Which wide-to-tele zoom?
There are five choices of ‘kit’ lens available for Sony Alpha DSLRs –
18-70mm, 16-80mm, 16-105mm, 18-200mm and 18-250mm.
N
o other DSLR maker offers the five focal length ranges of zoom
such a wide choice of possible offered currently under the Sony label
standard or kit zooms as Sony. with – or without – bodies in kits.
Two of the lenses, the 18-200mm Which would be the
and the 18-250mm, are close cousins best choice for you?
of Tamron models with the same
specifications, and in discussing
Cost
them here some our opinions are
based on using the Konica Minolta At the bottom end we get the basic
18-200mm and Tamron 18-250mm. SAL 18-70mm ƒ3.5-5.6 DT kit lens,
Users have different require- with a nominal price of £129.50 but
ments. Shirley and I shoot with a an actual price of around £50 when
different eye. I have loved extreme included in a kit. This lightweight
wide-angles since discovering 17mm lens takes 55mm filters but the
on full frame film back around 1974. front rotates as it focuses, making
Shirley prefers to be able to isolate polarisers difficult to use. It has
small close-up details of people, no focus scale, just a skinny ring
plants and animals and often ends behind the minimal clip-on lens
up at the long end of any lens. hood for manual focus; when you
This is no bad thing when you In our studio, a CZ 16-80mm with a year’s use and a brand new 16-105mm. The grip this at 70mm, you can feel the
travel and shoot side-by-side. Of scruffy ribbed grip of the Carl Zeiss is inevitable; you can’t handle these lenses for entire front unit wobble freely.
course we often get a similar shot, five minutes without the grip picking up particles or dirt from the cleanest hands. The 18-70mm is actually surpris-
but most of the time our angles These rubber grips are surprisingly thick and could not be removed and replaced ingly good by kit lens standards,
of view are different extremes. with leather or any similar new skin. They are part of the lens barrel. preferable to the low-cost 18-55mm
When we last used film, Shirley’s models offered by other makes not
normal lens on a Dynax 7xi was the just because it has a better range
35-200mm ƒ3.5-5.6 xi zoom while and wider apertures at middle
I shot with a pair of Minolta CLE focal lengths. It performs better.
rangefinder cameras using 20mm, If your interests mean you
28mm, 40mm, 90mm and 135mm need a longer lens such as the
lenses. We replaced the 35-200mm 75-300mm ƒ4.5-5.6 Sony SAL, the
with a Tamron 28-300mm ƒ3.5-6.3 18-70mm is an ideal choice to pair
XR for travelling but the optical with it. Both are lightweight, both
quality suffered. Moving to digital, I take 55mm filters, and they form
bought a Tamron 11-18mm ultrawide an almost contiguous 18-300mm
zoom as soon as they were available range. It also pairs well with the
and used it with a 24-105mm and new 55-200mm ƒ4-5.6 DT lens.
100-300mm. Shirley got a Konica One reason for buying this type
Minolta 18-200mm, the digital of kit might be that there are two
equivalent of the 28-300mm but of you – or two camera bodies.
much improved in performance. Next up in the price group is the
When the Tamron 18-250mm Sony SAL 18-200mm ƒ3.5-6.3 DT.
arrived, with even better optics, The Tamron-based 18-250mm (left, highly recommended) and 18-200mm (best This lens is identical to the Konica
the 18-200mm was replaced and ignored unless you already have one, as the 18-250mm is so much better). Note Minolta model in a redesigned finish,
sold. Much the same happened the focusing scale. These slow-focusing zooms have exceptional long distance ac- and lacks the zoom lock which the
with the 24-105mm when the curacy with even 100ft marked on the 18-250mm. Note the zoom lock too. Tamron variant has. This lock allows
16-80mm Carl Zeiss became you set the zoom to its shortest 18mm
available, but we kept the 24-105mm The humble 18-70mm kit lens is a parked position and fix it securely, so
for a possible full frame body. mixed bag. On the on hand, it offers that it can not extend with the help of
Along the line we acquired second-best close up ability, matching gravity. Although the 18-200mm has
(and sold) at least three of the any other non-macro lens in the Sony been offered as a very good kit deal
18-70mm ƒ3.5-5.6 KM or Sony kit range except the 18-250mm. It weighs with the Alpha 100, adding under
lenses, because the only cameras very little and costs less. But it’s an £300 to the outfit despite its £399
available were in kits. Recently, we ƒ5.6 lens for most of its focal length retail price, we would not advise it
bought a 16-105mm ƒ3.5-5.6 Sony range, and the ƒ3.5 only applies to unless the apparent extra cost is less
SAL from London Camera Exchange use at exactly 18mm, a mere token to than £200 over an 18-70mm combo.
Colchester, who had them avail- make the lens appear faster. Would you The optical performance is
able separately when even Sony ever have imagined buying a 35mm acceptable at the long end and a
themselves were unable to supply ƒ5.6 lens for an SLR in the past? Of superior to the 18-70mm within
a review sample on its own. course not! Well, that’s what you get that range, but all the three of the
So, since the launch of the Dynax here. Any of the lenses above will be a alernative wider range zooms are
7D four years ago we have used all of big step up in speed and versatility. better. Also, the zoom action will
photoworld 24
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