Best Walk Around Lens Comparison - Canon 18-200 vs Sigma 18-200 vs Tamron 18-270

A good walk-around lens, that's sort of like a nickname for having a very good general purpose lens. So if you're going on a long trip and you want to bring one lens with you, which lens would get the most work done? Every photographer has a different opinion in terms of what makes a good walk-around lens. This is just one man's opinion, but I think a good general purpose lens will have an equal balance between three things. Versatility, meaning it has a very wide focal length range. Portability, meaning that it's light and it's not bulky, it's small and compact, and it also has decent image quality. There are some lenses out there that have tremendous focal length ranges that are not very good quality. In any event, I tested three lenses. The Canon 18-200, the Sigma 18-200, and the Tamron 18-270. Now these are all great lenses and I don't think most people would be able to tell the difference between them. They look the same, they feel the same, they operate the same, but when you start doing some tests and you start breaking them down, they are not the same. So I need to make some recommendations depending on what type of user you might be. If you're super budget conscious or you are a casual photographer, maybe you're just an enthusiast or you take pictures of your family and your kids and you don't really want it for anything more than that, I would say the Sigma 18-200 is the lens you're going to want, and the reason is it's the cheapest in terms of cost. B&H has it for about $370, $380 right now, and bang for your buck that is a very good lens. If quality is your number one concern, I would definitely recommend the Canon in terms of image sharpness, image stabilization, motor speed, the least amount of distortion. That lens seemed to have the highest quality of the three. Are there better lenses out there in terms of overall quality? Absolutely. I'd probably give it a B on a grade scale, it'd be a B. The Canon L lenses, those are all typically in the A range, should give you a ballpark idea. The last lens that you would want to consider is the Tamron 18-270. This is it right here. Now the reason why you want to consider this lens is because it has an amazing focal length range from 18 to 270 millimeters, but if you remember if you put this on a 1.6 crop factor body, that's really more like 29 millimeters to 430 millimeters. So it covers an extremely wide range of focal lengths. It's pretty impressive. So if you need that extra reach, just keep in mind that you are going to lose a little bit of image quality once you get over 200 millimeters. That's something you're going to want to consider. I've had mine for six months now and I love it. The reason, however, I recommend this lens to all my friends doesn't have anything to do with the lens itself. It has to do with a six-year warranty that comes with the lens. The warranty on the Canon and the Sigma, those are one-year warranties. And so what this means is if the lens breaks or you know whatever, there's a problem with it after three or four or five years, Tamron is going to fix it. The Tamron currently has a rebate and it runs about 580, 570 with the rebate on B&H and the Canon runs at about 600. Now if you're interested in the tests, maybe some of the results or sample images I got, I have a new page on my blog and that is at www.michaeldamaven.com slash gear dash reviews and I'm going to have more tests coming soon. If you're an intermediate to advanced photographer, I have a great new video out called Advanced Photography Techniques. It's a DVD and that's also available on my blog. In any event, I hope you enjoyed this. I thank you for watching and I'll see you next time.