Plenty of photographers like to have a collection of lenses, from zooms to prime lenses in a range of focal lengths and speeds but sometimes it's nice to have one lens that has one big focal ranges for those times when you can't carry too much extra weights. In enters the Tamron 28-300mm F3.5-6.3 XR Di VC LD Aspherical (IF) Macro lens which fits the bill for an all-in-one lens. While this lens has been out for awhile for Canon users, only recently was it released with a Nikon mount that's also compatible with the Nikon D40, D40x, D60 cameras.

There aren't that many Tamron lenses that can autofocus with the D40/x and D60 so the addition of another one was definitely going to excite a few Nikon users, so we decided to have a closer look at the Tamron 28-300mm VC and see if it was as good as the hype that surrounded it. Considering the huge focal range on the lens, it's lighter and more compact than we expected. We did wonder if that was achieved at the expense of image quality.

Our fears were groundless, while we had heard rumours of bad images that were taken with this lens, when we attached the Tamron 28-300mm VC to a D40 and took it out for a joyride, we weren't disappointed. In fact we were pleasantly surprised. The focal range was amazing, 28mm might not be the ideal choice for landscapes and the likes, but between 28-300mm, you can take portraits, nature, still life and even 1:3 macro images. The Tamron has nifty minimum focusing distance of 49cm. The combination of Low Dispersion, High Refraction and Hybrid elements worked well to eliminate distortions. The images were crisp and clear with good bokeh. The only problem we saw when we took photos at the beach, was slight chromatic aberration, especially at the zoom end.

Sure the day we were testing the Tamron 28-300mm VC lens, the sun was high in the sky and it was a very bright day which means it wasn't a challenge to take great images. In dim light there would be a disadvantage.

The aperture on the lens is only f/3.5-f/6.3, which does handicap the speed of the lens when taking images. You need a slower shutter speed to be able to capture nice photos. That's where the VC was a godsend. The Vibration Compensation as it's called, would noticeably help in the dimmer light. You could slow down the shutter speed a few stops and still have relatively blur free photos. Unfortunately, it isn't the ultimate solution to the low light problem. A tripod and a flash would help.

In a studio environment, we took some test shots to see just how much distortion was evident, strangely enough we didn't see any problems with chromatic aberration though the images were a bit soft on the 300mm end. Barrel distortion as a minimum, another surprise considering the zoom range. The zoom ring was a little stiff to move, you'll be building enough arm muscle when you hold up the lens with a camera body anyways and there is no risk of zoom creep.

In terms of overall performance, the Tamron was surprising. It didn't have a silent motor when it auto focused, which might annoy some people, especially when things are very quiet. But in the noisy outside world, we barely noticed either the noise of the autofocus or the gentle hum of the VC mechanism. We were not disappointed with the Tamron 28-300mm F3.5-6.3 XR Di VC LD Aspherical (IF) Macro lens, the images came out beautifully, the lens was sturdy and not too heavy and the VC worked like a charm.