Dave Kennard
Posts: 93
Location: United Kingdom
Registered: 26 Mar 2006
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Tokina 10-17 fisheye - my initial thoughts
Posted: 20 Jan 2007 at 22:18 GMT
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I recently purchased this lens & a D200 so I thought I'd give my initial thoughts on the lens in case anyone else is deciding what lens to buy.
Before purchasing it I looked at full size images on Pbase & Flickr of images taken with the Tokina/Pentax 10-17 and the Nikkor 10.5, which was the other lens I was considering. I decided to go for the Tokina because in the photos I looked at, it seemed to have less CA, less purple fringing and also has the flexibility of zoom allowing for higher res panos with more shots when needed.
After finding the no parallax point I have only taken 1 pano so far. CA & PF control is okay, although I haven't tried shooting into the sun with it yet. The level of detail in images is quite good.
There is no aperture ring on the lens, so this must be set in the camera. The zoom ring is quite loose, and it's quite easy to accidentally change the zoom. I got quite a way through finding the No Parallax Point for the lens when I noticed that the zoom wasn't at 10mm and so I had to start again.
FOV seems to be quite small for a fisheye, leaving quite a large hole at the nadir & zenith. These are the top & bottom cube faces as produced by Pano2QTVR:
I didn't have too much trouble patching the nadir & zenith on the pano I took outside though. Before I had found the No Parallax Point (I just guessed it) I did take some other panos inside and patching the nadir was too difficult (shutter speed was too slow for handheld nadir pic which would have made it easier).
I haven't tried any panos (or found the NPP) with the lens set at 17mm yet.
So to sum up, I expect this lens will work fine for me, although I probably would have preferred the Nikkor 10.5 with less to patch at nadir and zenith. (I probably would be wishing I had bought the Tokina fisheye if I had got the 10.5 though!)
If anyone is interested in the Tokina fisheye and would like to see some NEFs or JPEGs etc. let me know.
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Smooth
Posts: 1455
Location: Australia
Registered: 21 Jul 2004
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Re: Tokina 10-17 fisheye - my initial thoughts
Posted: 21 Jan 2007 at 7:02 GMT
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Looking at your nadir & zenith I seriously doubt the Nikkor 10.5mm would produce a hole any smaller at all.
Without seeing your final panorama or the source images it is hard to make any comparison between the two on Chromatic Aberration or Vignetting.
The fact the lens has zoom capabilities makes it an interesting alternative.
Regards, Smooth 
www.smooth360.com
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John Houghton
Posts: 2205
Location: Hitchin, United Kingdom
Registered: 17 Jan 2005
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Re: Tokina 10-17 fisheye - my initial thoughts
Posted: 21 Jan 2007 at 8:20 GMT
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Smooth is right. Measuring the size of the Tokina hole in PTGui shows that it is around 45 degrees, which is almost identical to that of a 10.5mm fisheye on a D70, which I also measured, though the 10.5 hole was unexpectedly very marginally smaller.
It is a large hole to patch, but taking two nadir shots on the tripod, rotating the camera 180 degrees, will give the minimum area to patch, i.e. the tripod and head. In light that is too low for a handheld nadir, you can tilt the tripod right over at a crazy angle to give the camera a clear view of the nadir, with a foot on the rear leg to stop it toppling over. Or you can move the tripod well to the side and take the down shot with the camera vertical and the required nadir area to one side unobstructed by the tripod legs. Then extract a rectilinear view of the nadir area from a defished image.
Yet another possibility is to take the horizontal shots with the camera tilted down ten degrees, say, to reduce the nadir hole, but leaving the zenith hole small enough to be adequately covered by the zenith shot.
John
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Dave Kennard
Posts: 93
Location: United Kingdom
Registered: 26 Mar 2006
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Re: Tokina 10-17 fisheye - my initial thoughts
Posted: 21 Jan 2007 at 10:08 GMT
updated: 21 Jan 2007 at 10:13 GMT
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Thanks for your replies.
I've never used the 10.5 so I can't actually give a good comparison on how they compare.
It's good for me to know that the 10.5 leaves a similar hole to the Tokina. I guess the nadir images I saw with a small hole produced by the 10.5 must have been where it was tilted 5° down.
With regards to taking the nadir image in low light situations, I think I will try taking the pano normally, then reverse mounting the center column, increase the tripod height, then take the nadir photo. I will also try your suggestions as well John (I remember seeing them in a thread a while back) and see what works best.
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enbilaman
Posts: 67
Location:
Registered: 3 Mar 2006
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Re: Tokina 10-17 fisheye - my initial thoughts
Posted: 5 Feb 2007 at 14:31 GMT
updated: 5 Feb 2007 at 14:35 GMT
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Hi,
I have shaved this zoom fisheye lens.
I have done some initial testing and this is my first public report:
michel.thoby.free.fr/Tokina_10_17/Intricate_Panog...
I am stunned by the early results that I have got so far from this "shaved" lens that I dared to mount on my EOS 5D!
This article is a teaser: I am planning to deeper test this fisheye lens, but due to its versatile zoom feature, this may take a while as it should be compared to so many counterparts in its complete focal length range
Regards,
Michel
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shel
Posts: 41
Location: United States
Registered: 26 Jan 2007
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Re: Tokina 10-17 fisheye - my initial thoughts
Posted: 15 Feb 2007 at 12:56 GMT
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I have the pentax 10-17mm fisheye version of this lens; I'm very happy so far. Initially, I thought the 10-17mm lens was soft, especially at 17mm, and then I realized that it had trouble focusing in low light indoors. Once I focused it by hand, the results were sharp, even wide open at 17mm, although I'd still probably shoot my panos at F/8.0 just to be safe. Now that I know where "infinity" is on the lens, I can also use it as a useful wide angle zoom lens.
Anyway, on a Pentax 1.5x sensor at 10mm, with optimized ptgui parameters, I get HFOV=135.5 degrees, and VFOV=87.7 degrees. So the nadir/zenith hole is about 45 degrees. I get good results tilting downward 5-10 degrees, with the nadir hole shrinking to about 30 degrees.
Here's one from my library, six photos stitched around the circle with the camera tilted down about 5 degrees, and a seventh photo to cover the zenith.
www.sheltx.com/share_stuff/PAN020307.html
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