Review on Tokina 12 28Mm AT X Lens Nikon by Colin Watkins

Nice lens. I bought one (elsewhere) which had an image quality flaw that was very apparent in testing (it had poor clarity when shooting beyond f/6), especially when you were trying to shoot something up close. It's not really the main use case for the lens, but I ran into a defect that then drove me nuts. I sent this back (eBay seller) and bought a replacement here which was unaffected by the defect. Despite the fact that I received a defective one, I'll give this one a 5/5. When choosing this lens, I also tried two other wide-angle options. I took the more expensive 12-24mm from Nikon and got a Sigma 10-20 which (I think) had a variable aperture from f/3.5 to f/4.5. The Sigma in my hands produced significantly lower quality images. Nikon had comparable image quality but I paid more for it than for a new Tokina and there was one very important difference between Tokina and Nikon. Tokina is rock hard. It feels like the price should be twice as much. Nikon felt like a cheap plastic kit lens. And it's not cheap. So that's a bit disappointing. Some other details about the lens. The extra length at the top (28mm instead of 24mm or 20mm) is good. Considering this is intended for a crop sensor camera, your 12-28mm lens is actually similar to an 18-42mm lens, making it *almost* like a wander lens for a crop sensor camera because it's very close to your 50-50 range. . Another very nice feature of this lens is that while it's officially a 'DX' lens, it doesn't show any significant vignetting on a full frame camera as long as you stay >18mm. At 18mm it vignettes a bit, but it's easy to fix. So you've got a full-frame 18-28mm f/4 lens, which isn't bad either (as a lot of the wide-angle zooms you see for the FX are in the 18-35mm range), so that's pretty covering the same range. The image quality seems good to me, although I'm not really a fan of wide-angle shots. I usually shoot macro or portraits with other lenses, and it's rare that I choose this lens. But I was not disappointed. It has some highlights that I really like to use for effects. I don't have enough wide-angle experience to tell you if flare is a problem compared to the competition.