| Review of: Tokina RMC 28mm F2.8 by e-mountista on Sun June 26, 2016 | Rating: 7 | View more reviews | |
Views: 223042
Reviews: 23
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I have three 28mm lenses, this Tokina RMC, a Rokkor MD, and a Yashica ML, and they go from good to better to best in that order. There is nothing wrong with the Tokina, and the image quality is only slightly inferior to the other two lenses. It's not so much a question of sharpness or other big issues (though it is a little less sharp than the Yashica wide open), but more a question of color, contrast, micro-contrast, special sauce, etc. It the Tokina were all I had, I would be very satisfied with it. I could surely tweak the camera settings or work up the files in post and it would be a perfectly fine 28mm f2.8. One other thing is I think it's slightly less wide than my other two 28mm lenses, like maybe it's really closer to a 30mm, but this is not scientific.
I don't want to run this lens down. It's quite decent and has good build quality. I DO recommend it very much as long as you don't pay too much for it.
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| Review of: Tokina RMC / SMZ105 35-105mm F3.5-4.3 by e-mountista on Sun June 26, 2016 | Rating: 4 | View more reviews | |
Views: 77773
Reviews: 10
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I found this lens just lying around where I live. It's not a bad lens by any means, and it's built like a tank. The close focus abilities are good as well. At 35-50mm it doesn't really sharpen up until f8 even in the middle of the frame. At 75-105, it actually is sharp even wide open. But, especially on an NEX, I'm not willing to cart around a heavy zoom lens like this if it's sharpness is wanting, even if slightly, even at slow apertures like 3.5 - 5.6. I'd just simply rather shoot fast primes, and I find I never take this lens out for a spin.
IMHO, it's primary attraction is the decent 1:4 close focus performance if you can get it for cheap.
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| Review of: Tokina AT-X Macro "Bokina" 90mm F2.5 by e-mountista on Sun June 26, 2016 | Rating: 10 | View more reviews | |
Views: 84567
Reviews: 11
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There's no controversy surrounding this lens. I got one for about $250 without the 1:1 extender. It's not much of a problem b/c 2:1 is good enough for me. If I used the 1:1 I'd have to use a tripod, which I don't want to do. The lens is great, no doubt about it. It's really the anchor of my whole collection. If I broke it, I'd get another right away. Both shots below are wide open, first as a macro, and second as a portrait lens (not a great shot, but you can see how sharp it is wide open as a portrait lens).
100% crop
 
100% crop
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| Review of: Tokina SZ-X... 80-200mm F4.5-5.6 by e-mountista on Fri June 24, 2016 | Rating: 10 | View more reviews | |
Views: 55152
Reviews: 14
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Thanks to the other reviews here, I purchased a copy of the 52mm version, a.k.a. the Tokina SZ-X 200. (The 49mm version with the longer focus/zoom ring is the Tokina SZ-X 845). It is indeed a great lens, especially for an NEX mirrorless, where smaller sized lenses have better ergonomics.
This lens performs beautifully at every aperture and every focal length. The sharpness, saturation, warmth, and contrast are all very good. I'm not a zoom guy because the old primes tend to be excellent, whereas the old zooms have been surpassed technologically, but I thought I'd take a chance on a long zoom, b/c it's a bit too limiting to walk around with a fixed focal length of 200mm or 300mm. Well, this lens paid off. I can strike the long fixed-length lenses off my buy list since they're not much faster, lighter, smaller or and can't be much sharper than this zoom. Additionally it has 1:4.3 close-up focus. One wonders what they had to sacrifice to design this lens. It seems to do it all well in such a small package.
The only fault is vignetting and light fall-off wide open throughout the range. It improves greatly one stop down and disappears at f8. This isn't a big issue for me for me as a lot of photos look better with a bit of vignetting anyway, and I often apply some in pp.
Compared to another recent acquisition, a Yashica ML 70-210mm f4.5, the Yashica is a slightly better performer, but it may be especially tough competition (According to Fotomagazin almost as good as the legendary Zeiss 70-210/3.5). The Yashica has slightly more contrast, micro-contrast, color and sharpness wide open. But it's slightly cooler, has the same vignetting/light fall-off issue, and is almost an inch and a half longer. Since I got the Yashica for $25 bucks I'm glad I have both, but if I could only have one, I would choose the Tokina because the size difference is more significant than the difference in performance.
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