Shooting the Tokina 10-17mm

This article was first published in Underwater Photography Magazine in July 2007. You can view a gallery of images taken with the Tokina 10-17mm here. Requires Cooliris free plug-in for your browser.

I am sorry that this review is late. I was not the first to get my hands on the Tokina 10-17mm when it was released at the end of last year and I had actually expected it to have been reviewed by now. I believe that this is a very important lens for underwater photography and it would be a glaring omission if it was not covered in the hallowed pages of UWP. So here are some of my thoughts on shooting this lens, better late that never.

Fisheye lenses have always been popular in underwater photography because there are the widest viewing lenses, allowing us to shoot large subjects from as close as possible and also to create space in the murky undersea world. Our community has a long history of taking them underwater often showing great inventiveness in doing so. For example, in the early 1970s, before housings were widespread, Geoff Harwood designed and made the Vizmaster I and II for the Nikonos cameras in the UK. Others, such as Flip Schulke and UWPÕs own Peter Rowlands made lens housings for the manual focus Nikon 16mm fisheye so it could also be mounted on the Nikonos series. More recently, underwater corrected fisheyes have been manufactured by Sea & Sea for the Nikonos V and by Nikon themselves in autofocus SLR form for the Nikonos RS. And in the last few years Inon have produced their WL-165 accessory fisheye for digital compact cameras.

By definition, fisheye lenses are ultra wide angles that forego a rectilinear image to achieve their wide coverage with characteristic barrel distortion. Not having to worry about maintaining a rectilinear image (in other words keeping straight lines straight) allows lens designers to concentrate on making fisheyes ultra wide and sharp. Fisheyes have limited appeal on land and are generally considered special effect lenses, but underwater, where there are few straight lines, they are transformed from niche lenses to workhorses. Like many of you, I use fisheye lenses extensively, for example in my first book The Art Of Diving fisheyes contributed more than 50% of images.

Probably the biggest real world frustration of actually using fisheye lenses in underwater photography is that they are so wide. Unless your subject is very big, or lets you get very close there are plenty of times when you just canÕt fill the frame. That is where the fisheye zoom comes in.

The Tokina 10-17mm is not the first fisheye zoom to be widely used underwater. In the early 1980s the Pentax LX was one of the more popular underwater cameras, made all the more so by the Pentax 17-28mm fisheye zoom. We must also thank Pentax for the Tokina 10-17mm as the optics of this lens first appeared in 2005 as a Pentax branded lens for their range of digital SLRs. Since then we have all be waiting with baited breath for Tokina to release it in other mounts, particularly Nikon and Canon that dominate the underwater DSLR world. The Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye zoom is designed specifically for APS-C or DX sized sensor digital SLR cameras. It will not project a frame-filling image at its wider focal lengths on a film cameras or full-frame digital cameras.

The Tokina 10-17mm has received mixed reviews for land photography. Most fail to see a reason for its existence and then comment on the fringing. I struggle to think of any compelling reasons to have this lens on land, but by the same token I cannot think of a more useful focal range for wide angle photography underwater. In fact this lens could have been designed specifically for us. If you are someone who has to justify a lens purchases for a dual role both above and below the waves then the Tokina might be tough. For the rest of us it is an answer to many prayers.

Underwater this lens is particularly suitable to action packed diving: encounters with big animals and schools. I am sure that you have all made dives where you would like to put on a fisheye for high impact images, but are concerned that the subjects will not come close enough to fill the frame. Worry no longer. It is also a great lens for photojournalists, who want to photograph whatever they encounter to tell the story of their diving. For close-focus wide angle, I feel that it does not offer much advantage over a prime fisheye as most shots tend to be taken at the 10mm end anyway. The lens is very suited to shipwreck photography: at 10mm providing the coverage for large wreck vistas while at 17mm being suited to wreck details and interiors. As the lens is zoomed towards the 17mm end much of its fisheye distortion disappears, helpful for the straight lines of wreck innards.

