Light weight, optics

Is made of plastic (I think the previous version was metal?).....although I'm not sure this makes a whole lot of difference...EVERYTHING IS MADE OF PLASTIC THESE DAYS. And why don't they include the d**n lense hood in the purchase of the lense???

I bought this lense for a trip to Rome back in August. I used it almost exclusively on my N80 while there (along with a friend's 50mm lense). It is an excellent lense...my slides and prints are excellent as far as quality goes. The nice thing about this lense is that you can take lots of shots without a tripod and still get good sharpness...the old rule about handholding and the reciprocal of the focal length. Seems to be a solid lense...the zoom rings and focus rings have a pleasing feel (I actually used manual focusing most of the time).....not too stiff, not too loose.

Customer Service

They got my rebate check back pretty quickly.....and even filled out my warranty card for me!

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none

Price Contrast construction

Focus shift at the corners Possible chromatic shift at the corners

I bought this lens as part of my first foray into digital photography as I didn't want get heavily financially involved with a system that I hadn't used before. (I had only shot med and large format and had no 35mm equipment) I am pleased to say that this was a wonderful little lens for the beginner to prosumer. The contrast is crisp especially under low light conditions, its light and robust, erognomic, and resonably quick to focus (it's no AF-S though). The only problems I found were that focus tended to fall of towards the corners with a slight (you really had to look hard)chromatic aberation with slight violet fringing.I have since been told that the violet fringing is a function of the camera rather than the lens so my assesment may be unfair. Bottom line... an excellent bang for the buck. What did I replace it with? A Nikkor 18-35 which is now being replaced with a Nikkor 17-35. But it's a great place to start.

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Nikkor AF ED 18-35 D Nikkor AF-S ED 17-35 D Nikkor AF-S ED 12-24 G DX

• Great price • Fast autofocusing • Solid construction (but I miss metal lenses) • Smooth zooming • No ghosting, nice clean flares

• The snap-on hood • 77mm filter size - the filters are expensive and take up a lot of room in the camera bag • Fuzzy corners below f/5.6

After balking at the ridiculous asking price of the Nikon 17-35mm 2.8 lens, I went to Ritz Camera and found this lens, repackaged as a Quantaray, for $200. I had been using my dad's old Nikon F2, which had a broken meter, and the widest lens we had for it was a 28mm. In desperate need of a wide angle lens to fit my then-new Nikon system, I willingly forked over my christmas money. This lens has never let me down. At 19mm I had an angle of view that I thought impossible without a fish-eye lens. I have since found out otherwise, of course, as Nikon has had wide-angle lenses all the way down to 13mm since the early '80s. The images from this lens are incredibly sharp and the colors are exactly as I see them (although I tend to keep a polarizer on this lens). The zoom handle is smooth and autofocusing is really fast. However, at apertures higher than f/5.6, the corners of the image get a little fuzzy. But for the money, this lens is great.

Customer Service

Not needed

Similar Products Used:

Nikon 28mm manual focus

Price, build quality including a metal lens mount, good AF performance, included hood, and a 5-year warranty

For the price, no unpleasant surprises

A $200 lens isn't supposed to be good, especially in this zoom range. They have corner softness, geometric distortions (around 2-3%), and corner light fall-off. Build quality is plasticky, especially the lens mounts, and AF motors tend to be slow and noisy. But, after considerable research into zoom superwide/wide lenses costing twice as much, I found the pricier equipment, including the Nikon stuff, shares many of these shortcomings. So, why pay twice as much? The Tokina is every bit as well made as my Nikon D 28-105 with a metal lens mount and fairly fast and quiet AF. Optical performance is acceptable when stopped-down to f8 and smaller. Distortions with this or any other superwide zoom lens? It's a part of their charms, so don't sweat it. Here's a little something the other reviews have missed about the Tokina: you can buy it at Ritz/Wolf/etc. as a Quantaray house brand for $200 INCLUDING THE BAYONET LENS HOOD AND A 5-YEAR WARRANTY. If you buy it as a Tokina, the hood is almost $25 extra and the warranty is only 1-year. By the time you factor in the current Tokina $20 rebate and the price of the optional hood, if you buy this lens as a Tokina you end up paying $5 more for less. One of the really cute things is that although the lens label reads Quantaray, the included lens hood reads Tokina. They aren't hiding the origins very well.

Customer Service

Haven't had to use it.

