The complication
After coming back from Spain 2 years ago I noticed my Nikkor AF-P 70-300mm VR lens starting to barely work. It’s a cheap, but great APS-C zoom lens, nice and light, decently sharp. However after ~3 years of heavy use the VR part gave up the ghost. I still used it for another year this way, but sooner or later the lenses inside fell out of alignment and it became noticably blurry. So much so that my 18-105mm was sharper at 105mm and cropped twice than this at 300mm. I obviously stopped using it, thinking that I don’t really need that much of a reach anyway.
The solution
I was wrong. In just 2 months I started looking for a new zoom lens. I wanted either something longer (which is a push already at 300mm) or something faster (that pretty much left me with expensive primes). Then suddenly I saw what many would think of as a “bad deal”. A Tamron 18-400mm superzoom: coming in at 700 gramms it’s not light, it being a superzoom it’s also probably not that sharp, and with its usual used price of ~500EUR it’s not even cheap, but come on… 400mm is 400mm. There was something else. It’s slightly broken. The front elment has some damage inside it and there are some small loose shards of glass bouncing around in there. The seller claimed this didn’t affect the image, which I know is not entirely true, but it’s a fact that front element damage is something that’s rarely noticable. Anyway, it was 90EUR. Yes, even if I wanted to service it, it still would have cost less, than another one in good condition. So I bought it.
The experience
This all happened a year ago, so I do have some useful experience with it now.
The good
Sharpness
It’s surprisingly sharp. I won’t say it’s on par with a good prime lens, or even a 70-300mm, but it gives a perfectly cromulent amount of resolution paired with a 24MPixel APS-C sensor. It probably wouldn’t resolve much more than that, but if you’re after the maximum resolution you probably aren’t in the right place. Focusing close or far doesn’t really make a difference in sharpness with this lens. Using it at the wide end I can see some problems at the edges and even in the middle, but I suspect that might be because of that borked front element. At the long end I’m perfectly happy with its performance.
Reach
While it says 400mm on its side, that really depends on what you’re focusing on. The lens exhibits a huge amount of focus breathing, meaning focusing closer “shrinks” the focal distance to a noticable degree. Still, it’s more than 300mm all the time, and more than 380mm most of the time. For casual bird shooting, casual sport shooting, casual “pretty much everything that’s far away” shooting it’s a dream. The compression it gives in long straight streets is unreal. I even managed to hook it up to a small sensor industrial camera too, and pointed it at the moon. The last two videos are taken with that setup, interesting stuff.
The bad
Weight
It’s heavy. It’s surprising that it’s only 20 gramms heavier than the Nikkor I had before, it somehow feels twice as heavy. Most of the weight is at the front, so when carrying it on the neck with a lanyard, expect some pain after 15 minutes. A wider, thicker, softer lanyard might be more comfortable, but there’s a reason people rarely wear 1 kg chains. There is a lock switch which locks the lens in its unextended position, that’s useful when biking on rougher terrain or hiking.
Focusing
This is a bit weird. On my D3300 I ran into some erratic behaviour, which I’m still not entirely sure what caused. Sometimes while focusing, it stuck trying to focus very near with the focusing motor whirring crazy. Removing and remounting the lens usually solved this problem. Other than that, focusing speed is “decent”. It’s not too quick, there’s no limit switch, and there’s no full time manual focus, but for everyday use it’s good enough.
The meh
Low light performance
It’s practically non-existent. f/6.3 at the long end, f/3.5 at the wide end, neither of them are very fast. But that’s par for the course with any zoom lens, unless it’s a big prime. It’s still pretty good with long exposures, even with the front element broken there’s barely any internal reflection or unwanted halo around strong lights.
In conclusion
If you can find a cheap copy, like to go out hiking in good weather, not too worried about being able to catch every fast action, and don’t want to carry too much gear, I’d recommend the lens whole-hartedly. Since I bought it I rarely used other lenses in good lighting, knowing I always have the focal length for every eventuality is great. At nights I often leave it at home though, and opt for lighter, faster lenses. I also don’t really notice the broken front element, maybe only at the wide end, but I rarely use that focal length anyway.
Photos time. These were taken with the D3300 and the D5300 camera with the Tamron 18-400mm lens. Except the last two videos, they were taken with an ELP FHD USB Camera using a Sony IMX322 sensor.
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