Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. Here today...

The winter has been pretty dreary here of late, so I haven't had a lot of opportunity to get out with the new cameras. Last weekend however, it cleared up on Saturday evening, and I took the opportunity to get out with the Nikon D300 and my newly fixed Tokina 11-16mm f2.8.

Between a Rock and a Hard Place.
Nikon D300 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8
f11 @ 1/320th, ISO 1600

I was quite excited to try out the Tokina since having fixed the focusing issues it was having (see post here). I do tend to struggle with the ultra wide angle lenses though - composition can be tricky, and there are a few other 'issues' you need to be careful of.

Firstly, since there's so much glass on the front of the lens, you need to be very aware of flaring and the position of the sun relative to the front lens elements. The 11-16mm has a lens hood supplied, but because they take in such an enormous field of view, the lens hoods tend not to be too deep. So care needs to be taken when composing with the sun anywhere close to the front of the lens.

The other issue you can often have with ultra-wides is when using filters. I have purchased some new filters for the Tokina, which has a reasonably large 77mm filter thread. For this trip I had attached the landscape photographers must-have filter, the Polariser. I ended up purchasing a Kenko branded polariser, which apparently is owned my Tokina, so I figured they would be a good match. But when using any polariser with a wide angle field of view, you have to be careful that the darkening polarising effect looks smooth and even across the frame - especially in the sky. If you polarise too much with an ultra-wide, the sky can look a little blotchy and unnatural. So look carefully through the viewfinder as you spin the polariser to make sure things are still looking fairly natural.

9 Mile Beach. Nikon D300 with Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. f11 @ 1/80th, ISO 1600 (Blended image)

I ran up against the 'polarising effect' when I set up to take the image above. I wanted to polarise as much as possible for the foreground so I could cut out the glare in the water pools and include as much of the reflection of the hills as possible. But when I did that, I was getting very blotchy blue areas in the sky.

To combat this, I took two images. One polarised heavily for the foreground, and another polarised lightly for the sky to remove the blotchy areas. I then processed both of the images in Lightroom, and blended them together in Photoshop.

The keen-eyed among you may have picked up on a slight issue with the images posted so far. They were shot, incorrectly, at ISO 1600! I had obviously been playing around with the camera at home a few days before and had boosted the ISO to take a couple of photos. I have tended, in the past, not to use Auto ISO, but to set it as low as possible manually. But this also means that I need to remember to check what ISO I'm on before I start shooting. And this time, I didn't. ISO 1600 isn't completely unusable with the D300, with some judicious noise reduction applied in Lightroom. But still, it isn't ideal...

Starfish. Nikon D300 with Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4.5. f5 @ 1/15th, ISO 800

Fortunately, I realised that I was shooting with the wrong ISO eventually and started to set it accordingly. Unfortunately, it was more towards the end of the evening when the light was very low.

Another thing that was very low on this particular evening was the tide. I had decided to head out along the coast, to a place called 9 Mile Beach. At low tide, there is a chance that starfish clinging to the rocks will be exposed. I've struggled to photograph these starfish for many years, and haven't ever taken images of them that I'm happy with. But I was certainly keen to try.

Starfish on the Rocks. Nikon D300 with Tokina 11-16mm. f/6.3 @ 1/20th. ISO 800

Focusing on getting images of the starfish at the end of the evening, in very low light, was my downfall. Even though the tide was very low, and I could move around the rocks fairly easily, the starfish were still down quite low and not really that easy to get to. I had just taken a photo on the Tokina of the starfish low down on the rocks, with the hills and houses in the background (see image above), when I noticed some starfish a bit closer up. I decided I should use the Nikkor 18-70mm instead for a closer composition, so I needed to change lenses. At that moment, disaster struck!

Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 front element - with debris

I had changed lenses by doing what I always do - taking off the old lens and placing it loosely in my camera bag before quickly adding the new lens on the front of the camera, so as not to expose the sensor to the elements longer than is absolutely necessary.

Having achieved this, I went to take the lens cap off of the 18-70mm so I could use it, and promptly dropped it in a rock pool at my feet. Bugger! I bent over to retrieve the lens cap from the pool and dry it off, but I had failed to secure the Tokina in my bag properly. You don't have to be a genius to guess what happened next! Out dropped the Tokina, onto the rocks, and I watched as it fell down the rock face, bouncing around as it went, falling directly into the sea!

I'm not proud of the string of expletives that issued forth once I realised what had just happened. I was able to retrieve the lens from the sea (eventually) since it was such a low tide that was ebbing in and out - but the prognosis was obviously very grim. Of course the lens is destroyed, and unfortunately, my insurance policy has a $250 excess. The lens only cost me $300 secondhand, so even if I made a claim, I'd only get $50.00NZ out of it.

In a career that has spanned over 30 years so far, this is only the second lens I've ever ruined. So I guess that's not too bad over the long haul. I was enjoying using the lens, and am obviously upset that it's now completely ruined. But I also still struggle using an ultra-wide, so I'm not sure whether I'll even bother replacing it with the same (or slightly different) lens? If I'd dropped my Nikkor 18-70mm f3.5-4.5 I'd definitely be replacing it. But the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8? I'm not so sure....