joannmarie

I have d7500 and am considering a Tokina 11-20 f/2.8 wide angle lens for my camera. Would appreciate comments about this lens.....also where to buy and where NOT to buy. Thanks.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Good lens.

Good dealers -
Adorama, Amazon, B&H, Cameta, Costco, Crutchfield, Hunt’s, Robert’s

If you see a dealer selling one for an unusually low price, ignore it.

magicjack509 Loc: Schenectady, NY

I purchased that lens from Amazon more then a year ago and it's been a work horse for me. I bought it for night photography, but have used it for a number of occasions. Most of all, you can't beat the price.
Jack

JDG3

I had the Tokina 11-20 mm lens matched with my Nikon D7000 while doing a real estate photography class. Great lens, very sharp. I purchased mine from B&H, great people to work with. Since then I have switched over to Sony and wished Tokina made lens for them. Traded the Nikon and the Tokina back to B&H and was happy with the deals.

Retired CPO Loc: Travel full time in an RV

I have the Tokina 11-16mm and it's fantastic.

joannmarie

Thanks....good information

joannmarie

Thank you!

joannmarie

Thanks

markwilliam1

I have the Tokina 11-16mm on my Sony. It’s an A mount lens. Not sure if available in the E mount version?

amfoto1 Loc: San Jose, Calif. USA

First, the Tokina AT-X Pro lenses.... which includes the 11-20mm.... are very well made. They feel and look quite solid, much like the best that Canon and Nikon themselves offer.

The 11-20mm f/2.8 ($469 on sale currently) is the newest version of that lens and the only crop-sensor (DX) ultrawide zoom with f/2.8 aperture. Do you really need f/2.8? This makes it a fairly big and heavy lens with somewhat limited range of focal lengths, all by-products of the larger aperture. The 11-20mm uses 82mm filters and weighs 1.2 lb. (560 gr).

An f/2.8 aperture certainly can be beneficial for low light work, offering a bright viewfinder for things such as astrophotography or aurora borealis. It also can be useful for sports and action, to allow faster shutter speeds that help freeze movement. But on ultrawide lenses such as these a large aperture doesn't make for particularly shallow depth of field effects, the way it does on a telephoto. You have to be very close to a subject before an ultrawide at f/2.8 will render very much background blur. In fact, for many uses (architecture, landscapes), this type of lens is far more likely to be stopped down considerably and the large aperture unused.

The 11-20mm is a "3rd generation lens" that solved some "issues" in the two different 11-16mm lenses Tokina previously offered. Those lenses were very sharp, but also quite prone to flare problems. They also had that maddeningly narrow range of focal lengths (made necessary by f/2.8). Both these things are "fixed" in the 11-20mm. (Note: The first 11-16mm lens in Nikon mount version did not have an in-lens focus motor, so would be manual-focus-only on Nikon D3000 & D5000-series cameras. The 11-16mm "II" has a motor added, allowing AF on all Nikon DX cameras.)

Something unique to Tokina lenses is their "focus clutch" mechanism. The entire focus ring slides slightly forward or backward to engage or disengage auto or manual focus. When it's set to AF, the focus ring is disconnected and does nothing. As a result, there's no "full time manual override" of AF with Tokina lenses. You have to "shift" them to MF mode first, turing off AF, in order to manually focus them. (Nikkor AF-S and AF-P lenses allow full time manual override of AF.... In other words you can adjust AF or use de-focus/re-focus technique with them at any time, without need to turn off their AF.)

For sake of comparison... the Nikkor AF-P 10-20mm costs a lot less (currently $276 on sale), is more compact (72mm filters), weighs a lot less (.5 lb./230 gr). It's more plasticky and much slower (f/4.5-5.6), but has quite good image quality, as well as VR image stabilization.

Tokina themselves offer another alternative... their AT-X Pro 12-28mm f/4 DX lens. (Also a 3rd generation, following on two different 12-24mm models previously offered.) It is a little bit smaller, lighter and less expensive than the 11-20mm: 77mm filters, 1.2 lb/530 gr, $430 (not on sale right now). Other than those differences, it's 1-stop slower f/4 aperture and it's wider range of focal lengths, the 12-28mm's design, construction and built quality are very similar to the 11-20mm.

Any of the above lenses are a better deal than the Nikkor AF-S 10-24mm DX and AF-S 12-24mm f/4 DX lenses, both of which are very good... but ridiculously expensive.

photogeneralist Loc: Lopez Island Washington State

RE: "Since then I have switched over to Sony and wished Tokina made lens for them."
I have an 11-16 mm f/2.8 Tokina that I use on my Sony A77 and A 77II bodies. (Alpha lens mount , not e mount-- and APSC native) Sharp and crisp. If pixel peeping you can find some CA near the outer edges. I find that I use it mosly at the 11 and 16 extremes of it's zoom range and hardly ever in between those focal lengths. A 11 mm rectilinear prime would probably serve me just as well if I could've found one when I was looking.

PHRubin Loc: Nashville TN USA

Joann Marie, We can't tell who you are addressing unless you click "Quote Reply"

ronpier Loc: Poland Ohio

You may want to look at the Tamron 10-24 f3.5-4.5 variable aperture with VC. 77mm filters and weighs less than 1lb.

photogeneralist Loc: Lopez Island Washington State

You might check out dyxxum.com. That website is aimed at gathering and compiling info (from actual users) about Sony cameras and the lenses that fit them.