Fantastic lens, regardless of the price

My only tokina lens was the 35 2.8 which was f'ing spectacular. I'm curious on how it would perform on FX and wish I never sold it.

Yes, great things are always said about this macro.

Great shot!

I had one and sold it. Its the best lens for the money I have ever owned except for maybe the 58mm Voigtlander.

Yes, this is, indeed, a wonderfully good 100mm macro f/2.8, at any price. I did buy a Canon 100mm 2.8L Macro, to get Image Stabilization and weather-sealing, as I must work regardless of weather, often hand-held, but we kept the Tokina for personal shooting; flowers, insects, small animals, portrait, and even some general walking-about.

I think most, or all, macro lenses with internal AF motors have rather sedate AF speed, emphasizing accuracy, rather than quick focus acquisition.

Just curious, how do you think the Tokina compares to Canon 100/2.8L IS macro in terms of image quality? the new Canon 100mm IS macro should be a superb lens.

Jylppy said:

Just curious, how do you think the Tokina compares to Canon 100/2.8L IS macro in terms of image quality? the new Canon 100mm IS macro should be a superb lens.

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I do not yet have a monitor that would really, truly, reveal small differences in image quality. Such a monitor will probably be a late 2015 purchase for me, as July 2015 will bring one or two major positive changes to my financial situation. With the viewing equipment I have, I see no difference in image quality. I use the Canon when rain or adverse conditions are possible; it lives on one of my 7D cameras, which tends to front-focus with several other lenses, but performs well with this particular lens. I use the Tokina on my other Canons.

How does this lens handle hand held macro work like insects and flowers without image stabilization?

I just got the Tamron 90mm macro, which has stabilization. So far I really like it for macro and as a somewhat short telephoto. I find it sharp and the autofocus is quite accurate.

homerbasilwildlife said:

How does this lens handle hand held macro work like insects and flowers without image stabilization?

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With flash handheld macro with the Tokina is excellent. I rarely shoot macro without flash, but when I do it seems to work pretty well if the subject isn't moving.

Hi,

Just wanted to give an update in the name of transparency. I actually sold the Tokina and bought Sigma 105mm f/2.8 EX DG OS HSM Macro due to lack of OS in Tokina (and slowish AF). I do not think OS will bring major benefits in macro since the subjects are often moving, but sometimes it might. I also thought 105mm OS prime would so well as portrait lens so faster AF was welcome. So the driver behind the change was broader use scenarios for the lens, not macro as such. I got Sigma also dead-cheap from discount. When I bought Tokia, Sigma was trading still 2x+ the price.

I did some testing between the lenses and from those test photos I could not see Sigma have any image quality advantage in (hand-held) macro. I actually thought Tokina was slightly better and for a moment I was bit concerned I did a bad trade. But the differences were very small and those will probably go within sample variation.

So in summary, if you need a 100mm macro lens and get Tokina significantly cheaper than Sigma, go for it. It is a good macro lens. If the prices are close to each other and you might use the lens for other use cases than macro, you may want to consider the Sigma too. But do not expect the Sigma to be any better in image quality terms than Tokina in macro. Tokina is sharp.

I'm very happy with my Tokina (you have to use it carefully of course, like any macro lens). See this example (the eyes have more detail then can be shown on dpreview).


Aeshna mixta

Nice one! It will be hard to find a sharper 100mm macro lens.

first of all great photo! Secondly I have made my mind up to either buy the tokina 100mm or the tamron 180mm. The tokina has a edge on picture quality, but the tamron has it beat on on distance, so I am unsure on which of the two to buy. I think it will be a win win win either way.

homerbasilwildlife said:

first of all great photo! Secondly I have made my mind up to either buy the tokina 100mm or the tamron 180mm. The tokina has a edge on picture quality, but the tamron has it beat on on distance, so I am unsure on which of the two to buy. I think it will be a win win win either way.

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Which to get of those two I think greatly depends on the kind of macro work you want to - does the working distance matter, if so then the Tamron 180 is the way to go.

You could also consider the Sigma 150 f/ 2.8 macro - I use that myself and I find it to be very sharp, "light" enough to handhold with flash bracket, flash and softbox.

@OP - that image you took with the Tokina is fantastic, I really like the light, and of course the sharpness of the image, well done on the focus too.

Hi,

I own Sigma's 180mm/3.5 (not the new 1/2.8f) and really like it too. I would say that if you serious about macro and are OK to carry to bulk, go for 180mm. The extra working distance is worth of it. I have to warn you that the Depth-of-Field gets really narrow on longer focal lengths.

I think 100mm is good for shooting flowers and butterflies, but anything smaller you run into risk of squeezing the bug to death with your lens

If you can borrow (any) 100mm & 180 macro lenses then you could see how do those work for you.

What I liked about Tokina is the fact that it is very compact lens. It is far easier to take it to camera bag when doing casual traveling than trying to make space for 180mm monster (or even 100mm OS Sigma). Realizing this fact made me regret my sale of Tokina a bit.

And by the way. For macro lightning a good "starting kit" is ordinary flash (e.g. EX580) + gooseneck + diffuser over. This maybe as good it ever gets. I have Canon twin macro flash, but I think it is good only for MP-E 65mm 5x macro lens.

J

homerbasilwildlife said:

How does this lens handle hand held macro work like insects and flowers without image stabilization?

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If the insects are moving even a little bit you need shutter speeds 1/100s or faster in any case. Some bugs are of course very static and in those cases IS helps, but less in macro distances - I remember DPR said 1-2 EV, cannot remember for sure.

I agree. I haven't seen a lens with as good or better image quality at any price. It's amazing, and maybe Tokina's signature achievement!

I bought the Tokina 100mm for ring shots at weddings initially. After playing with it, I have found it to be a very sharp lens and have dabbled in macro more and more. For handheld a flash is quite helpful and at least for me, a necessity. And, yes the AF is a bit slow, but under the right conditions the 100mm is also a very good portrait lens.

A great portrait lens, I imagine!