The Tokina 11-18mm f/2.8 Lens: A Cheaper, Faster Alternative to a Native Sony Lens?

Unlike Canon, Sony has not banned the production and sale of some third-party lenses for its cameras. That's good news for Sony owners, and a perfect example is here, with this new wide-angle 11-18mm f/2.8 lens released by Tokina. Life's just better with third-party lenses, isn't it?

I recently posted about Canon's decision to ban the production and sale of third-party lenses for its RF mount cameras. The comments in that thread were quite adamant that Canon had made the wrong decision and shot itself in the foot, although there were a number of readers who defended Canon's decision, saying it was simply protecting its intellectual property. Wherever you might sit on Canon's decision, the final analysis means fewer lens choices for Canon users, which may end up hurting Canon's bottom line in the future. Fortunately for Sony users, no such ban has been forthcoming, the result being more third-party lenses available for Sony cameras.

And that brings us to this great new video by Kai Wong, in which he reviews the newly released Tokina 11-18mm f/2.8 lens. I should let you know from the start that this lens is made for APS-C sensor cameras, meaning that it is the equivalent of a 16.5-27mm lens on a full frame camera. With a constant aperture of f/2.8 and such a wide field of view, it's perfect for landscape photography as well as street photography and architecture. And at $599, it's considerably cheaper than the native Sony 10-20mm f/4 PZ G lens, and has a wider maximum aperture. It does have its issues, though, so give the video a look, and let me know your thoughts below.

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Iain Stanley is an Associate Professor teaching photography and composition in Japan. Fstoppers is where he writes about photography, but he's also a 5x Top Writer on Medium, where he writes about his expat (mis)adventures in Japan and other things not related to photography. To view his writing, click the link above.

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"Life's just better with third-party lenses, isn't it?"
Generally, yes. I have eight Samyang prime lenses covering 18mm to 135mm for my three a7RIIIs. They represent fantastic bang for the buck, and the two 1.4s are just ridiculously inexpensive.
Micro Four Thirds, too, benefits greatly from having two major manufacturers as well as a fair number of third-party lenses for the system. For a long time, MFT had more native lenses than any other mirrorless system, though Sony seems to have surpassed this now, thanks to the likes of Samyang, Sigma, Tamron, Tokina, Viltrox and others.