Hello everyone,

I am interested in buying the Tokina 300mm f/4 (I found a real steal). I will be using this lens for sports photography, mainly high school basketball, tennis, and volleyball. II am wondering if there an any specific compatitbility problems with this lens and the Elan IIe. Is the autofocus speed good enough? Also, how good is this lens optically? Thank you all for your input!

-- Eric Shen (emptelite@aol.com), October 03, 2001

Answers

I believe I responded to the same question on photo.net (so I'm going to assume that it's the same person asking).

I'll stand by my previous recommendation to find a used Canon 300 F4L USM. Definately no compatibility problems now, or later. Faster, quieter AF, and superior optics.

Tokina compatibility with Elan IIe (from www.photozone.de): "most lenses:camera stops working after releasing the shutter leaving mirror in upward position with battery symbol blinking"

As for optically, the Tokina should be ok, but not stunning...looking at the results for their F2.8 lenses, they're certainly not up with Canon on this.

-- Isaac Sibson (isibson@hotmail.com), October 04, 2001.

I agree with Isaac. I have Tokina 400mm. Autofocus crawls, you miss everything while this lens is focusing. For action shots I have to use it on manual focusing. Plus manual focus ring does moves during autofocusing, which is annoying, I have to remember not to grab it, Canon does not have this problem. Optically the lens is good.

-- Boris Krivoruk (boris.krivoruk@kp.org), October 04, 2001.

First of all, don't try to compare Tokina 400 with Tokina 300, which is built much better. But note, that Tokina 300/4 wouldn't be produced anymore for more than a year! The autofocus is quite slow in Tokina lenses (especially when compared to 4xmore expensive Canon 300/4), but if the optical quality is comparable to that of Tokina 80-200/2.8, then this is a superb lense (and I see no reason that 300 should be worse than zoom). I had no compatibility problems with new cameras and Tokina lenses!

Anyway I am now saving for the Canon 400/4 DO lense, :)

matija

-- matija (matijap@robo.fe.uni-lj.si), October 05, 2001.