Introduction

This lens is Vintage Lens Tokina 50-250mm f/4-5.6. It’s AT-x line from Tokina. It’s a good lens.

Things I like about it:

1. Focal range very useful
2. It’s sharp
3. Macro capability is nice
4. Flare is interesting

Things I don’t like about it:

1. Handling is not very easy
2. Heavy

Details

AT-x line

I have three other Tokina lens: Tokina RMC 80-200mm f/4, Tokina EL 28mm f/2.8, and Tokina AT-X 90mm f/2.5 Macro. The last one is the famous Bokina lens which is also from the AT-x line. Both of the AT-x lens are noticeable better than the other two.

Pros

Focal Range

The focal range is from 50mm to 250mm which is very useful. On the short end, it can be used for street photography, even thought is a bit too narrow sometimes. On the long end, 250mm is pretty good! It can be used to take some wild animals. However, it’s manual focus, so it’s hard to be a serious wildlife lens.

BTW, I really want to try the new Tamron 50-400mm lens which has similar focal range but reaches further and has auto focus.

Short end: Street photography for a house with 50mm

The view is almost too narrow to take the whole house. There are one case in which I want to take a tree but the view is just too narrow.

Short end: Street photography for a street

BTW, this was taken in RAW format so that I could bring back the details in the shadows.

Far end: people walking

As you can see, I didn’t focus well, and shaked my hand so that it has some motion blur. It also has blue fringing. But I like the compression and feeling.

Far end: tree and leaves

The sharpness is good. The color is also washed out a little. The lens doesn’t have a hood, at least I don’t have one.

Macro：Grass Close-up

The macro capability is nice which is one important reason I like this lens. It’s not a true macro lens, but it can focus very close which is more than enough for me. The bokeh is smooth。

this one is very sharp. I love it!

Macro: leaves close-up

This one is little soft, but not too bad.

Cons

Handling

While the Macro mode is nice on this lens, it’s not very easy to use. When it’s in the Macro mode, you move the tube back and force to focus, which is quite challenging. What I ended up doing is to focus roughly, then move the camera back and force to fine tune the focus.

Heavy

This lens is all metal and big, so it’s heavy. After holding it with A7Rv for a while, my hand started to sore a little :)

Purple Fringing at Far End

I noticed when using 250mm, sometimes it has purple/blue fringing. A sample photo is shown above