One of the strengths of the Tokina is that it has exceptional close focus, meaning that it is capable of surprisingly high magnification portraits, as long as the subject will let you approach closely. That said all these different types of shots (e.g. close-focus wide angle, big animals, wrecks and portraits) require quite different strobe positioning for optimum lighting. And on any dive it does become a hassle and a distraction to constantly be switching between them. I found I would concentrate on one type of shot for most dives, only switching if something exceptional was encountered. Although it was fabulous to have the option.

I should also stress that this lens is really wide. Even zoomed in. At its widest the coverage is close to 180û corner to corner, and zoomed to 17mm it is still about 100û. Zoomed in to 17mm it is about equivalent to the widest end of a rectilinear 12-24mm zoom, making theses two lenses a perfect travelling combination.

For me, this review comes down to one big question. Any underwater photographer will appreciate that the focal range is very useful, but how does the image quality compare with a prime fisheye. Testing the lens on land I found that the zoom was more prone to chromatic aberrations and particularly purple fringing on high contrast details in the corners of the frame. Sharpness was similar. Underwater, behind a dome port, the fringing issue is much less. At typical apertures (not wide open) under normal shooting conditions I have found the Tokina photos to be all but indistinguishable from my Nikon 10.5mm for sharpness, colour saturation and fringing. That said, pool tests published by Steve Frink and Mike Mesgleski on Wetpixel.com have shown more fringing from the Tokina, although they note that pool test shots are not truly representative of how fisheyes are used in the ocean.

The barrel length of Tokina 10-17mm is about 10-15mm longer than most of the prime fisheyes and most users find the best optical performance by using the lens behind a standard fisheye dome and small 10-15mm extension ring. Some manufacturerÕs recommend using just a standard dome port without an extension ring. And Nexus have already produced a dedicated port for this lens. A few manufacturerÕs have already produced dedicated zoom gears for this lens, although I found that one of the existing Subal gears in Ocean OpticsÕ parts bin fitted my Tokina perfectly.

A few of my friends have commented that they have found that this lens is prone to hunting and failing to lock on subjects when autofocusing. Possibly this is due to it being a slowish lens with a widest aperture of f3.5-f4.5. I have not had any problems with its autofocus, either in the tropics or dark in UK waters, although I accept that my cameraÕs autofocus is well above average. If your camera struggles to focus at times underwater you may want to use a focus lamp with this lens.

One frustration I have had with this lens is that it does not have a filter slot for gel filters on its rear. Filters are particularly useful for wrecks, reef scenic and big animal photography and well suited to fisheye photography. On the Nikon mount version of this lens a small square filter can easily be taped to the back of the lens on the wide plastic lens surround. The Canon-fit lens has a different rear lens construction, which makes the job more fiddly, although many have fitted filters successfully.

If you are new to fisheyes this lens provides the perfect introduction. The wide coverage of fisheyes makes them difficult to light, but the zoom of the Tokina 10-17mm allows you to work up to the widest settings building your experience on success.

For Canon users this lens makes total sense, as it finally provides APS-C sensor Canons with a 180 degree fisheye lens which has not been available before. If you want a fisheye, look no further. For Nikon users your decision whether to get this lens will certainly depend on whether you already own a 10.5mm fisheye. I continue to use both, although on a recent visit to Sipadan I made every dive with the Tokina and never once put the 10.5mm on my camera. I am loyal person, but I have to admit that my previous beau, the 10.5mm, is getting less and less attention.

It is a pity there is no equivalent for this lens for full frame digital cameras. Ironically, given the reasons that made many slow to convert from film to digital SLRs, this lens is so useful for underwater photographers that it may stop many switching to full frame digital cameras in the future. A pertinent issue if Nikon introduces a full frame DSLR later this year.

The bottom line for this lens is that I have found the image quality to be almost indistinguishable from my prime fisheye. With the added advantage of zooming focal range this lens seems hard to resist for any underwater photographer. I can best summarise my affection for this lens by the fact I have already given it two nicknames. And generally in life we only reserve nicknames for those we really adore.