Introduction
In the SLR era it wasn’t easy to find ultra wide angle lenses and it was even more difficult to find decent, affordable ones. The Tokina 17mm 3.5 SL RMC was one of these few options. Back in the day I used it on my D700, looking for a wide angle lens for my analogue FM2 now, I thought it was a good idea to revisit this compact vintage lens.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Contents
Specifications / Version History
There have been three different 17mm 3.5 lenses made by Tokina. Both the AF versions share the same optical design according to Tokina’s history page:
- Tokina 17mm 3.5 SL
300g, 11/9 design (all spherical), unit focus, 6 aperture blades, 67mm filter thread, F/K/FD/CY/OM/MD, 1979-2008 - Tokina 17mm 3.5 AF AT-X
400g, 11/9 design (1 aspherical), floating elements, 7 aperture blades, 72mm filter thread, built-in lens hood, AF/MF switch, EF/F/A, 1993-1998 - Tokina 17mm 3.5 AF AT-X Pro
429g, 11/9 design (1 aspherical), floating elements, 7 aperture blades, 77mm filter thread, removable hood, AF/MF clutch ring, EF/F/A, 1999-2003
This is a review of the first version which is manual focus only. Allegedly there are early samples of this lens that only had single coating whereas the later ones (“RMC”) were multicoated. This is a multicoated sample and its full specifications are:
-
- Diameter: 69 mm
- Field of view: 103°40′ (diagonally)
- Length: 50 mm
- Weight: 300g
- Filter Diameter: 67 mm
- Number of Aperture Blades: 6 (straight)
- Elements/Groups: 11/9
- Close Focusing Distance: 0.25 m
- Maximum Magnification: 1:10
- Mount: Nikon F, Pentax K, C/Y, Canon FD, Olympus OM, Minolta SR
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Disclosure
Back in the day when I was using a Nikon D700 as my main camera, this Tokina was my ultra wide angle prime of choice, until I sold it in favour of the Samyang 14mm 2.8 MF.
I bought another copy in 2024 to write a review and compare it to the later Tokina 17mm 3.5 AF AT-X Pro, but it turned out to be a very hazy copy (have a look at the sunstars section). Long story short, that copy turned out to be unusable for a review, which also means there are no new sample pictures.
A reader from our Discord who also happens to own this lens helped me out with pictures for the sharpness infinity chart, so I am still able to present you this review for us to see how this vintage lens compares to the later ultra wide angle primes.
Handling / Build Quality
This is an all manual lens with only a focus ring and an aperture ring so there actually isn’t that much to talk about here.
The lens looks and feels like it is an all metal construction, all the markings are engravend and filled with paint.
The focus ring of my sample has a nice and even resistance and the aperture ring features full-stop click-stops (none at f/4.0).
With its 67mm filter thread this is also a rather filter friendly ultra wide angle lenses and probably the smallest 17mm fullframe lens for SLRs. As you can see above the successor gained not only auto focus but also some additional weight and size.
You can adapt this lens to all kinds of today’s mirrorless cameras. It came in various mounts, these days the F-mount version is ususally the most expensive one.
Vignetting
| f/3.5 | 3.4 EV |
| f/5.6 | 2.6 EV |
| f/8.0 | 2.2 EV |
| f/11 - f/16 | 2.0 EV |
The tiny rear element doesn’t bode well for vignetting on digital cameras and indeed we see a very high amount of 3.4 EV at f/3.5. The AF successor shows about 1 EV less fall off at f/3.5, stopped down they perform very similar here though.
What is also interesting is, that the Zeiss 18mm 3.5 is by no means better, it shows very similar values at shared apertures.
It is recommended to have a look at this article first to get an idea how this brightness graph works.
Sharpness infinity (42mp Sony A7rIII)
At the maximum aperture this Tokina lens is very soft, everywhere in the frame. At f/5.6 the center starts to look pretty good though and by f/11 that is also true for the midframe area.
The corners look best at f/16, which is a bit unfortunate, as here diffraction will already have a negative effect on center and midframe.
Personally, I found this lens to be perfectly usable on lower resolution fullframe cameras as well as on film, if you are looking for the best possible performance on today’s high resolution cameras you might end up not being perfectly happy with it though.
Flare resistance
Flare resistance has been an issue with many Tokina lenses, not only those made before 2000, but still with those made in the 2010s. And this lens really showcases, why Tokina had such a bad reputation when it comes to the work against bright light.
