Shot-saver

Brilliant but fleeting photo opportunities can sometimes come completely out of the blue – and they can pass just as quickly. Not having to swap lenses can make the difference between getting the shot and missing it.

Tailor-made

Don’t be tempted to use a full-frame superzoom on a DX camera – 28-300mm FX-format lenses are available from Nikon and Tamron, but using them on DX bodies gives very little wideangle potential, with an effective shortest focal length of 42mm.

Long shot

With the 1.5x crop factor of DX-format bodies, superzooms with a longest focal length of 200mm or 300mm work out to an ‘effective’ 300mm or superstretched 450mm respectively.

Weather or not

All three of the Nikon lenses on test, plus the Tamron 16-300mm, feature a weather seal on their mounting plates. This is absent from all the other lenses in the group.

Zoom direction Manual focus override

Full-time manual focus override in Single AF mode is available in the Tamron 18-300mm and all three Nikon lenses.

Focus distance