I too have jumped on the Tokina 11-16 F2.8 bandwagon.. and have been desperately trying to find things to point it at to get a feel for it, after it rained for two days straight after it arrived in the mail. While heading into town for dinner I took the camera with and did some shooting around town. The town shots kind of left me unimpressed, not that it's necessarily the fault of the lens but the lighting wasn't great and I just wasn't setting up great shots. But I took a few experimental shots in the restaurant, a cajun joint that I'm rather fond of. I ended up quite liking this one. [attachment=1] I'm still not certain if there's a real need for the F2.8 aspect of this lens, many have commented that it's kind of backwards, ultra wides are for landscapes and you normally shoot closed down to get a nice wide DOF in that sort of shooting. But it made this shot possible, so who am I to question the wisdom of a double wide (wide angle, wide aperture). F2.8, 1/10th of a second shutter speed, 11mm, ISO 800. I was actually looking for the narrowest DOF possible, I was going for the whole blurry foreground and background look, plus I was pushing the practical hand holding shutter speed limit as it was. Even at F2.8 the DOF isn't that shallow, but with an extreme angle like this it'll show. For explanation, this is the hot sauce wall of the restaurant. It's a decoration, they're glued in there, but they're all real hot sauces reflecting a bewildering variety of styles. I must admit that they do repeat, but it's a long wall, it's still an awful lot of hot sauce brands and varieties. It's sort of the thing to do while waiting for your food, especially if you're seating next to the wall like I was. Browsing through the sauces, I mean. Some appear to be serious hot sauces, many seem to be excuses to put a wacky label on a bottle, there's lots of names that are basically bathroom humor jokes about what might happen to you if you were to consume the hot sauce. Someone with a crude sense of humor (such as myself) can have endless fun reading the hot sauce names and label designs. Many make me wish I could pull them off the wall and try them. The tables at this place are a sight to see, they have what I would guess to be around ten bottles of hot sauce on them, including something like three to four house brands, but I'm always interested in trying something new. I mean, when I went on my first cruise that stopped off at Nassau my mission was to get two things as souvenirs. Caribbean rum, and hot sauce. All I ended up getting was hot sauce. And I shopped around for it too. [This attachment has been purged. Older attachments are purged from time to time to conserve disk space. Please feel free to repost your image.]
This is a great shot and excellent use of shallow DOF. As for the hot sauces...don't touch the stuff but they are nice to look at. BTW, where did you get this lens? I can't find it in stock anywhere and it's selling above MSRP on eBay and most of those are not USA versions.
neat shot Dan. I love hot sauce too. I took just about the same photo in the germany pavilion, only with their bottles of wine. It is a different lens to use, you cant just point it at something. You have to work to make the photo interesting. I also felt that you had to be up close and personal in most cases, or the photo was just a bunch of really small details.
I got it on B&H. It was a weird chain of events. I had been looking on Craigslist, not just for this but for other options. Like a while back the Canon 10-22 was up for a fairly reasonable price. Someone had a 11-16 for $711, USED, proclaiming that it was rare. That made me angry and I checked B&H reflexively, even though I was on their email notification list, they were supposed to email me if it came in. And I hadn't gotten an email. It was in anyway. After a double take I made one last panicked check of the reviews, found that there is some unhappiness about the USA version of the lens, numerous problem reports involving softness or bad autofocus issues (all apparently involving the Nikon version, but I can't say if that's just coincidence or a trend).. and decided to grab it anyway, because I was out of options and I needed an ultrawide for an upcoming trip with scenic possibilities. Several days after I ordered it I got the notification email telling me that it was in stock. My only guess is based on the fact that they stress that it's a first come first served list. Perhaps they only send so many a day, delaying the notifications to people who signed on late to give the first people an edge.
Thanks, Dan! As much as I wish I could use B&H, living in NY state, I am subject to sales tax which significantly adds to the price of expensive photo equipment. So, I'll continue to check my favorite Out-of-State Webstores until Tokina can meet demand. Which, if they were having problems with the lens, woudn't be a problem. The Tokina 12-24 I rented last year was rock solid and most of what I have read about the 11-16 indicates it is too.
