[goatsNdonkey]

I just purchased a like new copy of the RMC Tokina f/5.6 100-300mm 1-touch close-focusing zoom, first introduced circa 1980 { oooooooops! that's 35 years ago, not 25! }, but later surpassed in the Tokina line by the AT-X 100-300/4. My copy is a plain-vanilla K-mount, but fwcetus says he has a KA-mount. In this post in another thread, he gives a detailed account of his experience with it, making comparisons between it and the AT-X version which he likes to call its "big brother" : < https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/10-pentax-slr-lens-discussion/323159-info...ml#post3674989 > . He's recently posted pictures and more details about his Tokina Bros, so you might want to read past the post I linked to.

I start out wondering how this lens might compare to the Tokina-made Sears f/5.5 300mm prime lens, which came out around the same time and which I've been experimenting with. That 300 is not at all close-focusing, and has a minimum focusing distance of about 17.5 feet. Other than that it's decent and well-built lens. Not close-focusing is a frustration for me, though. But, as the above picture shows, this zoom goes to a reproduction ratio of 1:2.3 -- not too shabby, and considerably more magnification than a lot of close-focusing zooms of its era, if not more than true macro (1:1) primes.

While f/5.6 is a bit slow, and while the lens is supposed to render on the soft side wide-open, that doesn't mean the lens can't produce sharp and contrasty images. For example, sometimes you have to stop-down a lot, like when you are using a manual flash from just over 3 feet from your subject:




I'm just starting to experiment with, or play with this lens, so these first samples will be limited. Like the above indoor shot, this view of dusky skies was taken not a great many minutes after I unwrapped the lens from the package it came in. I purposely underexposed a stop to deepen what colors there were:




Morning daylight, new opportunities. Here, a single spiderwort blossom (not more than 1/2" wide) on a clump of already pollinated and closed buds, taken from about 3.5 feet, aperture at about f11, partly just to keep the petal color deep enough:




I'll be posting more pictures from this lens in this thread in the coming days. I welcome posts by others, pics or information, reflecting what they have found this old school lens is capable of. Of course, it has limitations, but what can it do when it's best is coaxed out of it?

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Last edited by goatsNdonkey; 06-13-2016 at 08:08 AM.

[Dlanor Sekao]

I'm Glad to see You Doing this ! I love Vintage glass and always welcome new reviews of Old Glass......Interesting.

[fwcetus]

I welcome posts by others, pics or information, reflecting what they have found this old school lens is capable of. Of course, it has limitations, but what can it do when its best is coaxed out of it?

Here is what might seem to be at least the second version (or actually the third, since I now know there is a K-mount version with tripod mount that would have preceded this Ka-mount version) of the RMC Tokina 100-300/5.6 lens (the Ka-mount version probably from the mid-1980's) -



What follows are images captured with the above lens on a K-3. In each case, the images are in sets of three, one being a slightly cropped original image, and the other two being 100% (i.e., full-size 1:1) crops from each original.

With the exception of slight cropping and resizing of the original images, and slight compression of all images, there was no other processing used. [Obviously, some editing, such as for gamma, contrast (especially in those with the sky in the background), and sharpening, would significantly improve each of these images, but I have left them as unprocessed as possible just to illustrate what the lens itself can do.]

300mm f/8 -


300mm f/8 100% crop -


300mm f/8 100% crop -


300mm f/11 -


300mm f/11 100% crop -


300mm f/11 100% crop -


300mm f/10 -


300mm f/10 100% crop -


300mm f/10 100% crop -


100mm f/10 -


100mm f/10 100% crop -


100mm f/10 100% crop -


300mm f/10 -


300mm f/10 100% crop -


300mm f/10 100% crop -


300mm f/11 -


300mm f/11 100% crop -


300mm f/11 100% crop -


300mm f/10 -


300mm f/10 100% crop -


300mm f/10 100% crop -


I would suggest that the RMC Tokina 100-300/5.6 could sort of qualify as "the poor man's AT-X 100-300/4".

[goatsNdonkey]

Dlanor, thanks for the good words!

