a blog by Matthew Duclos
Tokina has expanded its character-forward “Portrait” edition of the Vista-P lineup with a new 180mm T1.9—the series’ first telephoto focal length. Pre-orders are now open, with shipments expected to begin in October 2025. Here’s how it fits into Tokina’s growing cinema lens ecosystem.
Continue reading “Tokina Caps the Vista-P Line With New 180mm T1.9”
Tokina has announced its latest addition to the Vista Prime lineup—the Vista-C. This new variant aims to deliver a more vintage-inspired aesthetic with controlled contrast, unique flare characteristics, and a slightly less uniform image while maintaining the high resolution and T1.5 speed that define the Vista series. But does this really introduce something entirely new, or is it simply a refined iteration of an already solid lens platform? Let’s take a closer look.
Continue reading “Tokina Introduces Vista-C Primes”
In the ever-evolving world of cinematography, where innovation meets tradition, Tokina Cinema has made a bold leap with its latest creation – the Vista-P lenses. Departing from the conventional pursuit of perfection, these lenses offer cinematographers a unique blend of vintage aesthetics and cutting-edge resolution. The Vista-P Prime series introduces a perspective shift, not just in the final imagery but also in the process of lens tuning.
Continue reading “Tokina Announces Vista-P Primes”
The Tokina Vista Prime family has expanded again! This time with a 65mm. Let’s take a look, shall we?
Continue reading “Tokina Vista Prime 65mm T1.5 Announced”
Tokina has been adding focal lengths to their Cinema Vista line of high speed, large format cinema prime lenses ever since they were first announced back in 2016. Let’s take a quick look back as well as a peek forward at the Vista Primes.
Continue reading “40mm T1.5 Joins Tokina Cinema Vista Primes”
Tokina Cinema has announced the new 25-75mm T2.9. Its focal length falls between its predecessors 11-20mm and 50-135mm, creating a versatile trio of zooms.
Continue reading “Tokina Unveils New 25-75mm T2.9 Cine Zoom”
Tokina joined the cinema market with their Vista Primes which were met with open arms for their excellent image quality and coverage. But for many cinematographers, the lenses lacked character or personality. They were simply too clean or “clinical” as I’ve come to refer to them. But that changes with the Vista One primes.
Continue reading “Vista One – More Character from Tokina Cinema”
I’ve written about the Tokina 11-16mm many, many times. In fact, I was temporarily banned from REDUser years ago for backhandedly plugging the Duclos 11-16mm conversion – breaking the rules of the forum. I’ve since cleaned up my act (sort of). I speak often of the Duclos 11-16mm, and when I do, I always give credit to Tokina for making such a great product. I wanted to take a post here and acknowledge the original lens, it’s heritage, influence, and evolution over the past (nearly) decade. Continue reading “Tokina’s Gateway to Cinema: The 11-16mm”
Tokina entered the cinema lens market several years ago with a few zooms and a macro prime which were all ported over from their still photography line of lenses. Originally, their 11-16mm T3 (a lens that we lovingly began the trend with) lacked a PL mount option which it finally gained just recently, while the other lenses featured the PL mount as a factory option. The 11-16mm was accompanied by two additional zoom lenses – a 16-28mm T3 and a 50-135mm T3 and a lonely 100mm Macro prime lens. Last week, Tokina announced that it will begin manufacturing three brand new prime lenses – a 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm, all T1.5, and refreshing the 16-28mm with a version II. Continue reading “Tokina Cinema Introduces New Primes, Refreshed Zoom, and More!”
