| Author: | | New Member Registered: November, 2019 Posts: 16 | | Review Date: October 18, 2020 | Recommended | Price: $154.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Sharp, easy to focus, good color reproduction with the lens works nicely | | Cons: | it's a little heavy and bulky | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 9
Bokeh: 7
Handling: 9
Value: 8
Camera Used: pentax K5 IIs
Focusing: 9
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I bought my lens from a Japanese site 10 days ago.It turned out to be brand new, without any traces of use. The optics are very clean. No dust or mold.
I think this is a very good lens. Easy to work with but a bit heavy. Works very well from the maximum aperture. A on F 8 and up sharp at all focal lengths.It can be shot by hand
| | | | | | | Veteran Member Registered: January, 2011 Location: Houston, Texas Posts: 982
2 users found this helpful
| | Review Date: January 2, 2017 | Recommended | Price: $320.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Relatively fast max aperture, very well made | | Cons: | heavy, a little soft at 500mm | | Sharpness: 8
Aberrations: 10
Bokeh: 9
Handling: 9
Value: 10
Camera Used: Nikon FE2
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I bought this lens earlier last year, mostly because I have the Tokina AT-X 100-300mm f/4, which is an outstanding zoom. I was hoping that it could live up to the 100-300's exemplary performance. Well, the result was it does and it doesn't. As fwcetus mentions in his review, it is quite good up to 300mm, then it begins to fade once zoomed beyond this focal length. I also own the Tamron 200-500mm f/5.6 so I saw this as a natural candidate for a comparison against the Tamron, which is a truly remarkable zoom.
Well, no matter how hard I tried, how carefully I focused the lens and how sturdily I mounted it to a tripod, the Tamron was noticeably sharper than the Tokina. The two were roughly equivalent in terms of contrast, but I had to give the edge to the Tamron when it came to sharpness at 500mm.
So does this mean the Tokina 100-500 isn't worth bothering with? Not even! It is still a remarkably good zoom, even at 500mm. One must be reminded of the Tamron's exceptional abilities and realize that the Tokina's performance is just "better than average." I am reminded of a Minolta MC 100-500mm f/8 push-pull zoom I owned for a while, and there is no comparison here. The Tokina is worlds better than that old Minolta. Also, because it has SD glass, its chromatic aberrations are very well controlled. This is a very nice feature to have, especially if you find yourself shooting high contrast subjects. It's also about a half-kilogram lighter than the Tamron, a not-insignificant amount.
I picked mine up on eBay for $320. It was a Buy It Now listing, but I thought it was a very fair price. The lens exhibits some moderate cosmetic wear, but the glass is mint and the mechanicals all perform as they should. Included with the lens was a front and rear cap, its custom-fitted case, and a set of filters.
| | | | | Site Supporter Registered: September, 2006 Location: New England Posts: 1,286
2 users found this helpful
| | Review Date: February 14, 2015 | Recommended | Price: None indicated
| Rating: 7 |
| Pros: | Nice zoom range; constant aperture while zooming; built like a tank; reasonably sharp up to about 300mm | | Cons: | Gets softer above 300mm :-( | | Sharpness: 6
Aberrations: 10
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 8
Value: 7
Camera Used: LX
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I really wanted to like this lens more than I ended up doing. It is well built and quite nice to handle (if you don't mind HEAVY) -- it is even hand-holdable in decent light, but it really needs a tripod for best results. However, I was disappointed to find that its sharpness fell off at the longer end (which is an all-too-common trait for many long zooms), and, since I tended to want to use the lens at 500mm much of the time, I ended up being frustrated a bit using the lens.
[Please note that, despite the date of this review, it is based upon my experiences from "way back in Ye Olde Film Days of Yore" using LX film bodies, in the pre-DSLR era.]
Here are some pix of the lens and its accessories -
Tokina provided a very nice dedicated carrying case for the lens.
The case, however, is just long enough to fit the lens plus its caps, but, unfortunately, there is not enough room for the Tokina slip-on cap to be in place if one has a UV filter fitted to the lens.
The lens takes 95mm filters.
Here is the one-touch (Pentax Ka-mount) lens at 150mm FL. Notice the knurled screw near the far end of the focus/zoom sleeve, used to lock the sleeve in place when desired.
Here is the lens at 500 mm FL, with the lens hood extended. Although, as a Pentaxer, it did make me cringe just a bit (grin), I did obtain a used metal Nikon 95mm screw-in cap to protect the lens, since the Tokina slip-on cap could be easily knocked off, and there was just enough room in the case for the lens with a 95mm UV filter and the Nikon cap fitted to it.
 | | | | | Inactive Account Registered: January, 2012 Posts: 2
1 user found this helpful
| | Review Date: February 5, 2012 | Recommended | Price: $470.00
| Rating: 9 |
| Pros: | Sharp, good colour, easy focus(for a manual) & brilliant zoom range | | Cons: | Manual focus, no stabilization. 35.5mm filters hard to get. needs lots of light | | Sharpness: 9
Aberrations: 8
Bokeh: 8
Handling: 5
Value: 9
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Its old & hard to find any info on.
Very impressed with IQ.
Its manual focus is very easy to get used to.
Push/pull internal zoom. Lens extends with focus & front element rotates.
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