Fred, thanks for the a m a z i n g post of pictures from your KA mount later version of the RMC Tokina 100-300/5.6 . They certainly seem to show that the lens is capable of sharpness at f8-to-f11. I was wondering whether that was color fringing on the back of the nesting raptor, but as I only see that effect on the upper margin of the bird's feathers, and not other surfaces and edges, I must assume it is an iridescence produced by the feathers when struck by strong light at that angle. Some of the unsharpness of distant subjects in your examples is clearly due to diffraction from intervening air currents of varying densities, rather than a lens flaw.

I want to submit three (much less sophisticated) examples, comparing views of the same subject at three apertures. The subject is a daylily flower taken in mid-morning sunshine (yesterday), from about 7 feet away, with the lens near the 300mm end of its reach, but zoomed slightly from there for better framing. The images are taken at iso 400 with my K110D, which has a cropped sensor. The images are in-the-camera .JPGs, with the settings for Sharpness, Contrast, and Saturation centered. The originals are 4mp (the K110D's max resolution is only 6mp) which is the largest size image I can ever upload with my dial-up networking. Some image resizing happens at the image hosting site I use.

F/5.6 [wide open] , 1/2000 Sec.



F/8, 1/1000 Sec.



F/11, 1/640 Sec.



The only softness I see in the F5.6 version (and this is confirmed when I look at the originals on my best computer screen) is in areas that are not in the plane of focus, which of course is narrower than in the two smaller aperture exposures. It might be important to note that this is a brightly lit subject, and that the subject itself has has distinctly contrasting color tones and edges. It is easier to focus on such a subject when the view finder is only lit by an F5.6 light level. If shooting the lens wide open does not inevitably lead to soft images, the ability to use higher shutter speeds could aid sharpness. The F8 version does get more of the flower, which is at least 4" wide, into focus, but I can't see (perhaps others can) more sharpness than for what was in focus in the F5.6 example. The F11 example is nice, but the background is more distracting in that one. Perhaps the F8 version is best, but is it better only as flower illustration? I'm can't really call the F5.6 a lesser image than the F8.

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Last edited by goatsNdonkey; 06-14-2016 at 07:53 AM.

[goatsNdonkey]

Okay, now another threesome from late yesterday morning. The subject, like the daylily, is sunlit, but unlike it this subject is much lower contrast: a large milkweed leaf. The leaf is quite cupped underneath, so that looking down on it, it presents a convex surface, not a flat one. As you will see, the lens is looking at several shades of green, none very strongly contrasting with another. Even the red central vein is a very similar depth of tone to the surrounding green. Even the background is green. The camera set-up is the same as for the daylily pictures, except that the lens to subject distance is closer and that I forgot what the shutter speeds were.


F/5.6:



F/8:



F/11:



As with the daylily examples, I personally don't see softness in what is in focus in the f5.6 example. There is just more in focus in the f8 and f11 examples. So, from this point on, I'm not going to be afraid to shoot this lens wide open. Now might I get some soft images that way? Yes, with poorer lighting and with certain subjects. Might I stop down to f8 or f11, simply because I feel less than confident about how well I am able to focus? Maybe, yes, sometimes. Would a faster lens be easier to focus with that kind of poorer lighting or subject matter? Probably, but I think the main issue is light-level limitations of the F/5.6 RMC Tokina 100-300mm, not some other design limitation. Could a more modern f/5.6 lens be sharper and more contrasty than this lens. Sure, but that doesn't make this lens less sharp than it is.

Next, I'm going to shoot a variety of images, snapping away for fun, unafraid to shoot the lens wide open, but free to stop down for any good reason. I may give more attention to shooting the lens over its range of focal lengths, without focusing on systematic tests, however. Could I discover some softness or other issues when shooting distant objects at or near 300mm? Maybe, but let's see what happens.

[fwcetus]

I was wondering whether that was color fringing on the back of the nesting raptor, but as I only see that effect on the upper margin of the bird's feathers, and not other surfaces and edges, I must assume it is an iridescence produced by the feathers when struck by strong light at that angle.

