Review on Tokina FiRIN 20Mm Auto Focus by Pete Brown

Tokina Firin is more of a four and a half star product than four, but Revain only accepts full stars. It doesn't get a five because the lens flares too much in backlight. Vignetting at f2 is noticeable but nothing to complain about and can mostly be fixed in post-processing. All photos are taken directly from the camera and only the RAW to JPEG conversion affects the image. Colors are well saturated and clear straight from the camera. Colors can be easily adjusted to your taste in post-production. The build quality of the lens is very good, the lens feels solid but well balanced. There's plenty of room to manually focus the lens, and the ribbed design of the focus area provides a comfortable grip. The only downside is that it's a bit plastic. It doesn't look like a nearly $1,000 lens. Focusing gets a bit finicky up close. And the lens also has problems in low light. The lens yaws a bit before locking into place. Chasing disappears when the object is a little further away. Close focus is enough to photograph large flowers, but nothing beats the Batis 40mm, let alone true 1:1 macro photography. This doesn't work well when the flower is heavily backlit. Before the price increase, Tokina was a good value. But now that the cost is approaching Sigma territory, the main benefit seems to be the ability to use filters without an adapter. If you can live without autofocus, the manual version seems like a good buy.