience as you…Mallards, Egret, Canada Goose. Although, at dusk a good 300 RWB came out calling on the cattails. The monotone/dead setting of the park right now set off the male’s pretty nicely.
- Ian Plant February 2, 2012 at 2:19 pm
  
  Hi Matt, yeah, you’re right, I was at Huntley. Not much going on there right now, everything is flooded, I didn’t see any RWB when I was there but I did see a lot of crows. When the red wings are there is the best time to go shooting, IMO.