Tokina 12-24mm f4

I've blogged frequently over the last couple of years about my desire to own a 'super' wide angle lens for my landscape work. In the past I have owned the Sigma 15-30, which is about as wide as I've ever gotten - until recently, of course, having just purchased the Tokina 10-17mm fisheye zoom. But this is a fisheye lens in the true sense of the meaning, and I don't for a moment consider it to be my one and only landscape lens.

So in a moment of weakness (or should that be bravado?) I bid on a Tokina 12-24mm f4 ATX-Pro wide angle lens, and won it!

Of all the third-party lens offerings, I have gravitated towards Tokina for a couple of reasons. Firstly, everyone raves about their quality and finish, some even suggesting that their lenses are better made than the manufacturers own offerings. And I can confirm this with my recent purchases. They really do make beautifully solid lenses.

And second, the quality of their glass is also impressive - which is, after all, why you buy a lens in the first place - right? I believe that the glass in their lenses is manufactured by Hoya, who have always been my preferred filter makers. I like the quality of Hoya glass, which always comes at a pretty decent price.

And thirdly (and perhaps least importantly), I also heard that Tokina was started by lens engineers who left Nikon to start their own company. They wanted to make more 'exotic' glass, but couldn't get it happening through Nikon, so they went out on their own. And certainly if you look at Tokina's range you'll find that they offer a lot less choice than the likes of Sigma. But I think the saying "Quality, not Quantity" aptly describes Tokina's mantra for business. And it's a mantra I'm willing to support.

Anyway, the lens turned up the other day and it is indeed a solid, well made lens. The autofocus action is  quick and quiet, the manual focus is incredibly smooth (like butter), and Tokina's unique 'clutch' mechanism for engaging manual focus work easily and has just the right amount of grip to make the transition obvious (but not forced).

Above is a photo taken at 24mm, at f8 - around the sweet spot of the lens and where I'm most likely to shoot with it for landscapes (maybe going to f11 or 16 on occasion). The image is very sharp almost all over - only degrading very slightly at the extreme edges. Distortion is kept well under control at 24mm (and even at 12mm), and the colour/contrast is crisp and accurate - at least to my eyes.

The 100% crop above shows the sharpness boost you get going from f4 to f8 - this is not a lens you should use wide open a lot. But since this is my landscape lens, I'm not going to use it at f4 at all - so no big deal, right? People get so hung up on sharpness nowadays it's ridiculous. For what I want to use the lens (predominantly) for, f8 is about where I'll always be - and this lens is super sharp at f8. For the times that I may want to shoot an environmental portrait, I'll want to be at f5.6(ish) anyway, and it's also plenty sharp enough there too. And from what I've read on other sites, the Tokina at f4 is a match for the manufacturers own offerings anyway - at half the price!

The range from 12 to 24mm is about right for my landscape style. I don't feel the need to shoot at 10mm, so the Sigma wasn't really a consideration. 12mm (18mm equivalent) is plenty wide enough - seriously. Once upon a time (in film days) 24mm was plenty wide enough for most people and 20mm was considered crazy wide.

Nikon's equivalent is also the same focal range and f-stop (constant f4), but is considerably more expensive. Even second hand, they go for twice the price that I paid for the Tokina. Is image quality twice as good on the Nikon? No it's not. And as described, you don't sacrifice construction quality with the Tokina either.

I'm very happy with the Tokina 12-24mm f5 ATX-Pro - well worth the money, and I'm looking forward to many years usage creating some outstanding images with it. Will post some landscapes taken with the lens when I get around to giving it a serious workout. Good times.

Nikkor 50mm f1.4 quick thought

My 50mm f1.4 arrived yesterday and I managed to take it out for a couple of quick shots to test its open aperture capabilities.

First quick thought - yes, it is made of 'better' materials than my 50mm f1.8, but I wouldn't necessarily say that it's therefore better made. My 1.4 has a bit of wiggle and a little jiggle when shaken - something that the f1.8 has to a slightly lesser degree. I'm sure this is normal, however, and not the optics shaking around inside!

Focus speed on the F1.4 seems about as fast as the f1.8 too - certainly not noticeably faster. And focus motor noise is also on par for both lenses. So really, it's in the optics that the f1.4 needs to shine.

