Great optical quality
Built to last
Excellent finish (All metal)
Standard 77mm filter size
Excellent integrated tripod collar
Looks intimidating, especially with the hood on :)

Can't use lens cap with the hood on
Bit on the heavy side (but well balanced and these kind of lenses aren't any lighter)

Excellent lens, it's built very tough and machining is nothing short of perfect.
The only (minor) downside is the scew on hood and the fact it's pretty heavy (~1.6kg), but screw on hood behaves like an integral part of the lens and it's not like you're putting it on and off too often.

Optically, it's fantastic, at F4 it is bit darker than on other apertures, but the sharpness is surprisingly good.

AF can hunt sometimes in darker areas, but mainly it's very accurate and fast considering the focal range.

This lens can be found very cheap and it's en par with much more expensive lenses from Canon/Nikon.

Similar Products Used:

Canon 55-200
Canon 100-400 f4.5-5.6 L
Sony 70-300

Sharpness , Built very well.

Somewhat heavy

This is a very sharp lens. I had a chance to use it for the first time today at Jungle Island in Miami. I have no complaints about the sharpness what so ever. It's a great range to bring to a zoo, or outdoor photography. In the low light areas at f4 the images came out tack sharp. I can count the feathers on the parrots I photographed. I highly recommend this lens to anyone who has been thinking about getting one.

Customer Service

none so far

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 50-500, Nikon 70-300

Just a very good lens and very well built

None

I wanted a 300mm lens for my sports photography and this lens came up on ebay and after using it i have found it to be brilliant. My photos are really sharp and i even tested it at a low evening light and the results have been very good.

Customer Service

Not used

Similar Products Used:

Sigma and Nikon lens

-Optical quality (sharpness, resolution, contrast, and color fidelity) -Built better than a German tank

Are you kidding?

A gem among gems! This lens is built like a tank and is optically fantastic at all lengths and virtually all apertures (though, I admit, I rarely use it stopped way down). Most of my photos with this lens are portraits at 100-135 f/4 or 300 f/4, and the 11x14's I've had made from these photographs are nothing short of stunning. I notice not color shift, but I do notice that one reviewer here records a cool cast while another reports a warm (magenta) one, so I conclude that may have something to do with their other equipment. If you have a chance to acquire one of these babies, snap it up!!

Customer Service

Speedy and courteous (questions only)

Similar Products Used:

Sigma 100-300 f/4 (briefly)

F 4 constuction weight is okay for the lens type

optics slow auto focus

I was very excited about this lens at first. The consturction is grade "A". This lens dose lack quite a bit of sharpness. 5x7 prints look great, 8x12 do not. Optics are good, but not great! The lens weight is not to bad, compared to my Sigma 50-500mm. Auto focus is slow so forget about good action shots.

Customer Service

after about a week and over 120 shot using fuji NPH 400 and Reala 200, I decided to return it. KEH.COM took it back with little hassel.

Similar Products Used:

sigma 50-500mm canon 300mm usm f4 L

Very sharp optics. Color is excellent. Very well built. Price. Customer service was great.

Lens hood, you must screw it on, but it is solid. If you pick one up for your EOS camera, send it to THK to recalibrate to match your current EOS body.

Sharpest 100-300m lens currently available. Easy to use, tripod collar works great, very well built. Because this was an older lens I was told it might not work 100% with the newer EOS system camera bodies. I had it sent to THK who distributes tokina, to have this lens re-calibrated to work on my Canon eos 3. They sent it back to me in 10 days - WOW! It now works perfectly. Autofocus is more than fast enough and switching to manual focus is fast and easy.

Customer Service

great

Similar Products Used:

100-300 sigma f4 (very poor build quality.

Focal range; sharpness; f/4 constant aperture; built quality; great tripod collar.

focusing ring rotates in AF mode. Slightly darker than the f/4 nominal aperture.

