Build Quality: 9.5/10

The lens is very solid and doesn’t feel cheap or plastic-ish. Zooming and focusing is very smooth, and the AF is very fast.

Price: 10/10

You can’t beat the price on this lens; it can be purchased for under $500 form various online camera shops. The lens produces sharp, high quality images reminiscent of a pro-level lens.
Conclusion:

If you are looking for your first wide-angle lens, this is a must-have. You can’t beat the quality for the price. The Tokina 12-24mm is loads of fun and I fully recommend it.

Other Stats:

Maximum Aperture: F/4
Minimum Aperture: F/22
Minimum Focus Distance: 11.8 in. (30cm)
Filter Size: 77mm
Dimensions: 3.3 in. (84mm) X 3.5 in. (89.5mm)
Weight: 20.1 oz. (570g)

This photo was taken in my makeshift studio. The model posing is my friend Shayan who is an avid basketball player. Let me begin by describing the “studio”. It really isn’t a studio at all, just a blank wall with some off-white paint. It is actually quite a dirty wall that looks nothing like a traditional white studio backdrop, it has lots of scratches and scuffs on it.

Lighting: There are two overhead lights (with regular energy-efficient bulbs), which provide minimal fill light. The main source of light is my Nikon SB-600 flash, which I used on camera and bounced off the white ceiling at a slight angle. I used the flash in manual mode to try and blow out the background to make the not-so-white wall appear white.

Lens/Exposure: I took this photo before I purchased my Nikkor 50mm f/1.8, so I used my 18-70mm for the two shots that make up this photo. Both were taken at ~30mm. I used an aperture of f/3 and an exposure time of 1/60.

Post Processing: I processed each photo individually in Adobe Camera Raw and then in Adobe Photoshop CS3. I did three major things to the photo after basic RAW processing:

•Skin Treatment

•Dodge/Burn/Lighten/Darken

•Spot Edits/Masking

I will be going over the basics of the skin treatment techniques I use in a later tutorial so I will skip that for now. To lighten/darken areas of the photo and burn in some areas I created blank curves layers and used different blending options with layer masks. I will go over this in more detail again in a later tutorial. There were a few spot edits to remove some of the scratches on the wall in the background and some masking to make the background appear white as if it were taken in a studio with a white backdrop.

The final step after editing each photo was to put the two photos together into one document to make it more interesting.

I guess I can start off by telling you a bit about myself and my photography gear. I am an amateur photographer who shoots with a Nikon D80. I currently have three lenses and one flash:

Nikkor 18-70mm f/3.5

Tokina 12-244mm f/4

Nikkor 50mm f/1.8D

Nikon SB-600