Tamron 18-270mm f3.5-6.3 Di II PZD for Sony/ Minolta (Part 1)

 I manage to get a 1 day testing of Tamron 18-270 f3.5-6.3 Di II PZD lens for Sony/ Minolta mount. This lens should be the longest superzoom range ever made for Sony/ Minolta mount to date as it beat Sony SAL 18-250mm f3.5-6.3 by only 20mm. While ‘Di’ is easily identified as digital, this new Tamron also bring ‘PZD’ tag with it. What is PZD? PZD stands for Piezo Drive; a newly developed motor design to give a smooth focusing operation compared to screw-driven motor used in previous version of lenses. I can give credit to this Piezo Drive because it was quite fast and silent too, although in low light condition, the lens struggle a bit to lock the subject (and it was expected). This lens didn’t come along with Vibration Compensation (VC) since Sony/ Minolta has their in-body stabilizer unlike Canon and Nikon. What’s in the box; the lens, petal hood and documents

And it comes with focus lock too. Very handy if you’re on travel

For comparison, it sits almost the same height with my Konica Minolta 17-35mm f2.8-4.0 lens, but at full length, the height was almost double from the original height. This lens has 62mm lens diameter, which is same as SAL 18-250mm f3.5-5.6 The aperture reading for this lens reads as follow:

18mm – min aperture is f3.5

24mm – f4.0

35mm – f4.5

50mm – f5.0

70mm – f5.6

150mm – f6.3

**end of Part 1. Wait for the second part; test shot using this lens.