As a relative newcomer to the world of DSLR's (less than two years), I've found that discussing camera's and lenses is like discussing what is the best pizza or beer - it is highly subjective and what is awesome to one person is crap to another.

Having said that, I bought this lens for my Canon Rebel xti back at the end of June and I love it. I'm sure you will like it as well. Although I have limited experience with the Nikkor 18-200 VR lens, I would say that the image quality of this Tamron lens throughout the focal length range is at least equal to, if not better than the Nikkor. Of course, there are two caveats:

1. The Nikkor has VR and this Tamron has no such functionality. On the long end of the focal lenghts, you'll either need to crank up the ISO or use a tripod

2. As stated in several reviews on this lens, it really shines at f8 or f9 and smaller, making it even a slower lens than the f3.5-6.3 it advertises.

Of course, to a lot of folks, those two things render this lens useless, but for me, who isn't a "serious photographer" and really only takes pictures when traveling, they are not that burdensome. I find this lens to be the perfect everyday all-around lens. I bought it before my July trip to Africa and found that it was an excellent travel lens. Almost all of my daylight shots were at f8 with a circular polarizer lens and was pleased with the images from the trip. (The bad pictures were the result of operator error rather than the lens ).

I'd like to know where you saw this for $275 because I paid $460 for mine. I think you got a good deal.

One negative thing I have to say about this lens is that it suffers from zoom creep. I think I exacerbated the problem by picking the camera up out of my bag by the lens and not having it locked at 18mm, but there are other reports of zoom creep in this lens. Make sure you use the lock at 18mm and you'll probably be OK.

On September 20th, Tamron is releasing an 18-270 lens with VC (Tamron's version of IS/VR) in Japan. US release is slated for the end of this year. The pricing in Japan is about the equivalent of US$650. If the reviews of this lens are as good as the 18-250 and the price is about the same, I'll ditch my current lens for this new one.

If anyone is interested in a few reviews of this lens, I have attached three links below. I found them to be helpful and good reads before starting to use the lens myself.

http://www.photozone.de/Reviews/Cano...report--review

http://photo.net/equipment/tamron/18-250/

http://www.popphoto.com/cameralenses...-ii-macro.html