Sorry to side track a bit.
What is it about superzooms that newbies seem to be attracted to like bees to honey?
This is something I can't for the life of me seem to understand because this question keeps cropping up time and time again. One of the key benefits of a SLR/DSLR camera is the ability to change lenses to have different perspectives. I just can't seem to understand this attraction to go for a single lens that seems to promise a lot but in reality come with plenty of trade-offs.
While I'll be the first to admit that I have used a superzoom, it have never really been an altogether satisfying experience thus far. For one thing, superzooms aren't exactly dirt cheap to begin with. There's usually quite a bit of barrel distortion at the wide end and pincushion distortion at the long end. Contrast is pretty average and usually has to be boosted in post processing. Overall sharpness is nothing to shout about with the corners predictably lagging behind the center. There's also likely to be color fringing. Close focusing is not close enough and there's often a reduction in focal length. But the worse compromise is the loss of maximum aperture at the long end. This leads to a dim viewfinder image, has a bearing on shutter speed and ISO, and often noticeable vignetting. Oh did I also mention zoom creep? :angel:
Sorry for this little rant but I just have to purge my system once in a while.
But then who am I to tell anyone how to spend their money?