Similar Products Used:

Nikkor D 28-105 3.5-4.5 & Olympus Zuiko: 28 f2.8, 100 f2.8, 200 f4, 35-105 3.5-4.5, & 50 f1.8

very well built lightweight internal zoom internal focus sharp warm colors

none

Typical great build quality from a Tokina lens (metal Pentax mount) with a twist that it is very lightweight. I love the internal zoom and internal focus design. It does not extend out extra inches nor turn the filter. I take advantage of the wide angles to take mostly indoor shots were slower shutter speeds can be used. The results are very sharp pictures with great warm colors. Please note I use 35mm film and process them to 4 X 6 print. I attended a Next Fest exhibit recently and took pictures of cars, a flying car, turbine engine and a robot. The pictures were astonishing with 400 speed film! For a few outdoor pictures the result was amazing sharpness and the same great warm colors. I truely love this lens!

Customer Service

none

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 24-70 f3.5 - f4.5 Tokina 24-200 AT-X f3.5 - f5.6

Under AU $1000 Solidly built Tack sharp 19mm!!

Heavy - but that makes it solid as well. 77mm filters are not cheap.

I just love 19mm!!! Its given me a new dimension to work in. This lens is definitely the best value lens in this range. The quality is brilliant and its tack sharp. I would recommend this lens to anyone moving into wide angle photography.

Customer Service

not needed but I heard its great.

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EF20-35 canon

- Price on used market is attractive. - Lightweight.

- Not built well at all - not up to Tokina's usually high build quality. Consider this lens as disposable and don't get too attached to it. - Plenty o' distortion at 19mm - might annoy some people. - Zoom and focusing rings are not smooth.

An affordable find on the used market if you need a very portable wide angle zoom. Don't expect the world, however - you will get what you pay for and this lens is no exception. Great as a set of training wheels to learn about wide angle composition. After you're done learning, consider spending your money on the better Canon/Nikon equivalents.

Customer Service

n/a

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n/a

Cheap, It's allways functioned and felt nice.

Soft especially open wide. lens flare, but what do you expect.

A good lens to buy, if you only use wide angle ocasionally on a film camera. If you plan to use it a lot, pay for something good. I bought this lens, to do some occasional wide angle with my F100. It worked well for that. I didn't use it enough to justify the big bucks for the Nikon version. Since then I bought a Nikon digital SLR that has a small APS size sensor and the 1.5 lens multiplying factor. Because of this, I need use the wide angles more often. I am really starting to hate the softness of this lens. Mayby I'm just imagining it, but the pictures on the D100 look softer then on my film camera using this lens. I'm not really sure why, it might be that the lens can't resolve enough for the small sensor. That's my guess.

Customer Service

Well, I dropped this lens and broke plastic ring that holds your filters and lens cap on. Other than that the lens works fine. So I brought it into the local Camera Repair shop (a very good one), they quoted me about $64 to fix it. They were taking forever to get the parts. Three months later they said they couldn't find anywhere to get the plastic ring from, and to come and pick up the lens. To bad so sad. I'll keep that in mind next time I think of buying Tokina.

1> Tank tough 2> Good optical performance, but not strong for architectural work due to noticeable barrel distortion in the short focal settings. 3> Great for scenics - just keep the horizon centered vertically in the frame.

No lens hood. I'll be in the market for another super-wide zoom for a new Canon I purchased. The recently introduced Tamron 19-35 (which includes a hood and a 6-yr warranty) looks VERY interesting.

This lens, in Minolta AF mount, is well constructed with a durable polycarbonate barrel. The focus action is smooth and adequately damped in manual mode, and quiet and equally smooth in automatic mode. It has withstood everything I've thrown at it for the three years I've had it with no malfunctions. Like all "super wide-angle lenses" - prime or zoom - it exhibits light fall-off in the corners wide open (This is NOT the same as vignetting!), and mediocre performance at the smallest aperture from diffraction effects (and THIS is physics, NOT a design defect). It is contrasty and exhibits good color balance. Flare can be a problem wide open, and Tokina should be taken to task for not supplying the petal-type lens hood (BH-774) packed WITH the lens. (The box and interior packing clearly have room for the hood, and I suspect not including it is a decision of THK in the U.S. purposely removing it for separate sale. B&H wanted $29.95 for one three years ago.

Customer Service

Never had occasion to find out.

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None

price sharp pics with good contrast

build quality (iffy not up to tokina standards) filter size (lots of vignetting) distortion ( there is less on my 17mm tokina)

a great cheap wide angle zoom for people who dont use this area much i love the 20mm length which i struggle to find a filter that wont vignette and cokin forget it below 28mm distortion an issue compared to my pentax fa 20mm this lens is a poor performer but at 4 times the price the pentax should kill it and it does. compared to my tonina 17mm the distortion is greatewr on the zoom and it is less sharp however having read many reviews i might think my example was a poor one anyway its been sold

Similar Products Used:

20mm pentax 17mm tokina