On Tue, 10 Nov 1998 061334 GMT, "toby"
>> groveti@bigfoot.com (Thor Halvor Stunderb¿ll) wrote
>>>I'm looking for assessments of the Sigma AF 3.5 14mm and Tokina AT-X
>>>17mm/3.5 lenses for my Minolta 700si. Can anyone help?
>The Tokina 17 AT-X has a good reputation, as far as I have heard. I had the
>pre AT-X and found it very disappointing due to extreme unsharpness at the
>edges. I have a Sigma 14 3.5. It is reasonably sharp across the field for a
>lens of this extremity, although not up to the Canon 14. Major problems with
>this lens are light falloff at the edges and flare. You have to stop down to
>f8 to get reasonably even illumination across the field (but this is a
>common characteristic of all extreme wide angles to some extent--don't
>forget that the fabled Zeiss Hologon 15mm has a max aperture of f8 and comes
>with a center ND filter). You'll find that the lens is also very subject to
>flare from any reasonably bright light source, including open sky. All this
>being said, it is an amazing lens for the price. Sigma just came out with a
>14 f2.8--might be worth checking out, too.
I tried a Tokina ATX 17mm, and was disappointed - edge/corner
sharpness never got good at any stop. For non-critical users,
I guess it would be OK...