SUPERZOOM SHOOTOUT

Matthew Richards puts eight top superzooms to the test to see which can be your all purpose travel lens – just in time for summer holidays!

One of the joys of any interchangeable lens camera is that you can fit the right kind of optic for the task at hand. It’s great news, most of the time. The drawback is that a big bag of lenses can eat into your baggage allowance when you’re travelling, as well as weighing you down when you’re out and about. A superzoom lens aims to satisfy your travel needs, offering everything from wide-angle coverage to serious telephoto reach, without the need to carry additional lenses or to swap the lens that’s fitted to your camera body.

The vast majority of superzoom lenses on the market are designed for APS-C format cameras, and typically kick off with an 18mm focal length. The Tamron 16-300mm is one notable exception, giving even wider-angle coverage. The long end of the zoom range is a much more moveable feast, with various competing lenses offering maximum focal lengths of 135mm, 200mm, 300mm and even 400mm. The last two of these stretch into super-telephoto territory, once you take into account the 1.6x focal length multiplier or crop factor of APS-C format cameras. Canon also markets a top-spec 28-300mm superzoom, suited to full-frame EOS cameras, which we’re including in this Super Test.

Any zoom lens represents a bit of a compromise in image quality, compared with a fixed focal length prime lens. It’s only natural that the bigger zoom range of a superzoom lens tends to result in a greater compromise, especially in terms of sharpness and distortions. However, recent designs aim to capitalize on technological advances, maximizing performance as well as versatility.