photocosmic's reviews

Tokina 16-28mm f/2.8 AT-X PRO FX SD

This review could be a short one, because this lens is truly amazing!
It is build like a... well, like the most of Tokina's lenses. The first time you take this lens in your hand, you realize it's worth the money you paid. It's heavy, rubber rings well made and operate smoothly, but with proper resistance, I also like the af/mf switching by pushing/pulling the front ring. Some people used to Canon's lenses would not like it, but for me it's perfect. There are only two flaws when it comes to build quality: front lens is vulnerable, but you know that when you buy this lens. I also have to admit that after half of a year of working with this lens I'm surprised by a quality of coatings - removing fingerprints is easy and I do not see any scratches, even though i have incidentally touched it many times. A second flaw is a lens cap. As far as I know, Tokina sells this lens with a new, better lens cap, but the early versions (unfortunately also mine) were equipped with caps that seems to be a bad joke - very thin, loose, falling off the lens all the time.

When it comes to lens' performance there is only one flaw: rather slow autofocus. I mean, it is not bad, but it's far for being as fast or silent as in Canon lenses equipped with USM. But the AF is quite accurate, I do not have any problems with ff or bf even though I bought it via the Internet, without having possibility to test it before purchase. Having said that, I must admit, that an optical performance is really amazing! It's really sharp, especially for being an ultra wide lens. I use it on cropped sensors (40D and 7D), so the center of image is almost as sharp as borders, but had an opportunity to test it on 5D markII and it still performed great. The color rendition is also good. F/2.8 is fully usable. When it comes to CA, it's noticeable on f/2.8, but not as visible as in Tokinas 11-16 or 12-24.

To sum it all up: I had a hard time when my Tamron 17-50 broke and had to buy a new lens. Canon 17-40 did not impress me and f/4 is too dark for me and Canon 16-35 is definitely overpriced for its performance. Both those lenses have much better autofocus, but fail in comparison with the Tokina when it comes to the optical performance. I am also used to use polarizers and gradual filters, so it was also hard to decide to buy a lens with no filter mount, but recently I made a deatachable filter thread that allows me to use Cokin/Lee/Hitech filters, so this stopped to being a problem.

If you need a FF lens, can live without ultra fast AF and filter thread, I truly recommend you Tokina 16-28. Give it a chance and you will be delighted with pictures this lens produces.

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