Does it shine there? Well, as yet I haven't made a direct comparison, but initial testing with the f1.4 confirms what I've been reading from others. At wide open (1.4) the lens is all-over soft. Not unusably soft - for portraits the softness is kinda nice - but it is soft nonetheless.

You can see from the above portrait of Emily and the 100% crop in on the eye that, although soft, the image still works as a soft portrait. The background is beautifully blurred, and the depth-of-field at f1.4 is just enough so that facial features remain reasonably sharp, but get increasingly blurred out from about the cheeks backwards.

Change the f-stop to f2.8, however, and things improve 100%. The focus point (on the eye) becomes stunningly sharp. Although as you can see, you do gain more depth of field. Lips and chin are now also in focus using my D300 cropped sensor body.

So from about f2 the 50mm f1.4 is super sharp. Again - not sure how comparable that is to the 50mm f1.8, but I'll make that comparison soon. In the meantime, I will use the f1.4 at a wedding this week and see how it performs. Might post a couple of images from the day as well.

Nikkor 50mm f1.4D

I weakened, and I bought one.

Yes, I know I've already got the 50mm f1.8D. And yes, I love it, and use it all the time.

But... I've always been curious about the F1.4D version. It's supposed to be much better built than the f1.8 (although to be fair that wouldn't be hard), and given than it's three times the price, then it damn well should be!

More importantly, it's also supposed to be sharper than the f1.8 (at the wider f1.8 to f2.8 apertures, and with much creamier/smoother bokeh.
That's the stuff that really interests me.

I love my Nikkor f1.8D - and the f1.4D is supposedly all that, and more! Hey, I'm up for that.

I'm not interested in the 'newer' f1.4'G' series lens. By all accounts it's slightly slower focusing than the f1.4D - and I just don't like the way the newer 'G' primes look. Too smooth and sculptured. They just look too plasticky. I much prefer the aesthetics of these 'older' lenses. Oh and yeah, the 'G' lens is also about double the price! No thank you.

I'll let you know what I think after the lens arrives, and probably even do a quick comparison with the f1.8D since I'll have both fast 50's together at the same time. Cool!

Fisheye Fun

My Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye arrived today, and yep, it's FUN!

At 10mm you can fit a whole room in - including most of yourself if you're not too careful!

And it has that great fisheye look which, although admittedly can get old real quick, is also undoubtedly a unique spin on an otherwise dull image. This is just a snap of Emy in our lounge - literally the first shot I took with the lens on my D300, but it's also kinda neat. I love how you get sooooo much in, although when kept in the middle the 'subject' still looks relatively natural.  I can see the wedding potential already.

So I took the kids outside and fired another a few more quick shots. just to get a feel for the lens. Not surprisingly it's very snappy to focus, and beautifully sharp, especially in the centre, even wide open. I may not use this lens a lot, but I can tell I'm going to love the results when I do.

Another shot at 10mm - showing again how the central figures can stay reasonably normal, while the horizon and edges bend for the funky fisheye effect. Great portrait of the kids.

Never ask your son "How close can you get to my lens?"
"Is this close enough Dad?"

Seriously, how can you not have fun with this lens?

Tokina Fisheye for my D300

Digital has taken a back seat over the last few months as my passion for film photography has really blossomed. I've written extensively on my experiences over at filmisback.blogspot.com and poor old digital hasn't got a look in!

That's not to say I haven't used my D300 - I shot my second wedding for the season last weekend, and am still all digital on a wedding shoot. I've also got a 'Trash the Dress' session booked in for next month, which will also be digital (although I may sneak some medium format film in there somewhere?). So while I might have been ranting and raving about film over the past few months, digital remains a big part of my work - and will remain so. I still love my Nikon D300.

So to that end, I've decided to give my D300 a little present - jut to say 'sorry' for neglecting it for so long  :-)  I've always yearned for a funky fisheye lens. Something compatible with my cropped sensor D300. When Brian and Emily Hatch visited from the States last year, I got to play with Brian's 16mm FX (Full frame) Nikkor Fisheye, and while I fell in love with it, it really wasn't fisheye enough on my crop sensor. To get true fisheye with a Nikkor lens, I'd need to get the 10.5mm DX lens, taking it back up to the 16mm of Brian's lens with the crop factor added in. But since a new 10.5mm costs over $1400.00NZ, that wasn't about to happen any time soon.

