An APS-C format DSLR has distinct advantages as a
travel camera, whether you’re city-hopping or jetting
off to the other side of the world. The camera body
itself tends to be reasonably compact and lightweight, and its
accompanying lenses are typically smaller and lighter than full-
frame compatible counterparts. But what if you could save even
more space by shelving the whole interchangeable lens ethos
and just travelling with a single lens? That’s the big idea behind
the ‘superzoom’.
Not only for travel, superzoom lenses are great for event
photography and any scenario where you need to switch quickly
and efficiently between wide-angle, standard and telephoto focal
lengths. It’s certainly a whole lot easier to do this with the twist
of a zoom ring rather than fumbling around and changing the
lens that’s mounted to the camera.
Superzooms certainly aren’t a new concept and stretch back
to the 35mm film camera era. However, relatively recent releasesinject a whole lot more ‘super’ into the superzoom category,
bumping up the overall zoom range to previously unimaginable
sizes. Thanks to high-tech design and complex aspherical
elements, 18-300mm, 16.7x zoom lenses are now available from
Nikon and Sigma. Canon has been somewhat left behind, still
marketing an ageing 18-200mm lens that’s in serious need of
a revamp. Meanwhile, Tamron has continued its habit of really
pushing the superzoom boundary. Its latest offerings include a
16-300mm lens that gives noticeably more wide-angle potential
without sacrificing telephoto reach, and an 18-400mm zoom
that beats everything else on the market for super-telephoto
stretch. The APS-C crop factor gives this lens an ‘effective’
600mm telephoto reach on a Nikon body, and as much as
640mm on a Canon.
Most importantly, the latest superzoom lenses aim to bump
up zoom range and versatility without compromising too much
on handling, image quality and overall performance.“Save space by shelving the interchangable lens ethos”
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