We’ve had a good deal of success with our 11-16mm conversion. So much that there have been at least half a dozen copy-cats, including Tokina themselves. Let me be clear about this – I’m well aware that Tokina was the first and only organization to make the glass itself and there wouldn’t be any conversion without them – to which I’m very grateful and respectful. What you see here is in fact a 24 Karat Gold Duclos 11-16mm. You’re probably shaking your head thinking, why… why would you do that? Well… Continue reading “Duclos Lenses Forges One-of-a-Kind 11-16mm”
We’ve been building our 11-16mm lenses as quick as we can while still maintaining the highest quality standards we can. We’ve received great feedback from a lot of satisfied customers and look forward to continuing to fill orders. There are quite a few back-orders still but rest assured, we are working diligently to fill orders as quickly as possible. This particular photo is our Nikon-F mount model. We offer the lens in PL, Nikon-F, and Canon-EF. Such a versatile little beauty. 🙂
The 11-16mm has been doing extremely well and received a lot of good reviews especially with the release of the RED Epic camera and it’s ability to cover the entire frame. There was a small slump where the lenses were constantly in stock and just sitting on the shelf. But now we can’t build them fast enough.
A little background on the lens and our conversion can be found here: Duclos Lenses PL Mount 11-16mm. We build our conversion lenses in batches of 25-50 at a time. The base lens is a bit difficult to find since it’s such a great photo lens, making it hard to find in stores and online. Once we have all of the stock lenses ready to go we begin tearing down the plastic housings and unwanted parts. The lens is essentially stripped down to the core mechanics and glass. Our local machine shops crank out all new aluminum and stainless steel parts for the housing and components of the new lens. All of the material, machining, assembly, and testing is done right in the San Fernando Valley. When we say Made in the USA, we mean it. Kinda… (The original Tokina lens is still made in Japan).
Now that this current batch is well into production the lenses should start shipping again. We learned from our mistakes and are producing a much larger quantity of parts for the conversion. So if you’re in line for a Duclos Lenses 11-16mm, know that we are building them as fast as we can and yours is on the way.
We have been considering several lenses for our next conversion process after the 70-200mm is complete. We started with the Tokina 11-16mm that did very well and thought it would be nice to stick with Tokina. However, Tokina didn’t have any other lenses that met our criteria. Certain specifications had to be met, such as constant, fast aperture, lightweight, internal focus and zoom, optical quality, and a somewhat decent platform to start with mechanically. When I heard about Tokina making a new 16-28mm f/2.8 lens I thought it would be a bit of a short range but still fit well. Then I saw the first photos of the lens and got really excited since it looked almost identical to the 11-16mm. In my head this meant that we could save a ton of time and money on research and development for the conversion parts and simply use the existing parts from our 11-16mm conversion. One step further, Tokina was planning to make this new lens a full frame “Pro” lens, perfect for the 5D.
Continue reading “Tokina’s 16-28mm Prospect”
The infinitely knowledgeable Jason Wingrove sent me a snap shot of a Duclos Lenses 11-16mm on a brand new Sony F3 camera. If you haven’t heard of Jason Wingrove or a Sony F3, you need to spend some more time on the interwebs because they are both a staple in the motion picture industry. Jason was able to shoot with one of three Sony F3 cameras in the world at the time. He notes that the camera is very light which makes lens selection in regards to weight critical. Looks like the Sony F3 and the 11-16mm are a match made in heaven. By the way.. If you haven’t listened to Jason’s Red Centre Podcast along with Mike Seymour you’re missing out. Thanks to Nathan Rodger for snapping the photos on location. Now if I can just get my hands on one of them Japanese moving picture things…
I first heard about this lens several months ago from NikonRumors.com which has been fairly reliable for early news unless I hear it from a manufacturer like I usually do with Zeiss. I don’t have a very deep relationship with Tokina so I had to wait like everyone else to confirm this new zoom. The focal length intrigued me since it picked up right where the 11-16mm left off. As many of you know, I love the 11-16mm. It’s not the end-all-be-all of wide zooms, but the price for performance ratio is simply unbeatable. With the next lens in the lineup Tokina made a few improvements, but not without sacrifice. The 16-28mm is now an FX format lens which means that it covers a 35mm full frame sensor. Excellent for me and my Nikon D700, but even more important, it would work well with a Canon 5D mkII or the upcoming RED FF35 sensor.
Continue reading “Hands On Tokina’s New 16-28mm f/2.8 Pro Zoom”