But there are decent alternatives in the third-party lens realm - probably the most tempting of which is the Tokina 10-17mm f3.5/4.5 DX fisheye - the world's only true fisheye zoom! Of the third-party offerings, the build quality of Tokina is legendary, and even though it isn't considered one of their 'pro' lenses, the 10-17mm still gets very good reviews for build quality.

I've been keeping an eye on the lens auctions recently, in the hope that a manual focus fisheye for either Olympus or Minolta would show up, even tough they are both as rare as hens teeth. Not surprisingly, nothing has. But what did pop up, at an amazing price, was a Tokina 10-17mm DX fisheye for Nikon. So I bought it.

What a sexy little lens it is! And most reviews are very positive - except for two things!

First, all the reviewers stress that this is a true fisheye lens, it hasn't been corrected for distortions in any way. Images, especially at the 10mm end, will distort wildly! Great, that's just what I want. You don't buy a fisheye to get rid of the fisheye look - you want to use it! Well at least I do. And yes, while I know that the fisheye thing can get madly overdone, I'm also willing to bet that when my brides see one or two fisheye images in their proof book they'll go nuts over them. I reckon I'll use it at least once for every wedding. And then there's my own landscape work as well. So the fisheye distortion argument doesn't phase me. This is a specialty lens to be used sparingly. Dually noted.

Second, and perhaps more damning, is the lenses tendency to purple fringe in places of high contrast within the image. While on the face of it this is a problem, the D300 (and other high-end nikon bodies) will actually reduce this problem 'in-camera' so I don't believe it will be as noticeable as many of the (Canon using) reviewers have suggested. It's also something that is fairly easy to fix in post processing as well. It does have an aspherical element to correct for aberrations, but that's a great big bulbous hunk of glass on the front of that lens, so it's not surprising it struggles a little with harsh light.

And while we're on the subject of the front element - it may have a tiny built-in hood, but the front stays mainly unprotected. No filters will fit on the front, and Tokina have not made any allowances for rear-fitting gels. No biggy, and I have seen a D.I.Y work around a landscape photographer posted on his blog if I want to go down that track. But I'm not worried, since I won't be using it for every shot. It is, as I've already pointed out, a specialty lens.

Can't wait for it to arrive. I'll definitely be posting some images and my initial thoughts on the lens when I've had a play with it on the D300. After 25+ years in photography, I'm finally going to own a fisheye lens. Yeeehaaaa!

A moment of Nostalgia

I've been doing a lot of research on the Olympus Pen (see previous post) and it's got me all nostalgic for film and retro-looking cameras.

So this weekend I pulled out a few of my old Canon cameras, and decided to shoot some film on the camera that started my passion - the T70.

The Canon T70 wasn't the very first camera I ever used - but it was the very first camera I ever owned. The first camera I used was a Nikon (FM I think?), handed to me by a friend when we went to a car rally. I fiddled around with the camera all day, desperately trying to freeze cars in a single frame as they went hurtling past me at a great rate of knots. I didn't get many good photos, but it didn't matter. I was hooked on photography from that day on, and it's been my passion/obsession ever since.

I had a love-hate relationship with my original T70, the camera that launched Canon into the 'computer age'. I loved the way it handled, the up-to-date interface (this was the 1980s) and its ease of use. I hated the top LCD screen that kept dying on me which meant that my T70 was in for repair more than it was out in the field. It was truly frustrating for someone trying the immerse themselves in photography and I think I would have eventually given up on Canon if they hadn't come to the party with a brand new T90! Now that was an amazing camera.

I don't own a T90 anymore, but have managed to buy a very good condition T70 (and T80 pictured behind it). This weekend I popped a couple of batteries in the T70, loaded up some Velvia 50, and went out with a Canon FD50mm f1.8 and Sigma 28mm f2.8 manual focus lenses. 

The family went for a walk along a local beach and I snapped away with the T70. Got to admit it felt good using a manual focus camera again. Although I wouldn't be too keen to take it to a sporting event with much accuracy. Auto focus really has spoiled us as photographers.