No, there actually does seem to be some PF, but I don't hold it against the lens too much, since it was almost a "worst case scenario" for really bad lighting -- the sky was very bright (but with some haze), and the sun, while not shining on the lens objective itself, was likely shining on the inside surface of the hood (which, even with the matte black treatment, still probably caused extra unfocused light to be reflected onto the front objective), and the contrast was, as a result, quite low. [However, samples don't always have to be of the best pix, right?]

I did try editing the osprey's pix a bit, but the contrast is still a bit low, but the osprey mom or dad is looking a bit better here -

Some of the unsharpness of distant subjects in your examples is clearly due to diffraction from intervening air currents of varying densities, rather than a lens flaw.

Oh, to be sure. But, of course, unstable atmospherics (or, as astronomers refer to it, "bad seeing") is a not uncommon hazard with long telephotos. Still, even in the most distorted image (the one with the not-too-distant windmill with the quite-distant Otis AFB wind turbine), the wind turbine is "squiggled", but its distorted edges are still pretty sharp.

Thanks for your comments.

[fwcetus]

I want to submit three (much less sophisticated) examples, comparing views of the same subject at three apertures. The subject is a daylily flower taken in mid-morning sunshine (yesterday), from about 7 feet away, with the lens near the 300mm end of its reach, but zoomed slightly from there for better framing. The images are taken at iso 400 with my K110D, which has a cropped sensor. The images are in-the-camera .JPGs, with the settings for Sharpness, Contrast, and Saturation centered. The originals are 4mp (the K110D's max resolution is only 6mp) which is the largest size image I can ever upload with my dial-up networking. Some image resizing happens at the image hosting site I use.

The only softness I see in the F5.6 version (and this is confirmed when I look at the originals on my best computer screen) is in areas that are not in the plane of focus, which of course is narrower than in the two smaller aperture exposures. It might be important to note that this is a brightly lit subject, and that the subject itself has has distinctly contrasting color tones and edges. It is easier to focus on such a subject when the view finder is only lit by an F5.6 light level. If shooting the lens wide open does not inevitably lead to soft images, the ability to use higher shutter speeds could aid sharpness. The F8 version does get more of the flower, which is at least 4" wide, into focus, but I can't see (perhaps others can) more sharpness than for what was in focus in the F5.6 example. The F11 example is nice, but the background is more distracting in that one. Perhaps the F8 version is best, but is it better only as flower illustration? I'm can't really call the F5.6 a lesser image than the F8.

I found your daylily (what I call a "tiger lily") images to be very good. I agree that f/8 might be the best overall (by a small amount), but f/5.6 does have the whole flower almost all within the in-focus plane, and is certainly sharp enough as is. I don't think that the bokeh is quite as nice on the f/11 image (but, that's not surprising).

The aspect of the lily images that is most impressive is the bokeh. I am a sucker for milky-smooth bokeh, and that's what your RMC 100-300/5.6 did produce. Very nice indeed.

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Last edited by fwcetus; 06-25-2016 at 06:41 PM.

[fwcetus]

Okay, now another threesome from late yesterday morning. The subject, like the daylily, is sunlit, but unlike it this subject is much lower contrast: a large milkweed leaf. The leaf is quite cupped underneath, so that looking down on it, it presents a convex surface, not a flat one. As you will see, the lens is looking at several shades of green, none very strongly contrasting with another. Even the red central vein is a very similar depth of tone to the surrounding green. Even the background is green. The camera set-up is the same as for the daylily pictures, except that the lens to subject distance is closer and that I forgot what the shutter speeds were.

As with the daylily examples, I personally don't see softness in what is in focus in the f5.6 example. There is just more in focus in the f8 and f11 examples. So, from this point on, I'm not going to be afraid to shoot this lens wide open. Now might I get some soft images that way? Yes, with poorer lighting and with certain subjects. Might I stop down to f8 or f11, simply because I feel less than confident about how well I am able to focus? Maybe, yes, sometimes. Would a faster lens be easier to focus with that kind of poorer lighting or subject matter? Probably, but I think the main issue is light-level limitations of the F/5.6 RMC Tokina 100-300mm, not some other design limitation. Could a more modern f/5.6 lens be sharper and more contrasty than this lens. Sure, but that doesn't make this lens less sharp than it is.

