TAMRON 18-200 mm VC Di III : Good

February 13, 2020

TAMRON 18-200 mm VC Di III : Good

Excellent travel & everyday lens.

I bought one of these a few weeks ago after comparing reviews between this and the sony equivilent and am very pleased with it so far. I have two nex 6s and an nex 5n and have used it on all three without any issues ( a couple of reviews have said there were focussing problems etc. ) so far other than one minor niggle, that being the start up time, it takes a couple of seconds to kick in when you turn on the camera which can be all it takes to miss a shot. The weight in the hand feels comfortable, easy enough to carry around one handed. I have 2 nikon slrs as well as the sonys and am going to new york for a week in may, first time there and the nikons seemed the obvious choice to take especially as i have an 18-300mm for the nikon but to be honest, nice as the extra 100mm is i’m happy with the reach of the tamron and after a lot of side by side testing of one of my d7100s versus an nex 6 i’d say the nex 6 and tamron take equally good pictures (in a lot of instances i actually found i preferred the nex shots cdespite the d7100s bigger pixel count). The d7100 and 18-300mm are pretty heavy and bulky in the hand and i really didn’t fancy wandering around ny, especially as it’ll be pretty warm then by all accounts, with a big camera on my shoulder or in my hand and i didn’t want to be constantly zipping and unzipping a camera bag, the tamron / nex6 combo is less conspicuous and so more convenient just to carry by hand. All in all i’m very happy with the lens (just wish sony would make a teleconverter ) and would happily recommend it, just dropped the one star for the start up lag.

This lens is a great addition to my collection lennses came well packaged in the box and was suprised with the quality of the lens itself nice feel, lock to the camra smoothly and fits firm with no movment or shake, feels good in your hand and when the zoom lens is fully extended it does not collape on itself like the sony version. Overall this is a great lens and would recomend it to anybody who was on the fence.

Much smaller than i expected but heavy for it’s size, the weight however balances the camera well so this is not an issue.

Not too heavy or bulky + not too obtrusive = ideal for candid shots.

What can you say about this lens other than it is well made and does the job. I have used it only a few times so far but it has met my expectations.

With super-zooms it’s always the same:i buy them for their convenience, knowing that they will not deliver as a prime lens does, but then i luckily have a couple of those as well so i don’t bother too much. After all, i just want a walk-around lens, right?. So the ‘add to basket’-button is activated. Then comes the first field test on a sunny day. I’m so happy i can take a close portrait directly after framing a huge landscape. I don’t miss a shot and everything works out just fine. Until i come home and see what i got on my computer: soft edges, smudgy contrast, distortion and chromatic aberations galore. . That is what i bought a dslr for?.Hell, i could have sticked to my bridge-camand the ‘not so super’-zoom goes right back to the dealer.

I don’t have time to write a great review however what i will say is that you can read all about this elsewhere but what you won’t read and what i have come to find is that if you are planning on taking any action shots. It uses only 5 pdaf points of the 190 odd that the a6000 has. Other than that its a great lens. However, it isn’t good enough for my needs so i have returned it.

Great lens, good for street photography !
Solid Tamron lens
Great lens

Tamron 18-200 mm VC Di III for Sony NEX – Silver

Make sure this fits
by entering your model number.
Light & compact all-in-one zoom lens designed exclusively for Sony’s mirrorless series of cameras
Specialized glass elements for crisp, flawless images
Three-coil electromagnetic VC (Vibration Compensation) system
Stepping motor driven AF mechanism provides fast, fine tuned and superbly quiet focussing
DMF (Direct Manual Focus) feature allows fine manual adjustments to the autofocus system

I’ve been using this on my nex5n for just over a week now and am really impressed – very quiet and fast,great image quality, just what i needed – i use the camera mainly for travelling, where size and weight are critical. A few weeks ago i bought the la2 adaptor so i could use my existing sony lenses (especially my 18-250), but with adaptor and lens fitted, i might as well have taken my dslr(so la2 returned). Instead, bought this and am very pleased. It is far lighter and smaller than the sony 18-200, and while it is not cheap, it is £200 less than the sony. And as i said earlier, the image quality seems to be very good – far better than i’d anticipated from a zoom. Will update after a couple of moths use, but so far so good.

Excellent lens for the sony nex5r, a pity the camera isn’t supplied with this lens as original equipment. Makes the standard 18-55mm lens redundent.

I think wolf’s head was unlucky, i think that the lens meets and surpasses expectations. It’s relatively sharp through most of its range and it’s focus is fast acceptable for stills- not so good for video. I would rate the lens 8/10 for build- 7/10 for performance, great travel lens.