this is the new tamron 18 to 300 for sony aps-c let's go test it
stop number one i'm gonna try and catch some of the swans out on the lake out here
and maybe some of the sunrise at the little cabin that's over there on the shore
all right spot number two there's just fantastic reflections off the water and the sun's just
coming up over the mountains over here so we're gonna grab this with some photos real quick
so we're in seward it is a beautiful day here um and right over here is this old boat and a
bunch of houses that go down the shore i think it's gonna be a good time to test kind of and
just play with this lens and some like layer stacking and compression with the mountains
in the background so we'll be down the beach walk down here a little ways and see what we
can capture with this thing and by the way tamron did send this lens to me for review
but they're not paying for this review and they're not getting to see or have any input
into this video before it's launched so these are my opinions of testing this lens here in alaska
all right so first of all this does have stabilization built in which is extremely helpful
when i'm shooting at longer focal lengths shooting some of those at like 200 millimeters handheld
also holding it out like this without the evf which really makes a big difference uh just
shooting at handheld like this is really a lot more difficult without an evf so stabilization
works well i'm surprised how how much it helps and how much it adds and then when you add the
active stabilization built into this the sony zve10 um yeah pretty solid combo i was surprised
those photos look pretty sweet the backdrop certainly helps it's not half bad for a place to
try out a lens that will go from 18 millimeters or what is about 27 millimeters in full frame
equivalent to 300 millimeters aka 450 millimeters in full form equivalent because you're on an aps-c
lens so does that mean you could shoot like me here and then something across the water exactly
something cool that doesn't happen very often is jevin dobby has been
here with me for five days and we've been running all over the state of alaska but
he's been filming a behind the scenes look at this video and how i make a lot of my videos
so that will be linked in the description you should definitely go check it out if you want
to see a behind the scenes glimpse of what it takes to film tests and reviews here in alaska
i also want to try out the macro capability of the lens because from what i understand you can
actually get a really close focal distance at the wide end which i'm excited to try
testing the close focus distance of the 18 to 300 actually got me some really surprising results i
personally i like the way the the bokeh falls off the autofocus areas fall off
i feel like it's pretty smooth and pretty nice the transitions
and the the fact that you can focus like an inch away or even closer at the wide end is
insane at the long end you're more like about two feet but then you're at like 300 millimeters
450 millimeters if you're full frame equivalent which means two feet away you just completely
blow everything out and get some really cool gradients depending on what your background
is but you can do some really creative things with this lens and i uh it's fun to play with
so this is me just hand holding it active stabilization on the camera's turned on and
the lens space stabilization on the lens is turned on too but i'm using my tripod as a
little bit of a selfie stick so i'm getting a little further away it definitely helps but if
we turn active stabilization off we'll lose that crop factor um in the sony the zv e10
and give you a little bit more field of view so let me switch that real quick so now we're in
the standard stabilization which is just the lens based vibration compensation what tamron calls it
which actually works really well i've used it in the 17 to 70 and i was super impressed with
how well it worked in there and um yeah seems to be working pretty well on this one as well
i'm impressed by the image quality coming out of this the amount of zoom range you get
out of this lens is insane you can zoom so far in and get so tight to something
and still get really nice quality photo and really nice quality the one downside is it's not
a constant aperture so it starts at f 3.5 which is decent but not great for low light and then it
goes to f 6.3 at the long end it's not fantastic for shooting in low light but if you run a
sony camera they perform fairly well in low light anyway they're pretty good at high iso performance
and honestly most of what you're going to be shooting with this lens is going to be
in the daylight out shooting wildlife maybe shooting some landscapes um point and shoot stuff
street photography this would be a pretty handy lens because you get a lot of different uh focal
lengths you get a lot of different uses including the macro stuff without having to change your lens
out so it means you can move really fast and get a lot of different options when you're out shooting
in a fast moving environment like if you're on vacation or if you're doing street photography
or something like that overall value it is a weather sealed lens you get a nice little rubber
gasket tamron's been doing really well with their weather sealing my lenses have been tested and
proven in some really harsh conditions and they're still going strong as far as construction it's
constructed like all the other tamron lenses that have been coming out the last few years for sony
it's a kind of composite plastic material which maybe doesn't hold up as well as metal but i can
say from experience having taken mine everywhere for the last few years and in all kinds of harsh
environments it it holds up well it's pretty simple there's no auto you know auto focus on
off switch there's no optical image stabilization on off you do all that through the camera menu it
is a double extending barrel which not necessarily bad i guess it could be potentially a weak point
but in my experience it hasn't been so far they do give you a lock switch which can lock there and so
the lens won't slide open which not a super heavy lens but if you have that off and if you hold the
camera up like this it can start to break loose especially if you're not all the way back at the
18 millimeter point as soon as you come out it it starts to get loose both on the good and maybe
not so good side is the autofocus the autofocus is really fast it's very accurate and it's very
quick especially when you pair it with newer sony bodies that have great autofocus built in
the one caveat is and the one downside is is when you're working with a super zoom like this and
you're zoomed way out at 250 300 millimeters it's difficult for the camera to figure out what you're
trying to focus on normally with a super telephoto lens like this any really long telephoto lens
you want to have a focus limit switch that will eliminate either to where you're doing the full
just everything from close focus to infinity or you want to set it to where it's you know three
meters out from you or 15 meters out from you so it gives the camera an idea of like you know
pretty much all this is far distance or it's still close distance so when you're using this at the
extreme telephoto lens you might have to help the camera find the focus and then once it does it's
great the one gripe i have about it uh and that will be something we'll have to see over time is
the zoom ring isn't super smooth you can kind of feel it uh change the tension as you zoom in or
out now you're going from 18 to 300 millimeters so that's an insane amount of distance but you do
have to kind of get the feel of how it zooms in or out if you want to try and do some smooth zooming
um you know from 18 to 300 millimeters otherwise it it just takes a little bit of getting used to
now that i've been back in the studio and i've been able to look in depth a little deeper
at the photos and video that i shot with this lens i have to say i'm really impressed tamron
has done a fantastic job at delivering spectacular performance in a lens that costs 700 which is
basically an all-in-one lens that you could buy for aps-c either sony or fujifilm x-mount and
be able to shoot pretty much anything you want to shoot definitely the weakest point is the
low-light performance but that is something that's going to be really hard to overcome in a lens that
will go from 18 millimeters to 300 millimeters you're just not going to find something that's
going to perform amazingly well at low light but beyond the low light capability this lens
delivers spectacular image quality across the board they're very sharp very detailed just
really really excellent and with the vibration compensation even at longer focal lengths i've
found that you can get some really solid video and photo even when you're just working handheld now
obviously you put on a tripod you can go even further and get lower light stuff especially
for photos where you can open or slow the shutter speed way down but yeah this this lens is a great
lens if you're shooting aps-c and you're looking for one lens to get started with that will pretty
much cover everything you need for a while a very long while then i can highly recommend this
tamron 18-300 now if you're looking for lenses that work really well with sony cameras i put
together a video right here that goes through some of my favorites and how i like to use them
click or tap there i'll see in one of those videos as always if you have questions ask
me in the comments below or join my live stream wednesday nights at 4 pm alaska time 8 pm eastern
she's got a few miles to hike back home i'll see you again soon in the next video cheers and if you
want to see a behind the scenes of how he made this video that's what i'm doing oh actually