Will your next camera be EVIL?

There's a new category of camera hitting the market - one I suggest you take a very hard look at if you are looking at buying a new point-and-shoot anytime soon.

They're being called EVIL camera's (Electronic Viewfinder Interchangeable Lens) and most are based around a new 4/3rds sensor - although some (like Samsung's NX100) are even using an APS-C sized sensor taken from digital SLR's.

The very first of these EVIL cameras (I just love that term) was the Olympus Pen EP-1 - a camera I am seriously considering as my next 'travel' camera.

Olympus pioneered the 4/3rd's system (with an image sensor smaller than the APS-C sized, but much larger than those found in today's point and shoots), first seen in the Olympus' E-1. As solid and professional as that camera was, the 4/3rd's system failed to capture the imagination of most other manufacturers (with the exception of Panasonic) - until the release of the Pen.

It was with the Pen EP-1 that Olympus defined their 'micro' 4/3rd's camera. Beautifully built, and stunningly retro (harkening back as it does to the original film version of the Pen from the 1950's), the EP-1 almost literally rocked the camera industry, and Olympus built a very loyal following that now includes the EP-2 and (more consumer driven) EPL-1.

The 'micro' in Micro 4/3rd's doesn't relate to a smaller chip - the chip size hasn't changed from that which Olympus uses in their digital SLR's. It's the bodies of the cameras themselves that are now smaller (micro) because they have done away with the prism viewfinder experience of a digital SLR - to the more point-and-shoot experience of using the LCD to compose and shoot (although optional Electronic Viewfinders are available - hence the EV in EVIL).

Panasonic released their first Micro 4/3rd's camera, the G1, soon after the Pen - although they took a slightly different tact. The G1 was a much more SLR-like camera (with a built in Electronic Viewfinder) - and have since released a much more compact model - the GF1 (seen here) to compete directly with Olympus.

Both systems use a Panasonic 4/3rds sensor, and both have interchangeable lenses (the IL part of EVIL). Popular among these is the 'pancake' lens with a fixed focal length (17mm for Olympus and 20mm for Panasonic) which makes the EVIL system 'almost' pocketable (but still much larger than the smaller point and shoots that are available).

So why would you want one of these new EVIL camera's. It's all about the sensor baby. Bigger sensors (generally) mean better, noise free images - especially at high ISO's, and the reviews of these cameras are bearing this out. At ISO 800 the images are very useable, and the Olympus can even shoot up to 6400 for 'OK' results (the Panasonic stops at 3200). This is much better than even the best point and shoot, which is why serious amateur's and professional photographers alike have been flocking to buy these cameras.

With so much interest being shown in this new line of EVIL camera's, it's not surprising that more manufacturers are coming on board with their own offerings.

Korean electronics giant Samsung is the newest kid on the block, with the NX100 released this year (2010) at Photokina. And Samsung have upped the anti further still by putting an APS-C sized sensor in the NX100 which should produce even better high ISO performance (although we'll have to wait and see).

The 'other' electronics giant who I haven't mentioned, but who also recently released their own EVIL cameras onto the market are, of course, Sony. The NEX 3 and NEX 5 are, as you would expect from Sony, beautifully designed cameras that 'stand out' from the crowd, but have received slightly mixed reviews so far.

With all this flurry of activity and interest around the new EVIL camera system, it's surprising that there are two notable absences from the party. What are Canon and Nikon up to? the two camera giants might be silent at the moment, but they are certainly not sleeping. Both were heavily rumored to release their own EVIL cameras at Photokina - although it didn't happen. Why? Well, I can't say. But Nikon have already indicated that they will be coming out with their answer 'in due course' - and whatever Nikon does...

What this all means for us, the consumer, is better/smaller/lighter cameras fitted with decent sized sensors - FINALLY! Thanks to Olympus and the 'Micro' 4/3rd's concept, life in digital camera land just got a whole lot more interesting.

And for me. Well, the Olympus Pen EP-1 that started it all remains a very attractive camera - literally! Look at it - it's gorgeous! And while it's auto focus system isn't reported to be the fastest, the images it can produce are classic Olympus - beautiful colour, great sharpness - with very good ISO performance. That may be something I find very hard to resist. My next camera will be EVIL. Will yours?