Tokina 11-18mm E lens review at Opticallimits: “the value king in its class”

Tokina 11-18mm lens is at BHphoto. Adorama. Amazon US&EU.

Opticallimits tested the lens and concluded:

It’s nice to see that Tokina is finally back with a new original design. And the Tokina atx-m 11-18mm f/2.8 E doesn’t disappoint. Like all ultra-wide lenses, it has a few rough edges but overall, we are generally very pleased with the performance. This is especially true for the resolution chapter. With the exception of 18mm @ f/2.8, it is pretty sharp across the image field. At medium aperture settings, it even approaches greatness. Thanks to comparatively low native image distortions, image auto-correction doesn’t need to work hard either – thus maintaining most of the resolution goodness. The original vignetting is very high at 11mm f/2.8 but it’s reasonably well controlled at other settings and quite low with auto-correction again. Lateral CAs are an old Tokina enemy and they are indeed visible in RAW files but they represent no problem after processing. The sunstar rendering is decent at medium aperture settings. A weakness is flare in backlit situations, so better use the supplied lens hood.

The Tokina lens follows the brand’s long tradition of having a very good build quality. The lens is lightweight yet doesn’t sacrifice a solid feel. The control rings are very smooth. The inner lens tube extends slightly when zooming towards the wide-end – there is nothing wrong with this, but it is a little unusual in this respect. The AF is reasonably fast and it’s perfectly silent. While it won’t affect most users, we’d prefer finer steps of the AF motor though. As is, manual focusing via the focus-by-wire system feels somewhat coarse.

The Tokina atx-m 11-18mm f/2.8 E enters a busy market segment with lots of options to choose from. Besides being a pretty good lens to boot, it is also more affordable than most making it the value king in its class.