This large aperture telephoto zoom lens was the first 100-300 lens with a fast, constant aperture of f/4 throughout its entire zoom range. The results I got are briefly summarized below. f/4: Good sharpness, slightly decreasing with the focal length. In particular, it is not possible to have all the corners equally focused. Light fall-off is visible in the corners when shooting uniform subjects, namely in the 200-300 mm focal length range. Nevertheless, the light fall-off is within 0.5 stop (my rough estimate!). At the long end, sharpness does not significantly change (i.e. decrease) when shooting subjects at around 2 m. In this respect, the 100-300 has a more uniform performance in the whole focusing range than the AF ED Nikkor 80-200/2.8 D. Distorsion is very well corrected: it''s visible, namely at 200 mm, but not larger than other professional telephoto zooms I''ve tested and used (Micro-Nikkor 70-180 at infinity and 80-200/2.8). f/5.6: Slight increase of both sharpness and contrast. Light fall-off is much less visible (less than 1/3 stop). f/8-f/16: the zoom performs like a prime lens. But you probably wish to know also how does this lens behave in the field, and - therefore- when used to take pictures of "real" subjects, and not of bricks or walls. Well, I must be sincere. I caught myself looking at the surprisingly high image quality I got using the Tokina 100-300/4. Color rendition is very pleasant, resolution is exceptionally good, distorsion is very well corrected even at the long end, vignetting is negligible. So, has this lens any shortcomings? Yes. The focusing ring rotates during AF operation and the maximum aperture of my sample is 0.4 stop darker than the nominal one (f/4), as measured by a KYORITSU EF 8000 Multi Camera Tester. Nevertheless, the effective apertures in the f/5.6-f/32 range correspond - within 0.1 stop - to the nominal values! In conclusion, a great lens for travel and nature photography that delivers results of biting clarity.

Customer Service

Never used

Similar Products Used:

AF Nikkor 300/4 IF ED; AF Sigma 300 Apo Macro; AF Nikkor 80-200/2.8 D New; AF Micro-Nikkor 70-180/4.5-5.6

Extremely sharp at any focal length and aperature. I use it wide open (f4) 99% of the time for shooting sports and it's extremely sharp. A bit heavy if you're not used to a high performance lens, but very well balanced, well built, & rugged. The constant aperture is invaluable!

None

I got a great deal on a used one from ebay. I highly recommend this lens to anyone who needs a telephoto zoom (beyond 200mm) with a fast constant aperture. I also tried it with a Tamron 1.4 autofocus teleconverter and got very good results.

Customer Service

Not needed.

Similar Products Used:

This lens replaced my Sigma 75-300 f4.5-5.6 APO lens which was also pretty sharp, but slow (and variable aperture). The Tokina gives a brighter image in the viewfinder, it's sharper, and allows you to use slower films.

This is a very fine lens among zoom lenses. Its optics quality is superb, it surely beats any 100-300 zoom lens available on the market. I tried it on a portrait photo session and was amazed with the results, very sharp with well color rendition. When I shot at 300mm with maximum F4.0 apperture to knock out the back ground, the pictures came out just beautifully. Tokina has incorporated a well AF Internal Focusing system into this lens, it focuses pretty fast on my Nikon F4s. I am very happy with this lens and would recommend it to any one that is seeking for a well made zoom lens without spending thousands of dollars.

None

Very well made, affordable zoom lens (for sport and landscape), yet yields high quality images that comparable to expensive brand name lenses.

Similar Products Used:

None

- Solid Built
- Great finish
- Smooth AF & zooming
- Full range sharpness
- Constant Apeture
- Accurate colour reproduction
- Impressive balancing
- Comes w/ metal hood and tripod collar

- Screw-in hood sucks! (Can't put on lens cap when hood is on)
- Heavy
* AF not fast enough to capture a flying jet-fighter. (is that a weakness?)
- Focus hunting when using Kenko Teleplus PRO300 1.4x

This a one of the masterpiece that made by Tokina with top construction and optical quality. Some people said that it is much slower than the USM/AF-S lenses, of course they are right but is this a real matter for you? Moreover, Canon and Nikon don't have a 100-300 f/4 USM/AF-S in production, so the only subsitution for this is from Sigma, I choose Tokina because it's Hoya glass.

For those who want to shoot car race or jet-fighter in flight, pay 2 or 3 times more for a USM/AF-S lens. If not, but this one and you won't be sorry.

I wish Tokina would have the lens hood re-designed since the design of the hood is really stupid but I still like this lens for it's cost/performance ratio.

Similar Products Used:

EF 70-210 3.5-4.5U
EF 70-200 4L U