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Buyers’ guide

Tokina › tokinalens.co.uk

or interiors, then make sure the atx-i 11-20mm f/2.8 CF (£529) is on your wish list. This ultra-wide angle zoom for Nikon F and Canon EF mounts, weighs around 560g and is less than 10cm long. It delivers great image quality, perfect for those who want to travel light. The fast f/2.8 aperture is good for night scenes – and it can focus down to 0.28m, giving you plenty of detail.

Tokina produces a broad range of optics, from super-wide angle to ultra-telephoto. With a 500mm mirror lens on the horizon, as well as a host of APS-C spec models on its lens roadmap, it’s a catalogue set to keep on growing. Announced last year, the SZX 400mm f/8 Reflex MF (£249) mirror lens is T2 mount, so fits most cameras with the right mount. Fittings available as standard are Canon EF/

RF, Sony E, Nikon F/Z and Micro Four Thirds. Another lens trading on great performance in small size, is the atx-m 56mm f/1.4 X. This Fujifilm X Mount lens is a tiny portrait optic, with a big aperture. Weighing just 315g, it uses affordable 52mm filters. Finally, if you’re an APS-C DSLR user looking to branch into landscapes, urban scenes

SUPER WIDE Tokina’s 11-18mm is a great lens for scenics as well as interiors. Here shows off its flare and ghosting resistance skills

Samyang › holdan.co.uk

Voigtländer › flaghead.co.uk

refractive index elements, as well as Ultra Multi Coatings to suppress ghosting and flare. At 1050g, it’s not a light lens, but it’s not large, measuring under 10cm. As a manual model, it’s a task to focus precisely at the maximum, but get it right and the results are amazing. Similarly high quality, the XP range also includes the XP 10mm f/3.5, XP 14mm f/2.4 and XP 35mm f/1.2, all Canon EF and Nikon F fits, along with the XP 50mm f/1.2, which is EF only.

Growing from an upstart indie lens developer to become a regular name among award winners, Samyang has plenty of superb lenses in its catalogue. Its small, fast and light wide-angle primes, in particular, have found their way into the hearts of landscape photographers. They deliver excellent results for nightscapes and astrophotography, for instance the AF 12mm f/2 E (£359) and AF 24mm f/1.8 FE (£460) for Sony APS-C and full-frame mirrorless cameras, respectively, are great options. Also of special note are Samyang’s XP premium manual focus lenses, including the XP 85mm f/1.2 (£799). Currently only in Canon EF mount, this ultra-fast short telephoto lens is a real stunner for portraits, rivalling Canon’s own legendary EF 85mm f/1.2L II USM in spec, but undercutting it massively in price. Its nine, rounded aperture blades give bokeh a soft and serene quality. It uses one aspherical and two high-

light opportunities. It offers electronic contact with more recent X Series bodies, for features like automatic focus check, distance info, Exif and compatibility with X Series models’ IBIS.

uses a 12-bladed aperture to produce a rounded bokeh, while also promising edge- to-edge sharpness. With a beautifully finished metal body and screw-on lens hood, it weighs 196g, measures approximately 60x40mm and has a 46mm filter thread. Like many first-party X Series models, it also has a manual aperture ring, operating in one-third of a step clicks, down to f/16. The f/1.2 aperture makes it the fastest X Mount lens at that focal length, and should open up all sorts of low-

With a name echoing back into photographic history, Voigtländer today makes wonderfully engineered manual focus lenses and models, that are as pleasing to look at as they are to use. Its range covers Sony E-mount, Micro Four Thirds, SL, VM and now Fujifilm X Mount lenses, too. One of their most exciting is one of the newest. A lens like the Nokton 35mm f/1.2 (£599) for Fujifilm X Mount, doesn’t disappoint. It has a construction of eight elements in six groups, and

30 Photography News | Issue 93

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