Only Okay, K2

I've decided I do not much care for my Tokina-EL 28mm lens. It is VERY difficult to focus well and the images never seem quite as good as they do with my Vivitar or Focal 28mm lenses. Oddly, my Tokina SX-L, 28-200 is a fantastic lens at 28mm, so I suspect it has to do with overall lens quality. The little EL has a tiny front lens, maybe 26mm across, and that severely restricts the amount of light that comes through. So the lens does not have the best contrast profile, nor does it render colors as truly as other lenses. This translates into monochrome photography because muddled colors mean muddled contrast and muddled details.

That said, when this lens is on, it's SPOT on. But there's no middle ground and no room for error nor compromise.


1/500th, f5.6


1/1,000th, f2.8


1/500th, f11


1/500th, f11

Those last shots, taken while I hung out the side of a cable car, required almost no post processing and are basically straight out of the camera. They aren't great shots, but display what this lens can do when it's on. At f11, where this lens seems to be sharpest, it's very crisp with nice depth, good tone, and a great dispersion through the zones. This lens works quite well with TMax 400, when it' on. But this lens does not present highly usable results when it's open much wider than f5.6. This severely hampers the lens' ability to perform in diverse situations, too.

As for why lenses perform differently under different conditions, that requires its own, future post. Having just done two long posts this week about filters, I'll refrain from posting a third long post about light bending through glass and how apertures control sharpness as depth of field. Another week.