Anyone familiar with Tokina 11-16mm issues?

[Kaido]

Picked up the first-gen Tokina 11-16mm (Pro DX, not DX II) lens for my T2i. My wife mainly uses it, but we've noticed 2 issues:

1. (slight) Pink hue to all photos (requires editing each photo for tint)
2. Half come out slightly out of focus

I do some basic corporate photography at work (random group shots of employees & stuff) and shot a group of 50 people off a scissor lift the other day - most of the photos came out just slightly out of focus. I was able to get some usable ones, and the usable ones were very sharp, but most of them were off by just a smidge, enough to make the photos unusable. I know it's not the camera body, because I use a variety of official Canon glass as well as vintage Zeiss lenses, which have no tint or focus issues.

Anyway, I've been waiting a long time to pick up a Tokina & really wanted a gen1 version (not the gen2 DX II) and finally snagged one for sale off Amazon (new). Kinda disappointed with the issues - not sure if mine is sort of a dud or what. The reviews have been outstanding in general & I haven't heard of these issues before on this lens. And it's not like the lens is majorly defective...maybe I'm just using it wrong haha.

 

[imported_Irse]

Had that lens for awhile for mt Nikon. No problems. Maybe you got a bad copy. Can you exchange it?

 

[Kaido]

Had that lens for awhile for mt Nikon. No problems. Maybe you got a bad copy. Can you exchange it?

Yeah, I should be able to. I can't tell if it's defective or just us, since the issues are very slight - some pink tint on the photos (my wife does real estate photography and LOVES it so far, but she doesn't want to have to individually edit the pink tint out of every single photo to the correct level) and some occasionally slight unfocus. But I've never had a lens that did that, not even the cheapie lenses I've gotten.

 

[imported_Irse]

If you don't have pictures from other lenses that are pink tinted, I would guess it's the lens. As far as it being OOF, that could be user error. Is it wide open or stopped down some? That part, maybe you got to get used to the lens. I would return it because of the pink tint.

 

[Syborg1211]

I had zero focus or color issues with my Nikon mount Tokina 11-16mm. I'd recommend getting another copy.

 

[RampantAndroid]

I've got the original one that requires a worm drive on the Nikon F mount. I don't see either tint or focal issues;

I seem to remember you can adjust focus settings on nikon DSLRs?

Are you using any filters that might add tint? Are you shooting RAW?

 

[slashbinslashbash]

The tint is a problem, but most decent import software lets you set automatic correction when importing your photos.

The OOF is weird, and pretty hard to understand with a UWA actually. The DOF on something like a large group shot from a scissor lift should be something like 1m-infinity, pretty hard to mess that up.

At f/2.8 and 11mm, focused at 10 feet, DOF is 4.26 ft to infinity
At f/4.0 and 11mm, focused at 10 feet, DOF is 3.44 ft to infinity
At f/2.8 and 16mm, focused at 10 feet, DOF is 6.11 ft to 27.5 ft
At f/4.0 and 16mm, focused at 10 feet, DOF is 5.26 ft to 100.1 ft

http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html

Are you sure that it's a focus problem, or could there be something else making the photos blurry on some shots? (something inside the lens loose or broken) Try setting it to manual focus, set 10ft focus distance and f/2.8, walk around outside and take 100 shots, are all of them in focus?

 

[jhansman]

Rented that lens some time ago for a D5100 I had at the time, and in reviewing the shots I took with it, none of the issues you name appeared in any. Probably a bad copy.

 

[JohnnyRebel]

Send it back to Amazon for replacement. Tokina lenses are very good. However, I remember lensrental.com talking about their customer service being so bad that lensrental does their own repairs rather than send them in for warranty service.

 

[sochee]

Tint might be a problem, but when I had a Tokina 11-16, it seemed very soft to me. Maybe that is the same issue you're experiencing with the focus?