drekka's reviews

Tamron 18-250mm f/3.5-6.3 Di II LD Aspherical IF Macro AF

I bought this lens just before going to Thailand and Cambodia on holiday. I had just purchased a Pentax K10D and needed a good vacation lens. having had a Tamron in the past I naturally had a preference for one, although one or two others such as Sigma where also rans.

Generally speaking I found the lens to do everything I had read here. However the reason for writing these comments is a major issue I found when adding filters to it. Something that I didn't find commented on in the reviews or comments.

Normally I like to run around with a UV filter on to protect the lens and when outside, a polariser. What I found was that even with just one filter on, the shots at the 18mm wide end had heavy corner shading in the corners. Sometimes going right to black. Obviously the edge of the frame in at the wide end is right next to the edge of the glass so in adding a filter you effectively block off the corners of the picture. Effectively with 1 and especially two filters, the zoom range is more like 100mm - 250mm.

This was not something that occured to me to check for in a lens as I've never encountered it before. Certainly in future I will be checking for it. But I wanted to write it up here for others to consider.

I'd also like to ask the slgear reviewers to check the lens with at least 1 filter in place when doing a review.

Thanks
Derek