With the sun inside the frame you will almost always encounter a host of artefacts. Ring flares, huge ghosts, rainbow artefacts, you name it.
If you think you will be fine as long as the sun isn’t in the frame you are sadly mistaken. If a strong light source can somehow reach the front element you will again end up with huge ghosts in the frame.
I read reports that the first party lenses of this era (e.g. the Nikon 15mm 5.6 with its bulbous front element) were least as bad in this category. But compared to modern lenses this is hardly acceptable nonetheless.
Coma
100% crops from extreme corner, focused on corner
For its age – and considering the lack of aspherical elements – this Tokina 17mm 3.5 SL shows a surprisingly good performance. This becomes even more apparent when comparing it to the Tokina 17mm 3.5 AF AT-X Pro, which despite featuring an aspherical element hardly performs any better.
Now on absolute terms this is of course not a great performance, as stopping down to f/8.0 is needed for somewhat clean corners.
For astro photography, there are obviously much better options available today.
Distortion
The Tokina shows a very wavy distortion which must have surely been an issue in the analogue era. Today we can easily correct this in post – when there is a correction profile available. There wasn’t one for this lens, but back in the day I created a correction profile for Lightroom/Photoshop which you can download here.
(In Lightroom go to “Edit” -> “Preferences” -> “Presets” -> “Show Lightroom Develop Presets” then go to “LensProfiles” create a subfolder named “1.0” and place the unzipped correction profile in that folder, restart Lightroom and it will show up under “Nikon” and works for Raw files only)
With that profile this Tokina lens is also usable for architecture applications.
Sunstars
33% crops from center, A7rII
This Tokina 17mm 3.5 SL only makes use of 6 aperture blades that lead to sunstars which are not particularly nice to look at in my opinion. I also took these pictures with the sample affected by haze, leading to additional issues.
If you want to learn more about sunstars have a look at this article.
Chromatic Aberrations
lateral
Not too uncommon for ultra wide angle lenses the Tokina 17mm 3.5 SL shows a noticeable amount of lateral CA. These are still easily corrected in a raw developer like Lightroom by one click. Also in this category the successor hardly does a better job.
longitudinal
As this is a very wide and rather slow lens longitudinal CA (loCA) are nothing to worry about.
Conclusion
good
|
average
|
not good
|
When I was using this lens on a D700 in 2013 – and I was still regularly using GND filters at that time – it was one of the few ultra wide angle options that were affordable and took normal filters. Already the 12mp files showed that the corner performance isn’t amazing, but it was still good enough to take many nice ultra wide angle pictures of which I even had some printed and which are still hanging on the wall to this day.
The main issue, and that was already apparent to me in 2013, is the abyssmal flare resistance. If there is a strong point light source around that will lead to the creation of various artefacts.
Today you can find this lens at flea market prices though (especially those not for F-mount) and if you are still shooting analogue with an old manual SLR, this might be the only affordable ultra wide angle option for you, in which case this can still be a relevant lens today. All the others may want to have a look at the alternatives section first.
There are also some rumors floating around that this old manual focus Tokina lens is a better performer than the later AF models. Having used both extensively I don’t really see that. Stopped down their performance is similar, but I would take the AF version for being way more usable at f/3.5, its slightly better flare resistance and producing way nicer sunstars due to 7 instead of these dodgy 6 aperture blades.
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Alternatives
SLR Designs
I already talked about the successor, the Tokina 17mm 3.5 AF AT-X Pro, in most of the categories above. In the Nikon world there has also been a rare and therefore too expensive 18mm 2.8 and Tamron also had a 17mm 3.5 AF lens. Zeiss offered an 18mm 3.5 manual focus lens.
After that we saw the rise of zoom lenses and e.g. the Nikon AF-S 14-24mm 2.8G as well as the Sigma 14-24mm 2.8 Art easily outperform this old prime lens and same is true for the affordable and lightweight Nikon AF-S 18-35mm 3.5-4.5G.
Mirrorless Designs
This lens is from a time before there were decent ultra wide angle zooms starting at 17mm (or even wider) available. You can find many of those options as well as ultra wide angle prime lenses discussed in our Guide to Ultra Wide Angle Lenses for the A7 Series. There is one modern 17mm lens though:
Sigma 17mm 4.0 C DG DN:
The Sigma 17mm 4.0 C DG DN is somewhat the spiritual successor to this Tokina lens. It is very lightweight at only 220g and I expect it to outperform this vintage Tokina lens in every category.
