Perfect travel companion with excellent image quality for a tight budget. Lower build quality than their A series and still zoom ring but this is tolerable for its price range

Sometimes we are joking about a hypothetical 18-300mm f/1.8 to meet all our photographic needs. Well, we aren't quite there yet nor will we ever see such a lens on a DSLR but the manufacturers are at least scratching this focal length range with some 18-200mm variants and the Sigma AF 18-200mm...

I recently got the Sigma 18-200 f3.5-6.3 DC Macro OS HSM C lens for my Canon 1100D. This is the first third party lens I've bought. Took over 200 photos the morning after receiving it (only stopped taking photos because I had to go to work) and am very happy with the results.

The perfect lens does not exist. There is no lens that covers an extreme range of focal lengths, has an ultra-wide aperture, has incredible build quality but remains small and light, has amazing image quality at all available settings – and is inexpensive.

Although Sigma released their first lens with a built-in Optical Stabilizer (OS) system in the spring of 2004, the company employed this technology in only one pro-grade lens, the 80-400mm f/4.5-5.6. That has changed with the introduction of a more compact/affordable (digital-only) 18-200mm OS zoom.

Sigma continued the miniaturization trend; at the beginning of 2014 they presented another lens of that series, the C 18–200 mm f/3.5–6.3 DC Macro OS HSM. In its case the number of elements decreased from 18 to 16 but the number of low-dispersion and aspherical elements actually increased.

compact dimensions for such a wide focal range; very good image quality in the frame centre across the whole focal range; decent image quality on the edge of the frame; very good correction of the longitudinal chromatic aberration; sensible correction of lateral chromatic aberration; proper...

a bit too many reflections near 100 mm focal length; noticeable vignetting at both ends of focal range; image quality on the edge of the frame at 18 and 100 mm and at the maximum relative aperture a bit under the decency level

Recently I compare the resolution of tis lens with the other lenses I have (Tamron 17-50 and Tamron 70-200). One of the measurement that I made was the amount of sensor pixels per 1 mm of actual target (same for all shots and lenses). I use Sony alpha 350 camera.

light weight

Shorter focal range that annonced (18-140 mm); backfocusing; slow

Is the 18–200mm APS-C zoom a sought-after lens category? We've tested four of them in recent years, and almost all the current stabilized models are in their third-generation. (Yes, they're popular.

All-in-one super-zoom lenses are all classically huge and heavy. Made to do everything and be a master at nothing, these extremely wide focal length lenses have historically only offered only decent image quality.