What Photo Gear

Aside from its 18-270mm VC Ultra-Zoom, Tamron has also announced a new 10-24mm Ultra-Wide lens for Nikon and Canon mounts.

Covering a 16-37mm zoom range (in 35mm terms) this f/3.5 - f/4.5 lens also features a minimum focus distance of about .24m though out its entire zoom range.

Tamron is probably going to price this lens just above the excellent Sigma 10-20mm (currently at just over $500 at Amazon.com) but well below Canon’s 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5 and Nikon’s 12-24mm f/4.0. Or for those of you who might see a Nikon D700 or D3 or a Canon 6D (or any full-frame DSLR) in your future - you might also want to look into the Sigma 12-24mm f/4.5 - 5.6 which can cover the full 35mm frame, something which all the other previously mentioned ‘digital only’ ultra-wide lenses can’t!

The Tamron 10-24mm f/3.5 - 4.5 will be available in Japan in late September 2008, and should make its way to the rest of the world in time for Christmas. We will have sample images here on WhatPhotogear.com as soon as they become available. Stay tuned!

Tamron has just announced a new ultra-zoom lens, initially available in Nikon and Canon mounts. The Tamron 18-270mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II VC LD Aspherical (IF) Macro covers a whopping 28-419mm zoom range (in 35mm terms) - that’s a 15x zoom!

The VC stands for Tamron’s Vibration Correction feature (similar to Canon’s Image Stabilization (IS) and Nikon’s Vibration Reduction (VR) ) - which should ideally give you a 2-3 stop advantage when hand-holding the lens.

Other features include a minimum-focusing distance of about .49m over the entire zoom range and a maximum magnification ration of about 1:35 at 270mm, on paper, this looks to be the ultimate ultra-zoom yet - the only significant potential downside so far is it being an f/6.3 towards the long-end of the zoom.

All-in-all, this looks to be quite an interesting lens for Tamron - a 15x zoom definitely has its upsides, especially if you don’t want to be carrying around too many lenses. But with Nikon’s 18-200 VR finally becoming widely available, and Canon having just announced its own 18-200 IS zoom lens, not too mention Sigma’s 18-200 OS lens - it’s getting pretty crowded in ultra-zoom territory.

This lens is scheduled for a Sept 20th release in Japan. We’ll get you sample images as soon as we can. Stay tuned.