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Other lenses you might want to check out if you are looking for a compact ultra wide angle prime are the Voigtländer 15mm 4.5 SWH, Laowa 14mm 4.0, Samyang 18mm 2.8 AF and Viltrox 20mm 2.8 AF.
Sample Images
Most of the sample images in this review can be found in full resolution here.
Further Reading
- All Lens Reviews
- Review: Laowa 10mm 2.8 AF
- Review: Nikon AF-S 24-70mm 2.8G
- Review: Nikon AF 85mm 1.4D
- Review: Nikon 200mm 2.0 IF ED Ai
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Thanks for this review. Another brilliant one. Although there is now a large selection of Sony, Canon oder Nikon lenses for mirrorless I still love vintage lenses because of their flaws. Better say charakter,
Especially lenses that were wider than 24 mm were extremly rare, quite expensive and every wide angle lens had a lot of flaws.
My choice: I still love the Canon FD 17mm but it is bigger than this small Tokina guy as far as I can see.
The Tokina made MF 17 3.5 was also available with other brand names, most notably Vivitar.
Throughout the decades, different magazine tests from different countries and different languages tended to agree that the Vivitar branded samples performed better (especially having sharper corners), raising the possibility that they were made to tighter toleraces and/or were selected samples.
My own experience 2 Vivitar versions (Nikon & M42) would also confirm that their corner performance is better than the sample tested in this article.
A rather unexpected review, and a very nice idea to cover this most affordable (ultra)wide angle option.
If someone is willing to pay about three times as much, the Minolta 17mm F4 is a much better performing option (with decent corner performance), for those who would still prefer a vintage lens, but expect better performance.
This Tokina is such a cheap lens, ideal to “test the waters” and see how 17mm feels, before spending much more. I’ve tried it on a 24MP Sony, and it looked pretty much the same as on the provided infinity test; if anyone wondered.
Thank you for this unexpected review (a long time lurker here).
I had the AF AT-X Pro for some time on Canon 10 years ago. I really wanted to love it but I had to let it go because it was redundant, and not exactly a spectacular performer. Not bad, mind you, just not standing out, and I had a 16-35mm f/2.8 lens at the time anyway. Mechanically though, it was such a nice lens.
The Sigma 17/4 really looks like the continuation of the idea. Even in having central sharpness that isn’t super high, but instead ending up performing pretty evenly across the frame (per the OpticalLimits test).
Nice review.
I have this lens as an early Soligor variant. It was my (admittedly only) ultra-wide choice for some time before I bought the Zeiss 18mm. I still like its character, but sometimes you need sharpness…
I have a Vivitar 19mm F3.8 that seems similar. Reasonably sharp with poor flare resistance. Not a glowing endorsement, but lots of fun for not much money.
Hi Bastian, thank you for this nice review. I am particularly pleased with your review of this lens because it has been my faithful companion for a lot of years. I have taken many beautiful shots with it. My experiences coincide with your review. The thing that bothered me was the bad backlight behavior. Last year I replaced this lens with a Voigtländer 15 4.5.
Here are some images of the Tokina:
https://flic.kr/s/aHBqjBQWxp
Thanks for sharing!
The author’s remarkable skills in image editing make even the worst lenses look amazingly good. My experiences with this lens are more similar to this test photos that were submitted to DPREVIEW in 2014 to evaluate the Sony A7R. https://www.dpreview.com/sample-galleries/9629135953/sony-a7-a7r-with-third-party-optics
Hardly anything has been edited here 😂
These pictures are unchanged from more than 10 years ago.
I’m wondering how the Laowa 14mm f4 DSLR lens compares to these older designs. The Laowa is also fairly light and compact, should at least have better sunstars and potentially also better sharpness and CA correction. Flare? Not sure as it’s often a weakness of Laowa lenses..
Obviously 14mm vs 17mm is a huge difference, so not a 1:1 comparison..
The lens I was using on my OM-2 series. There were no cheaper solution for an UWA way back. The Tamron 17/3.5 SP was very expensive but nowadays is said to be worst than the Tokina on digital. I don’t remember if I was using (often) f/16 on film…Whatever: Unexpected review!