Quick Take: Tamron 18-270 Lens

I had the chance to get my hands (briefly) on the Tamron 18-270. This was a lens I was very interested in, with the gigantic zoom range of course being the main attraction.
 

Nikon 18-105mm VR Lens

I’ve been using the Nikkor 18-105mm VR as a walkaround lens for my Nikon D40 for a couple of months.

I was looking for a lens that I could keep on my camera all day long, with a 28mm equivalent wide angle and a bit of tele, and most importantly: vibration reduction. Basically, I wanted the equivalent lens on the D40 that I had previously on my compact big zoom camera.
 

Nikon 18-55 VR compared to Nikon 18-105 VR

Over the past 2 years, I've had the chance to use and compare these two lenses on my Nikon D40. On the way, I learned a great many things, so I’ll start off with the story.
 

Tamron 10-24mm Wideangle Lens

The Tamron 10-24mm lens was designed for use on crop sensor DSLRs. For Nikon DX camera owners, it has a quite useful (35mm equivalent) focal length range of 15-36mm. For Canon APS-C cameras, the range becomes 16-38mm due to the slightly larger crop factor. In both cases, it covers a useful range from extreme wideangle to only slightly wide.
 

Minolta Hi-Matic G Rangefinder

This is an old rangefinder camera, similar to the Olympus 35RC.
 
The Minolta Hi-Matic G is very similar to the Olympus, but is much simpler and has less manual controls.
 

Sony W-120 Digital Compact Camera

The Sony DSC W-120
 
I was looking for a compact, cheap, ok camera to keep in my coat pocket all the time. I wanted to have a camera that was compact and light, had acceptable image quality, image stabilization and didn’t break the bank
 
Bonus points were given out for: Wide angle, low light ability, video capabilities, snappy operation
 
After some research, I ended up with this Sony DSC W120.
 

Olympus 35 RC Rangefinder

This cute little camera is a classic Olympus “Rangefinder”.

 
 This means, unlike a Single Lens Reflex (SLR) camera, the viewfinder is not coupled to the main lens of the camera. The film will see the light through the main lens in the middle of the camera, whereas the viewfinder is on the top right corner of the camera. You are not seeing exactly what you will take a picture of. There might be alignment errors for close by objects, for example. Well, what is the point of having such a camera when SLRs don’t have such problems? Size, mainly. Since rangefinders do not have the mirror moving up and down with each shot, the bodies are much less deep. Also, many of them, like the Olympus 35RC come with a fixed focal length lens (no zoom) which is physically quite small. Therefore they are quite convenient, and will fit in a coat pocket.
 

Nikon D40 SLR First Impressions

This camera is a Nikon D40 Digital SLR. It is Nikon’s entry level, thus cheapest DSLR. I have recently bought this camera, my previous being a ‘big zoom’ compact. Below are some of the impressions of the D40 coming from a compact camera.