Tokina 12-24mm f/4 new, first results

I've been wanting a Tokina 12-24mm for well over a year. I would have bought one before a trip last year except everyone was constantly out of stock. This year the Sigma seems to be scarce.

This year I was looking again and have been really torn between it and the Sigma 10-20mm. Both seem to be excellent lenses. After looking at hundreds of images from both, I think I got a handle on the strengths and weaknesses of both lenses. My primary concern with the Tokina was the sometimes obvious CA on the edges and sometimes corners. With the Sigma it was sometimes obvious softness along one side, or corners - and light drop off. Problems with both lenses can be coped with, or ignored, and the images from both are good. That "extra 2mm" isn't an issue for me and wasn't a deciding factor between the two.

Yesterday my new Tokina arrived on my doorstep. Decent packaging, and a decent looking lens. Build quality appears to be as good as the reviews all say.

I've only had time to take a few genuine snapshots with it to judge sharpness/focus with. The first thing I did was take a couple of pictures of windows and my skylight in an effort to see massive CA. Yup - there was CA, just as predicted, but it really wasn't that bad. Looking critically at the original .NEF files at 100% I could clearly see it, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be and was easily corrected. The images were otherwise crisp and clean.

So, what about those snapshots? The first one was taken before dinner with my folks. Just a simple snapshot on program, at f/5 with an SB800. .NEF/.JPG via Capture-NX and resized with PS-CS2:




Today I took a quick trip down the street to get some images with decent depth of field, some grass/plantlife to see sharpness, and some direct sunlight to look at flare (somehow I wasn't full-wide on the first set):

@13mm f/13 - no filters


@13mm f/14 directly into the sun - no filters


@12mm f/9 + Kenko C-PL
View attachment 96337

@14mm f/14 + Kenko C-PL
View attachment 96338

The whole gallery with exif data can be viewed here.

So far the lens seems really sharp with decent contrast. Just as I expected. It does have CA, but it doesn't seem like its going to be an issue with me (fingers crossed). Flare seems pretty well under control, even shooting directly into the sun the lens has great contrast with just a little flare.

 

Yep...gotta watch verticals too - makes 'em look all stretched out  

 

It's been ok after the seabreeze kicks in. Smoke has been the big problem, went out to shoot a job in south Florida the other day and nearly couldn't get back into the airport on the way back due to smoke.

 

Sigh. The excitement of the new lens has slowly been drowned by a problem with the camera I discovered last week.