Again, good images -- not as pretty as the lily pix, of course, but they're good samples test for low-contrast lighting conditions.

Shooting at f/5.6 will give you a faster shutter speed, but it also makes for a narrower DOF, so you might consider f/8 to be a good alternate compromise when the light is good enough (i.e., when it's brighter than with those leaf images).

Next, I'm going to shoot a variety of images, snapping away for fun, unafraid to shoot the lens wide open, but free to stop down for any good reason. I may give more attention to shooting the lens over its range of focal lengths, without focusing on systematic tests, however. Could I discover some softness or other issues when shooting distant objects at or near 300mm? Maybe, but let's see what happens.

That sounds like a plan...

[goatsNdonkey]

Fred, thanks for the additional informative and helpful posts! I went out driving in yesterday's heat and extreme humidity, looking for some fresh subjects to try with the RMC 5.6/100-300. I would say that it is a great walk-around/or drive-around lens, except that you have to not start by walking all the way up to the vantage point where you'd stand with a 50mm lens -- or you will (as I did) spend a lot of time walking backwards!

For a little more parklike setting than the farm, and one with some architectural-to-artistic stone accents I visited nearby Oak Hill Cemetery, made famous as "The Hill" in Edgar Lee Masters's book Spoon River Anthology. I drove in to an area near the "Lincoln Columns" and just looked around for some interesting images. Why are they called called "The Lincoln Columns"? Abe gave a speech standing between them when they stood in front of the former court house? How did that court house come to burn and a new one have to be built? Part of that story is in the book. As for photographic approach to yesterday's pictures (which will be included in one or more additional posts), I generally started with the aperture at f/5.6 and only stopped down if I wanted a bit more DOF, and usually only one stop, though sometimes one more. I let the K110D bracket the shutter speeds by the equivalent of 1/3-stop increments for a bit of exposure insurance.


Flag decorated markers, the day after Flag Day.




Lincoln Columns, Oak Hill Cemetery




Column capitals.




What's in a name?




Figure against the trees.

The K100D preserves no F-stop info for manual lenses, and I didn't record them -- in the spirit of fun and adventure, more than science. These are some of the better shots from the cemetery visit, after which I drove on.....

[goatsNdonkey]

The village of Smithfield, IL (Pop. 300) doesn't offer a lot of subjects for a long lens, unless you're exploring close-ups. I had to drive to the east edge of town, and shoot back into the town through tree tops to get this view of the top of the water tower:




From the same location, I discovered that I was almost far away enough to nicely frame a large, unusual, white-painted church made of decorative concrete blocks. Although I've visited the town before, I don't recall seeing it before. It was a good opportunity to shoot something at both the 100 and 300mm extremes of the lens:







My next somewhat successful pictures came from Canton, IL, the only city in the county with more than on traffic light. But you wouldn't know that out at Lakeland Park visiting with the resident Canada Geese:







Earlier Wednesday, pre-photo-drive, I took a few pictures at home with the 100-300/5.6, but since I wanted to give a break from my earlier close-ups, I thought I'd post them after the others. I think the Black-eyed Susan flower was shot at f/8, but the dragonfly was probably shot wide open. With the close-up mode working at all of the focal lengths, and the greatest close-up magnification coming from the 300mm position, it makes for having very ample working room. I must have been at least 5 or 6 feet from the dragonfly. And I didn't have to bend way down to shoot the flower.







Lastly for this post, I shot another cloud shot early Tuesday evening, while the sun was still quite high. Having discovered I had a 55mm rectilinear polarizing filter, I thought I would try it out:




So far, I'm having a lot of fun with the RMC Tokina f/5.6 100-300mm. Certainly on bright days, shooting it wide open or only stopped down one or two stops still lets one use very fast shutter speeds (with iso 400), relieving one of some worry about camera shake or even subject movement. It's a bit long for framing large subjects (such as buildings or tall monuments) in close quarters, but in those circumstances would offer a lot of close-up options. It offers a lot of reach, if you can't get close, or it can embrace large subjects, if you walk backwards far enough. It's an interesting set of capabilities. I will look for increasingly different subject matter and conditions to try out the lens with.....

