Only three months ago I wrote about my new wideangle lens, Tokina 16-28mm. I was mighty impressed with it, but what I really didn’t see coming is that I would find out that it’s not wide enough. Yes sure enough, it’s 26-45mm on a crop sensor, but you have to consider that my previous ”wide angle” was the 24-105mm zoom (38mm at widest on crop sensor). So going from 38mm to 26mm, I was sure it would be enough for me. But it wasn’t. So I did something I’ve never done before, which is by a second lens within three months so I’m now a proud owner of a Tokina AT-X 11-16mm f2.8 Pro DX and today was my first day out with it.
First impressions: It’s much smaller and lighter than the Tokina 16-28mm (of course). The build quality is just as solid as the bigger zoom, the zoom ring is a little bit stiff but it’s not a problem, and anyway it’s better like that than the Canon 24-105 which sometimes suffers from zoom creep when the lens is pointed down. And it takes on filters without any vignetting; I haven’t tried any stacking yet but as long as a polariser works, it’s all good.
Second impressions (after reviewing the pictures): It’s sharp. Even wide open. Corner sharpness is better than with the 16-28mm lens (I haven’t done any scientific testing yet, but I was impressed with what I saw).
So now I have a problem. I had almost decided that my next camera will be full frame (Canon 5D MkIII, whenever it is released), but after just one day with this new lens, I start hesitating. The small size and filter thread… it could just tip the scales towards another crop sensor (follow-up to Canon 7D, whenever it’s released). So I would say that it’s a tie at the moment and Canon will have to make the next 5D something very special to make me favour FF. Or make a total mess of the next 7D, that would also force me to reconsider my options. But all of that is still a long way ahead, until then I will happily shoot with my trusty old 40D and the trusty new Tokina 11-16mm f2.8. Honestly, if you’re looking for a serious wideangle for a crop sensor camera, then you can’t get better value for money than this!
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I did two small hikes today, first one to Hägenlammsmyran which I visited the other summer to look for wolf lichen. I found the lichen and I found a fascinating bog, I mean just look at the satellite picture (shamelessly stolen from Google Maps), all those ridges with water in between. It’s a real maze when you’re walking around, you always have to look ahead for which ridge leads to the next one, and when it leads to muddy water. Except now of course almost everything was frozen and I was able to take some shortcuts, but like I’ve said before, walking on ice makes me very nervous so I preferred to keep on the moss. The water wasn’t all frozen anyway, it was still open in the places where it was flowing from one terrace to another so you had to keep an eye out where you put your foot. But on a windy day like this, that ice worked just fine because it doesn’t ripple!
My second hike was to Svartån, but I have a few HDR’s still to process so I will put that in another post.