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[OM] Rocky Reviews are acually pretty good

Subject: [OM] Rocky Reviews are acually pretty good
From: Ken Norton <ken@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 2009 10:48:22 -0500
Ken Rockwell types out of his sphincter half the time, but once in a while
he's dead on.

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tokina/100-300mm.htm

I absolutely agree with everything he has to say about this lens, except
that in my sample the 300mm performance is just fine and peachy at F5.6.
300mm at F4 is somewhat sharp, but loses contrast for some reason. Stopping
it down to 5.6 and beyond addresses that perfectly.

One thing he didn't harp on which I will, is the one-touch zoom is a real
pain to use sometimes.  The focus is essentially short-throw, so just a
whisper of an adjustment is enough to mess up your focus. As it is a
one-touch, any slight adjustment to focal length will force you to adjust
focus all over again and any adjustment of focus can mess up your desired
focal length.  It's a vicious circle.

As compared to the Zuiko 300/4.5, it isn't as sharp wide-open, but at F8 is
similar, if not slightly better.  Mine has essentially zero CA, whereas the
300/4.5 is prone to it.  Bokeh is not nearly as nice as the 300/4.5, but
respectable.

My digital "Go Kit" contains the Olympus E-1 with 14-54 and the Tokina
100-300/4.  It's that good!  But when working out of multiple bags and able
to plant myself somewhat, I'll prefer the Zuiko 300/4.5 for the wide-open
performance and general look and feel of the images. If working from a
tripod, the Zuiko is better, handheld the tokina is better.

As the lens needs to be stopped down to be sharp and contrasty, it is less
than ideal for stop-down on the E-1 where I really enjoy shooting most of
the primes wide-open, but on the OM bodies, auto-stopdown makes the lens
very enjoyable as it is bright and reasonably easy to focus on the
split-image.

Rocky's observation about the aperture ring is also my own.  I prefer
whole-stop clicks as I work by feel most of the time.

AG
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