New lens

[oldno7]

Brian Head, right? I got to go up there two years ago... http://richardbarron.net/galleries/plateau/brianhead/

Yes, Brianhead. It sure has some nice views.

[Ryebrye]

2.8 aperture for sure is awesome. the exact opposite of depth of field is true. the wider, the less you need to stop down to achieve a larger depth of field. we use the 11-16 to shoot most of our night shots with wide aperture. but for general landscape, it is great as well. best lens flare characteristics i've ever had at that wide. i found it to be very sharp given how wide it is.

also, it's lighter i believe. 12-24 is designed for full frame. 11-16 is for a crop camera. smaller optics.

Interesting. I've been mulling over it, but the thing that's made me almost decide on the Canon 10-22 over the Tokina was that I heard that the Tokina 11-16 flares like crazy and loses contrast if you are shooting into the sun (lots of internal reflection). My main application in addition to landscapes would be for shooting circular 360x180 panos - where you are very frequently going to have the sun in the shot - or shooting architectural panos you'll always have shots where you are shooting right at the light source.

Then again, Canon had to go and announce their 8-15 L fisheye - if that lens clocks in with a street price around $1k or so, I'll have a hard time keeping my fingers away from the "buy" button. I don't have a FF body, but on a crop it'd give me fullframe fisheye with some amazing glass - which is something I definitely want. (Taking a fisheye image and turning it into a rectilinear image in postprocessing is quite simple.)

Getting stars out of a lightsource is a factor of the number of blades in the aperture and stopping it down. [A good article about this phenomena and shooting holiday lights is here: http://www.lensrentals.com/news/view...holiday-lights ] The tokina 11-16 has 9 blades, and so you get 18 rays out of it. The rays out of the point light I'm not worried about - it's the flare I'm worried about. The flare is the part where you get reduced contrast and discoloration that spreads across the frame and moves around as you move the camera around. (You can see some of the flare in the false kiva shot summit42 posted - and in that shot it's not bad, but it's a pain when you have a couple shots overlapping with flare in different locations you have to mask out).

For single shots, that kind of thing is easily avoidable - just point your camera slightly differently or hold your hand up to block some light coming in from the edge - but shooting a spherical pano it's a real pain because it's in different spots in different positions so you have to go in and mask it out before you stitch it to make sure that spots with flare aren't included in the stitched image.

Dan - (or anyone else who has shot both), is the flare on the Canon any better than on the Tokina? Since the Tokina has 9-blades it will almost definitely have a better bokeh and have more points in the star around the light... the Canon will only have 6 points around a lightsource since it has 6 blades- but the points should be more defined with less blur.

For every application except for spherical panos, it seems that the Tokina has a slight edge and looks like a great lens - but I'm not a fan of flare (of the discoloration / contrast-lacking spot variety) so I'm mostly curious about that aspect.

[CarpeyBiggs]

flare is subjective... what is "better?"

the tokina flares something lovely in my experience. but, for panos? you probably don't want it, since it will be different every time the angle changes. i shoot almost exclusively landscapes, and i would probably take the tokina over the 10-22, it's flare characteristics being on of it's highlights. of course, i always wanted to get the sun flare, and never did a detailed comparison between the two in that regard.

however, 10-22 is nice though too. i have used both extensively, and swapped them a couple of times. i really liked the 2.8 aperture, and of course, the price...

[tmartenst]

Dan, what are you shooting with now? Do you use the Tokina on FF? If not, what do you use in it's place?

The closest I've got is 17-40.

[CarpeyBiggs]

on the 5d, i used the 17-40 for a couple years. it is great, my favorite of all the WA lenses, but it is f4... unfortunately, i lost that lens when i dropped my camera in sandthrax couple years back. so i used the tokina at 16mm for most of the wide angle shots on my 5d, but it showed some vignetting. now i have a 5d with a 20 1.8 because i sold everything else. i shoot mainly on m4/3 now because it is so much smaller and lighter for backpacking... 5d only comes out when i'm close to my car.

[mjn_slc]

I bought the Nikkor 12-24 earlier this summer for a Nikon. I love the wide angle and picture clarity. It's great for landscapes or if you take interior pictures and don't want flash. Here a few images for reference.

[R]

For APS-sized sensors, I have nothing but praise for the Tokina 12-24...

http://richardbarron.net/cameras/200...he-rest-of-us/

[ststephen]

Thought I'd finally post something that I shot with this lens. This is an Arch in the Wadi Rum region of Jordan. I have some trip reports coming about our experiences hiking/scrambling in that area and around Petra.