What is Tokina doing? It’s not a brand that you would think of when buying a new lens that is going to be used underwater. I mostly use Nikon optics for it’s quality, but some Tokina’s are just as good. It seems that the Tokina 12-24mm wide angle zoom is very sharp. I bought the Tokina 10-17 (sometimes referred to as “the Tok”) fisheye zoom. Whow, what a great and versatile lens. I have not used the 10.5mm from nikon anymore since I got the Tok. That is, I have only used the Nikon with a converter behind a very small custom made domeport on my Seacam housing.

Below you see an image that I made with the Tokina 10-17 during my trip to Tasmania last year.

The Nikon 10.5 fisheye is still great, especially when you combine it with a 1.4 converter. The image below was made with this combination behind a custom dome port on my Seacam housing. This port was made for Geert Nies by Seacam. Geert was super frendly in lending to port to me during one of my trips. Geert is the Seacam distributor in the Benelux. You can find his website www.mes-bvba.be here. Rumour goes that Seacam will take a similar port in production very soon from now!

Tokina has recently announced the macro lens that I was waiting for. The crop factor of the Nikon DX format has enlarged the focal point of my 60mm too much when I use it in bad visibility conditions. And believe me, we have those conditions in the Netherlands. So, I was waiting for a small, let’s say 40mm macro lens. Tokina has announced such a thing. The Tokina 35mm macro lens will hit the streets very soon from now. The Canon version will take a little bit longer because of autofocus issues. No problem for me since I a Nikon fan.

I am sure to test this lens next year and I will put my review of yet another great Tokina lens here.