Any advice before I shell out...?

Auraomega · 17 Jul 2011 at 23:23

About to buy a wide angle for my Nikon, I've found the Tamron 10-24 (£334), Tamron 11-18 (£272), Sigma 10-20 f4-5.6 (£330), Sigma 10-20 f3.5 (£432) or the Tokina 12-24 (£372). I doubt the constant aperture will make much difference to me as I imagine I'll be using the lens as wide as possible and seeing as I find myself using my telephoto the most I doubt the extra £100 would be well spent between the Sigma lenses. The Tamron 10-24 seems to get mixed reviews and is apparently soft in the corners. The 11-18 is nice and cheap and what few reviews I've seen praise it but I just can't help thinking it's too cheap to be any good. Finally the Tokina seems good if not as wide.

Personally I'm leaning towards the Tokina but hopefully someone can give me some final advice!

AtticusFinch · 18 Jul 2011 at 07:27

I use the Tokina 11-16 on my crop bodies and is great. The 2.8 allows you use it indoors with great results too. I understand that this was an upgrade to the f4 12-24 which was also highly regarded. If you spend the extra £150 or so on the f2.8 you'll be getting a very fine lens with multiple applications.

Auraomega · 18 Jul 2011 at 16:03

I'd love the 11-16 however as far as I can tell it doesn't have it's own motor and owning the D3100 would require me to manual focus (not a total disaster but means I might miss on some time critical shots).

bigredshark · 18 Jul 2011 at 16:39

It's worth noting that both the Nikon options (10-24 and 12-24) are excellent, the 12-24 is maybe expensive for what it is but it's superb quality and rated as professional glass by Nikon. The 10-24 has a variable aperture and more plastic build but looses nothing in IQ terms in the overlapping range, it gets a bit ropy down to 10mm though and distortion is higher. In the 12-18 range both are impressive though...

Ksanti · 18 Jul 2011 at 16:41

Auraomega said:
I'd love the 11-16 however as far as I can tell it doesn't have it's own motor and owning the D3100 would require me to manual focus (not a total disaster but means I might miss on some time critical shots).

You're hardly going to be doing a lot of action shooting on a wide angle (at least not action shooting you wouldn't prefocus anyway), are you? In any case the DOF is so big on lenses this wide that manual focus shouldn't be a huge problem for the few times you'd apply it to something other than landscapes?

Auraomega · 18 Jul 2011 at 16:49

bigredshark said:
It's worth noting that both the Nikon options (10-24 and 12-24) are excellent

Both are way more than I'd like to spend unfortunately, as much as I prefer Nikon lenses I just can't justify it for some glass I probably won't use that often.

Ksanti said:
You're hardly going to be doing a lot of action shooting on a wide angle (at least not action shooting you wouldn't prefocus anyway), are you? In any case the DOF is so big on lenses this wide that manual focus shouldn't be a huge problem for the few times you'd apply it to something other than landscapes?

You have an interesting point and from what I can tell the Tokina is an astounding lens that I probably wouldn't need to upgrade from. I'm no stranger to manual focusing (I've a couple of old lenses which are manual focus only), just spending this amount of money I'd really like to be able to auto focus. Do you reckon I'd be making a huge mistake to buy this lens now and manual focus until I upgrade to a better body?