I just received my Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 in the mail on Thursday of last week. I've only had the chance to take a couple of test shots with it to see if it lives up to the rave reviews. Sadly, it's been constantly rainy and dreary here in Kansas, so I'm looking for suggestions of how to test this baby and once I do, I'd like to post the results here so you all can help me confirm or deny that my copy is indeed sharp.
StuCollings wrote:
Shoot anything but damned brick walls or dog portraits!
How about a frog portrait, at f/2.8? It was dreary here recently too. I hope to get out in the next week and actually use it. I plan to hold onto at least an XSi to use it.
Thanks for the reference at f/2.8 for one and for the subject idea. Perhaps I'll round up a bunch of old toys and try to light the scene with my strobes. I wish I had like a white sheet or something to pin up as a background... going to investigate now.
Because I haven't the slightest idea what I'm doing, I'm going to post an original and then a 100% crop straight out of the camera. All I did was adjust exposure a little and convert from RAW to jpg.
Things to note: The center focal point was used and placed on the top juggling ball. They were taken with a tripod... and I'm including the shutter speed and I don't know why.
First: 11mm @ f/2.8, 1/100
11mm @f/2.8 Crop, 1/100
16mm @f/2.8
I may just be getting picky here, but the 16mm looks a lot more sharp. I can probably stop this test now because I've pretty much affirmed my own suspicion that this lens actually does rock... at least at this distance... and with this AF point.
Exposure was ISO 100, 16mm, 1/2 second, f/11. I didn't use a remote release or mirror lock up for this set. Perhaps that's just user error. I think the blue lost it's 'pop' because I adjusted bumped up the exposure before publishing to jpg. Here's the same 16mm f/11 without the exposure bumped.
It still looks as if Mario isn't crisp in focus as he was in the f/4.0 version. (I didn't have to up exposure pp in that shot, and the shutter speed was higher)
I wish I had a good sized room with neutral walls and a good lighting kit to do these tests... right now i'm working with a blanket at two speedlites. Yuck.
