The producer emphasizes the fact that the new Tokina 11-16 mm got new coatings in order to improve work against bright light among other things. Unfortunately those claims are nothing but fibs – we haven’t seen such a horrible performance against bright light for a long time. Ghosting, artifacts, huge contrast decrease are almost constant companions at all combinations of focal lengths and apertures, even with different positions of light sources. What’s the worst, the artifacts are visible also when the sun is situated far from the frame – if you are out of luck you can take such photos in which there is virtually nothing but one huge flare. A disaster…
Please, take a closer look at the pictures below: they are arranged according to the focal length, from 11 mm through 13.5 mm to 16 mm. For every focal length the photos were taken by f/2.8 and f/8.0, starting with the sun inside the frame, then moving it to the corner and finally far away the frame.
I have to admit honestly I am completely disgusted with the situation. I could understand a slip-up with the first version of the lens, although it still would be strange it wasn’t noticed during the prototype testing. As it was pretty clear that the first version failed to work well against bright light why the second version wasn’t improved? After all flares which take almost the whole frame are not that easy to overlook…
Please Support Us
If you enjoy our reviews and articles, and you want us to continue our work please, support our website by donating through PayPal. The funds are going to be used for paying our editorial team, renting servers, and equipping our testing studio; only that way we will be able to continue providing you interesting content for free.
