Absurd Singularity

My lens collection is finally complete with the arrival of my Tokina AT-X 124 AF PRO DX AF 12-24mm f/4! Well, at least for now. Later on I may decide to upgrade to better versions of the lenses that I have now or even dabble in primes but the first stage has been achieved with 3 zooms covering the 12-200mm range with no gaps. Well, actually 19.2-320mm range on the 1.6x crop XT that I have. Although I may still pick up a Sigma 1.4x teleconverter to get a little more range out of my Sigma 70-200.

Anyway, the Tokina turned out to be a smaller lens than I was expecting although my sense of size may be skewed after handling the behemoth Sigma 24-70 most of the time. But it has a very solid build and feels pretty good in use. The autofocus actually works pretty quickly and the sound is a lot less intrusive than on the Sigma 24-70. However, on the fifth shot I took with it it caused an "Err 99" on my XT. Not sure what the heck happened there but hasn't happened again since. Also has the thickest front lens cap I've ever seen. Guess they really want to protect that slightly more bulbous front lens element.

Unfortunately the weather here has been absolute crap yesterday and today so haven't really been able to put it through its paces. Took a few shots from the cafeteria at work though. The following 3 shots are unedited 'cept for conversion to JPG and shrinking down to the current size.

ISO 800, 1/60s, f/5.6, 12mm

Here you can see pretty well the distortion that you can expect from a wide angle lens. This warped effect is more noticeable when taking pictures of objects that are relatively close to you.

ISO 800, 1/250s, f/11, 12mm

This is the view northwards from the 16th floor at work. Distortion not as evident in this shot. Sorry about the light reflection off the window that I took the shot through.

ISO 800, 1/50s, f/5, 12mm

This is a shot of the gigantic flag that covers the entire expanse of windows on the side of the building facing the World Trade Center. Apparently there's a bunch of boarded up glass panes that they haven't gotten around to fixing behind the flag. It also rises above the southern-facing entrance that currently is hidden from view at ground level behind a temporary wall which you can make out at the bottom of the pic. Obviously there's a bit of distortion going on in this shot as well but sometimes, distortion is not necessarily a bad thing. =)

Anyway, hope to get some semblance of a sunny day soon so I can get a better feel as to the image quality of this particular lens. Will post those when I get the chance.