All-in-one superzoom lenses are ideal for travel as they are flexible and easy to pack.
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The Holiday season is finally here and what could be nicer than a week or two in an exotic location, equipped with an SLR and a full set of lenses and accessories? It sounds ideal, but for most of us it’s a sure-fire for peeved partners, frustrated friends and bored children. Indeed, some photographers choose to leave the DSLR at home and make do with a compact camera for holiday snaps. But there’s a better way. You do not need to get bogged down with loads of kit while you are on holiday. Whether you are on the beach, hiking in the hills or getting acquainted with local culture, your trusty DSLR and a single lenses is often all you need for top-quality creative shots. Especially if the lens happens to be a superzoom, as we are testing here. As well as cutting out the extra weight, excess baggage and general inconvenience of carrying around multiple lenses, a superzoom has another key advantage for holiday shooting. Picture yourself standing on a sandy beach with a fresh sea breeze blowing in off the ocean. You want to switch to a telephoto lens to capture some surfing action, only to suffer the instant panic of wondering how much of the sand blowing around will end up dumped on your camera’s sensor. With a superzoom, all you need is a quick flick of the wrist and you are ready to start shooting. Enven in the cleanest, most dust-free environments, superzoom lenses still have the dege when it comes to reacting to surprising situations. With the capability to switch instantly from a wide angle to a telephoto focal length, and anything in between, you are ready for any photo opportunity that presents itself suddenly. You can be shooting a wide-angle landscape one second, then zooming in for a close-up of passing wildlife the next. |
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| How Good is that ?
If superzooms are so great, what is the point of limiting yourself to prime lens, or a lens with a more modest zoom range? Inevitably, a massive zoom range comes with compromise. First off, prime lenses tend to be faster, with a bigger maximum aperture. This is great for blurring the background with a small depth of field, as well as for avoiding camera shake at fast sutter speeds. That said, superzoom lenses enable a fairly shallow depth of field at their smaller maximum apertures if you shoot at the |
longer end of the zoom range. Many superzoom lenses also have built-in optical stabilisation, which typically gives a four-stop advantage in fending off camera shake. Olympus, Pentax and Sony superzooms lack optical stabilisation, but current camera bodies from these manufacturers generally have effective sensor-shift stabilisation instead. Sure, any amount of stabilisation can not counteract movement on the part of the subject being photographed, but then again, the latest SLRs maintain very good image quality at fairly high ISO settings, so you can still get fast shutter speeds when you need them. | ||
| “Even in the cleanest, most dust-free environments, superzoom lenses still have the edge when it comes to reacting to surprising situations” |
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| Quality Control
Compared with a basic prime lens, a superzoom will often have around 3 times as many elements built into a complex array of groups that move back and forth to enable an extremely large zoom range. Ultimately, the trade-off for the extra convenience is a loss in image quality. Most zoom lenses suffer from noticeable barrel distortion at the wide-angle end and pincushion distortion at the telephoto end. With superzoom lenses, these distortions can be more pronounced, but some camera bodies have options for making automatic corrections at the shooting stage. Otherwise, you can apply distortion correction in Photoshop when editing your images. Chromatic aberration, also called colour fringing, tends to be more prominent in superzoom lenses. These fringes are usually most noticeable around high-contrast lines, such as tree branches shot against the sky, and towards the edges and corners of the frame. Agin, though, current Nikon and Pentax cameras can apply corrections automatically while shooting. Otherwise, it’s another job for Photoshop. RAW-processing programs are usually effective at correcting chromatic aberrations, but given the often large data sizes of RAW files, many of us prefer to shoot in JPEG mode for holiday snaps.
In Focus
Of these, the Sigma and Tamron optics have small ultrasonic motors which, while fairly quiet, are not any quicker than conventional alternatives. It’s only the Nikon 18-200mm that boasts the more advanced ring-type variant of ultrasonic autofocus, which is fast and features full-time manual focus override. So,let’s take a closer look at what each of the lenses has to offer. |
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| Zoom range18-200mm has become a standard for APS-C cameras. 18-250mm and 18-270mm lenses push the boundaries with extra telephoto reach, equivalent to around 28-380mm and 28-405mm. | Distance scaleThis is use ful for setting the hyperfocal distance using manual focus, or for adjuxting flashgun power. Most lenses have a distance scale, but it’s lacking on the Canon, Olympus and Pentax here. | AutofocusThe Nikon optic has the most refined, ring-type ultrasonic autofocus system. But it’s not the only lens in the group to feature full-time manual override-the Olympus and Pentax also have this ability. | ||
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| Maximum apertureAll the lenses in the group offer a maximum aperture of f/3.5 at the wide-angle end of the zoom range. But while Canon, Nikon and Pentax lenses manage f/5.6 at the telephoto end, others are slower at f/6.3. | Zoom lockThe length of the lens barrel can almost double at the telephoto end of the zoom range. A zoom lock switch is good for keeping the lens locked at it’s shotest setting to avoid any knocks and scrapes. | Optical stabiliserOptical stabilisation is great, especially for Canon and Nikon bodies that lack sensor-shift stabilisation. This is especially true for superzooms, with long telephoto abilities and slower maximim apertures. | ||
Superzoom Lenses Comparision & Ratings |
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Canon EF-S 18-200MM F/3.5-5.6 IS FEATURES ★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★★★ OVERALL ★★★
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FEATURES ★★★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★★ VALUE ★★★★★ OVERALL ★★★★★
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FEATURES ★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★★ OVERALL ★★★
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FEATURES ★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★ OVERALL ★★★
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FEATURES ★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★★ OVERALL ★★★
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FEATURES ★★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★★ OVERALL ★★★
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FEATURES ★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★ OVERALL ★★★
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FEATURES ★★★★ BUILD QUALITY ★★★★ IMAGE QUALITY ★★★ VALUE ★★★★ OVERALL ★★★★
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OLYMPUS ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 18-180MM F/3.5-6.3
SIGMA 18-200MM F/3.5-6.3 DC OS
