The initial plan about this review actually was to include a series of test shots and concentrate on picture quality, but I didn't find the time and thus sold the lens before taking them. The following is a roundup of its first impression. The lens has a very cheap build quality, as I would have expected from a very entry level lens, that the whole EMZ line was targeting at. It's not even documented in the Tokina discontinued product files. The lens is all plastic (except for the mount) and feels like all plastic. The zoom is of the push-pull type. It's not parfocal and has a minimum focusing distance of almost 2 meters at the wide end and 2 meters at the long end. The lens has a front lens focusing system. The filter thread and the hood bayonet both rotate during focusing, as well as the focus ring rotates during AF. I bought this lens used and didn't have the lens hood delivered with it. The zoom grip is big and utilizes the bigger part of the lens barrel. It is equipped with a wide rubber ring. The AF is slow and noisy compared to the Voigtländer APO-Zoomar, but still a Canon EF 28-80mm F3.5-5.6 II will be even noisier. It is also not working very accurately, several corrections are normal until the AF indicators will show success. The focus ring is located at the front end of the lens and will not interfere with lens holding needs. It has a distance scale printed on. This lens is not optimal for manual focusing since the ring is rotating everything else than smooth, and it uses only 1/4 of a full rotation to get from minimum focus to infinity. The lens has aperture openings of F3.5 to F5.6. In addition this lens is weirdly limited to F16 at the wide end. For 28mm to 35mm it will give an aperture range of F3.5-16, from 35mm to 55mm it's F4.0-19, from 55mm to 85mm it's F4.5-19, from 85mm to 135mm it's F4.5-22 and from 135mm on it will be F5.6-22. Only at the 210mm mark it will provide an F27 as a max. aperture. The lens shows the typical distortion (typical for a super zoom), barrel on the wide side, cushion for the rest, both noticeable through the viewfinder. The barrel reaches from 28mm to approximately 35mm, the cushion starts somewhere at approximately 45mm. |