[fwcetus]

I welcome posts by others, pics or information, reflecting what they have found this old school lens is capable of. Of course, it has limitations, but what can it do when its best is coaxed out of it?

Here are some "macro" (i.e., close-up) images taken with what might seem to be at least the second version (or actually the third, since I now know there is a K-mount version with tripod mount that would have preceded this Ka-mount version) of the RMC Tokina 100-300/5.6 lens on a K-3. Many of these images are in groups, with each group consisting of a slightly cropped original image, followed by one or more 100% (i.e., full-size 1:1) crops taken from the original.

With the exception of slight cropping and considerable resizing of the original images, and slight compression of all images, there was no other processing used. [Obviously, some editing, such as for gamma, contrast, and sharpening, would significantly improve each of these images, but I have left them as unprocessed as possible just to illustrate what the lens itself can do.]

100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop


300mm f/11


300mm f/11


300mm f/11

[fwcetus]

I welcome posts by others, pics or information, reflecting what they have found this old school lens is capable of. Of course, it has limitations, but what can it do when its best is coaxed out of it?

Here are some more "macro" (i.e., close-up) images taken with the second version (or the third, since there is a K-mount version with tripod mount that must have preceded this Ka-mount version) of the RMC Tokina 100-300/5.6 lens on a K-3. These images are in groups, with each group consisting of a slightly cropped original image, followed by one or more 100% (i.e., full-size 1:1) crops taken from the original.

With the exception of slight cropping and considerable resizing of the original images, and slight compression of all images, there was no other processing used. [Obviously, some editing, such as for gamma, contrast, and sharpening, would significantly improve each of these images, but I have left them as unprocessed as possible just to illustrate what the lens itself can do.]

100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop


200mm f/11


200mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11 100% crop


100mm f/11


100mm f/11 100% crop

[ScooterMaxi Jim]

The 100-300 f/4 is capable of some especially fine shots that rival the modern lenses.

[goatsNdonkey]

Fred, it's great to see these two new posts from your lens. I'm in the process of doing a test comparing the RMC Tokina 100-300/5.6 to some other old close-focusing zooms I have. When I have the post ready, I'll link to it here. In the test, I have found it useful to test this lens at more than one focal length, since it goes into close-focusing mode from any focal length. Some of the other zooms have a close-focusing mode that is connected to only one end of the focal length range, usually in the 75-80mm range.

[goatsNdonkey]

fwcetus, ScooterMaxiJim, and others posters and readers here --

Here's a link to the thread where I am comparing the RMC Tokina 5.6/100-300 to four other close-focusing zooms I have. Phase one of that comparison was shooting all five at wide-open aperture for 3 views of a colorful still-life. Two of the views were at each lens's maximum reproduction ratio, which was a bit more challenging for the 100-300 since it's greater magnification and slower aperture present challenges. I'm developing ideas for Phase Two of that five-way lens comparison. That thread will mainly compare close-focusing abilities between those lenses -- at most it could compare them out to portrait length if I do anything other than close-up comparison.

https://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/10-pentax-slr-lens-discussion/324798-old-...ml#post3696545

I will continue adding RMC Tokina 5.6/100-300 shots and observations here, and look forward to seeing others, posts based on it or on the version of it like Fred's! Actually, I am hoping that the comparison in the other thread will help me get a clearer idea of what it particularly is helpful with in my photography. What can it do better than another close-up capable lens I have, at least under certain circumstances, as well as what range of things can it do reasonably well? When will it be the lens to grab over another zoom which partially overlaps in capability? I realized that my head was in a muddle over questions like those -- hence the test in the other thread!

ScooterMaxiJim -- Thanks also for posting the amazing shot from the ATX F4 version, what Fred calls the "big brother." for comparison's sake.