tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 update

My second Canon Digital Rebel XSi arrived this evening, and the battery just finished charging.

Since it's late, I only plan to do a focus test tonight, leaving real-world shooting for tomorrow. I don't intend to repeat most of the tests performed on the first XSi, since, unlike autofocus accuracy, things like noise, dynamic range, and sharpness are not likely to change between different copies of the same model camera. Since I already love this camera, the goal for this weekend is merely to determine if the camera is actually defective like the last one. So basically just shooting as much as I can, in as many differnt ways as I can, and looking out for corrupt files.

Then, on Monday, my Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8 arrives. I've already done a preview of the Tokina 11-16mm f/2.8, which set some expectations for the lens. Since then, Photozone has weighed in with some stellar sharpness results—if they are to be believed, this lens is sharper than the EF-S 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, which I'm convinced is the sharpest standard zoom ever made.

In other areas:

• Lateral chromatic aberration looks serious, which sucks, since without either ACR or DPP support for this lens, that is something I can't minimize in post-processing.


• Vignetting is better than the Canon 10-22 both wide open and at comparable apertures. At 11mm f/2.8, it is the same amount as the Canon 17-55 f/2.8, which in my book means it's not a problem in practice; at any other setting, it is negligible.


• Distortion, although "comparatively low", is indeed significantly worse than the Canon 10-22. Again, this sucks because of the lack of DPP support for the lens, and because I already have a fisheye zoom in this range—the point of the 11-16 is to get straight lines, not somewhat less fisheye distortion.


• Autofocus speed: "Ok". "Noise-wise it is noticeable but not obtrusive."


• Flare: "The Canon may also be a tad better in terms of flare." but "no definitive statement on this til next month." Of the three contra-light sample images, only one shows obvious flare, and that one would be relatively easy to clone out

So, in terms of image quality, it looks like a pretty average lens except in the most important aspect, sharpness, where it would appear to be phenomenally good. Even if it had thoroughly average image quality, its max aperture would still make it a bargain: basically, you trade zoom range for some weight and a wider max aperture. I'll take that trade any day, and I'd trade both for better image quality, so I'm very excited to try out this lens.