Well, it has been a bit, I have been doing sparse photo stuff, but I have just not been wanting to sit down and process photos. Anywhoo, I have this batch ready to go and I wanted to post this then move on to a comparison/quick and dirty test of this lens. Which is... Drumroll... The Tokina AT-X 400 AF a 400mm f5.6 lens I was given by my friend Mark. I have a zoom that covers this focal length, but it is BEAST. My Pentax 150-450 Zoom is great lens, but I have no desire to carry it to do street photography. This lens is light enough I am willing to give it a shot. 400mm will definitely provide a different view than what I usually walk the street with. Tokina still has this listed on their website though it is out of production. https://tokinalens.com/product/at_x_400_af/ 

I want to introduce the lens a little then get on to the photos I took, basically in one afternoon after getting off work a little early. Some on the U of U campus and some downtown SLC.

This is an autofocus lens, the focus is pretty zippy and the lens is reasonably balanced on a K1 it feels solid without being ridiculously heavy.  It has a pull out hood that I never used and a focus ring as well as an aperture ring with A setting as well as ability to select the aperture on the lens. Meaning it can be used on any k mount body even the old film ones. I think it may need a focus adjustment which I can do in body should I desire to use this lens more. I may... it has a very different field of view from my usual wide angle lenses. Telephoto lenses allow you to do some things very well, bring distant things closer, compress the distance between two or more subjects in the frame, frame things differently. I find it a challenging change of pace as well as refreshing. 

Now, the first, biggest question for me when I pull out a lens is: Can it produce sharp images? and Can it do so without a lot of post processing to fix things? I think by modern standards this lens is just OK for sharpness, I will learn more as I work through the next post comparing it with a contemporary and my 150-450 zoom. I doubt a newer lens would do worse. That said... it ain't BAD, and when I hold it steady enough it IS reasonably sharp. It just isn't bitingly sharp and hand held 400mm doesn't help as the slightest movement will induce motion blur and reduce detail. The f5.6 aperture doesn't help either, that is fairly slow. I think shooting it off a tripod may help quite a bit, but that really limits street shooting.

Post processing need? Yeah there can be a bit, the exposure metering is spot on, but in certain situations there can be some chromatic aberration, with green on one side of a dark/light transition and purple on the other. The two photos below show after and before in crops from the third photo. First one could maybe have used a smidge more green correction but it cleaned up decently. This was taken early in the morning with cloudy skies and High ISO at  f5.6.

This is straight out of ACR converting the RAW. I don't think there is any baked in correction in the software without me telling it to. You can see the difference.  

This building has featured in may test shots in other posts, comparing this to other shots taken from the same spot shows the change in field of view compared to a more wide angle lens.  

This is from a slightly different angle at 35mm, quite the perspective difference.  

Back to the 400mm, I really needed to think differently to compose images with this, had to look further away.

Now after work I got off the bus at Presidents Circle on the west side of the U of U campus. Looking west I can compress several miles of cityscape together, it was hot enough that heat mirage made the buildings wavy if you look close. It was a weird effect. Focus point was on the upper right building.

Stopping the aperture down to f11 definitely helps with sharpness. Also slows your shutter speed down, broad daylight helps with this, also cuts down on the chromatic aberrations like most lenses.

The background blur is reasonable especially the closer you focus, This lens focuses closer than the other 400mm I will be comparing it too. That was a big plus.  

Wide open at f5.6 the background is quite perfectly acceptable. 

I found the focal length too constricting here. Not the lenses fault though.   

I really like this shot, not entirely sure why... but I like it. The image was plenty sharp, and the colors are good as well.

This is a 1000 x 1000 pixel crop from the photo below so quite a big crop that should display pixel for pixel on your screen That is a really good level of detail all things considered.

Sometimes older lenses, or medium age lenses like this one that were designed for film can struggle with color casts and rendering color correctly, this lens did great here. All my photos are taken with daylight white balance in camera when I am just walking around.

I LIKE the compression effect of a telephoto, this was wide open at f5.6 stopping down to f11 would have given more depth of field, but I made the choice for thinner depth of field. I normally would not have kept this as it has no strong subject except the hennessy canopy. But I wanted to show the DOF and compressive effect. Don't judge me. ;-)   

This back alley next to Gallensons Gun shop has some GREAT Grafitti and I enjoy it.  

Snoopy is new, he looks happy.....  

 Another subject I wanted to explore with this lens was reflections. I do enjoy how the bend in the glass distorts the reflections and yet gives a cool image. 

Zooming with my feet would have put me in the street as roadkill, I need to remember this spot when I play with my 200mm f2.5 lens... Here I did acutely feel the limitation of the field of view at 400mm.

The purple fringing is very visible even uncropped here, I can easily be removed, but is a drawback.

Nothing here is a close together as it appears.   

This is literally the shot I wanted to get, when I decided to play with 400mm at this time. I see this reflection but with the naked eye it doesn't look like much, but I knew more reach would get me there. It looks sharp enough at this size, it is not quite super sharp at 100%, again I think I would need to dial in some focus correction for front focus, but I ain't printing this big and it does look OK for this purpose.  

Notice the pattern?

This one a punched up just a little bit, but not much. It just warms my soul for some reason.  

So, what did I learn about this lens? It is reasonably sharp, this may improve with correcting a little front focus, it has moderate chromatic aberrations that can be fixed in software. It is a little long, but not too heavy and balances OK on my K1. On a mirrorless with an adapter it could possibly be awkward and too long. The focal length provided me with a nice change of pace and the colors were pretty good. It can be had for $150 plus shipping on fleebay if you can find it. The autofocus is pretty snappy and overall it handles acceptably well. I may not use it much but it is a fun lens. 

If you have a shorter zoom, say 55-300 or 50-200/70-200 range and want more reach this could be a lens to consider.

Thanks for sticking around and keep an eye out for a comparison of this and a similar Sigma lens to my Pentax 150-450 lens.