Tokina 24-70 bokeh and sharpness

Looks pretty good overall. Nice contrast and bokeh. How's the size and weight?

AwesomeIan said:

My new Tokina 24-70mm came in the mail today. I took some pictures wide open at 70mm. I wanted to see the bokeh and sharpness.

I had to shoot inside because of rain and darkness. I setup some Xmas lights to try and make some interesting bokeh. The first shot is straight jpeg conversion. I added some sharpening to the crop

focus was on this purple flower

My initial impression is favorable. I am looking forward to the weekend when I really put it through its paces.

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Must tell you, it looks very nice. Where did you order from?

Would like to keep a tab on this conversation and see further pictures as you move along, still a lens I am very much considering, especially since the (out of my budget) Nikon 24-70 VR doesn't appear to have blown the competition out of the water as much as people were expecting.

-TBri

thelenspainter said:

Looks pretty good overall. Nice contrast and bokeh. How's the size and weight?

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It is heavy and short. The barrel extends when you zoom. The glass in front is huge. It does take filters. I often walk around with my Tamron 150-600 so it doesn't bother me. I read somewhere it weighs quarter pounder heavier than the Nikon.

Albert Silver said:

AwesomeIan said:

My new Tokina 24-70mm came in the mail today. I took some pictures wide open at 70mm. I wanted to see the bokeh and sharpness.

I had to shoot inside because of rain and darkness. I setup some Xmas lights to try and make some interesting bokeh. The first shot is straight jpeg conversion. I added some sharpening to the crop

focus was on this purple flower

My initial impression is favorable. I am looking forward to the weekend when I really put it through its paces.

Click to expand...

Must tell you, it looks very nice. Where did you order from?

Click to expand...

I ordered through amazon. I think it was from TheCameraBox.

travelinbri_74 said:

Would like to keep a tab on this conversation and see further pictures as you move along, still a lens I am very much considering, especially since the (out of my budget) Nikon 24-70 VR doesn't appear to have blown the competition out of the water as much as people were expecting.

-TBri

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I will write up a review soon. I want to get some landscape and long exposure first. Unfortunately I never used the Nikon 24-70mm. What I can say is this lens rivals the sharpness of my 50mm 1.8. More to come.

Ive been huge tokina fan for years untill i got 2 different lenses in span of about 5 years that exhibited exactly same behavior.
Had 11-16 2.8 long time ago when it first came out. It was awesome.
Then i got 50-135mm 2.8 tokina ( about 2008) and it was overexposing as you close down the aperture. Returned the lens.
Then about 1.5 years ago i got new 12-28 f4 all excited. Bam. Same issue. At 12 mm it was fine but more i zoomed it towards tele end and fired few shots with f4 , 5.6 , 8 and f10 in a row for example ( pointed at the same subject ) by f10 it was overexposed by about 2 - 2.5 stops ( overexposing each shot with smaller aperture more and more)
I thought i was crazy but then did quite a bit of research and saw i was not by far alone. Ever since i have pretty much written the tokina off...
Does this new 24-70 behave in this manner or its exposing perfectly?
Seems like sticking aperture blades issue that i had of 2 diff tokina lenses.
Thanks !
--

akjos said:

Ive been huge tokina fan for years untill i got 2 different lenses in span of about 5 years that exhibited exactly same behavior.
Had 11-16 2.8 long time ago when it first came out. It was awesome.
Then i got 50-135mm 2.8 tokina ( about 2008) and it was overexposing as you close down the aperture. Returned the lens.
Then about 1.5 years ago i got new 12-28 f4 all excited. Bam. Same issue. At 12 mm it was fine but more i zoomed it towards tele end and fired few shots with f4 , 5.6 , 8 and f10 in a row for example ( pointed at the same subject ) by f10 it was overexposed by about 2 - 2.5 stops ( overexposing each shot with smaller aperture more and more)
I thought i was crazy but then did quite a bit of research and saw i was not by far alone. Ever since i have pretty much written the tokina off...
Does this new 24-70 behave in this manner or its exposing perfectly?
Seems like sticking aperture blades issue that i had of 2 diff tokina lenses.
Thanks !
--
http://www.pbase.com/jps1979/galleries

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I have been using it in aperture priority with exposure compensation set at -0.3 with matrix and spot metering and haven't seen a problem.

Thanks
I just saw few user reviews on bh photo for this lens and one says the same thing. " gradually overexposing series of shots" he called it i think. Weird
Maybe some of us get unlucky? On the other hand I have never had this issue with any other non tokina lens. :/
--

Couple more pictures shot inside without a flash. I will try and get outdoor pictures soon.

Here are a couple outdoor shots with a small aperture. I know they are boring. I just wanted to test the sharpness with smaller apertures and I am too lazy to leave home :-D





The stop sign on the edge of the frame looks pretty dang good

AwesomeIan said:

Couple more pictures shot inside without a flash. I will try and get outdoor pictures soon.

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Looks great. I'm impressed at how little distortion there appears in the 24mm pic of the cutie.

How do you like the handling, AF, etc?

Ok I got off my butt for some golden hour since who knows when I will have good light like this again. So far so good.

AwesomeIan said:

Ok I got off my butt for some golden hour since who knows when I will have good light like this again. So far so good.

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Most lenses see diffraction as of f/16 BTW. That said, though it could be an impression, it seems to have less distortion at 24mm than other 24-70s I have seen (and less than the 24-120 that I own).

Everything looks nice and sharp

Albert Silver said:

AwesomeIan said:

Ok I got off my butt for some golden hour since who knows when I will have good light like this again. So far so good.

Click to expand...

Most lenses see diffraction as of f/16 BTW. That said, though it could be an impression, it seems to have less distortion at 24mm than other 24-70s I have seen (and less than the 24-120 that I own).

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I really wish I had a good baseline for this lens. What I can say is edge to edge sharpness is very good and the contrast and color is impressive. I don't know how it compares with other lenses unless I go to my 18-140 on my dx in which case it owns