Discussion of lenses, brand or independent, uses and merits
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I'd like to get a lens which is a bit wider than 18-55 kit (came with my A550) - good ol' GAS
The Tokina 11-18mm looks to be a good choice at a sensible price, though I have thought the Sony 16-105mm would see more use at the expense of the wide end.
I was lucky enough to snag a Sigma 8-16mm refurbished at 60% of normal price here, in Warehouse Express's bargain basement dept. It's a fantastic lens, I had already used it on Nikon, but now I've been using it on A55 and it has all the resolution needed - best at f/11 for corner to corner quality.
The problem with the HSM (superb, and AF compatible on NEX) Sigma 8-16mm is the price here - £569, or about $850. I was able to sell my Sony 11-18mm and buy the Sigma 8-16mm with an overall cost for the change of £110, which I consider entirely reasonable to get the extra angle, newer lens and HSM focusing. That was only because I found a Sigma going at a low price.
No, it seems to work fine. Anyway, the rechipping issue is not terminal. All that happens is that from time to time, the camera locks up and won't fire. You just turn the camera off briefly, unmount and remount the lens, switch on and you are back in business. That at least is what happens with the 70-300mm Sigma OS, which does have the issue. This is a factory refurbished 8-16mm bought three weeks ago, and that is one reason I went for it. If it has been back to Sigma for sale as B-Stock, it's probably been rechipped anyway.
I don't know if you're still interested in the Tokina 11-16mm, but I recently bought one for a trip to southern France. After using the lens for awhile, I still don't know what to think of it. On the one hand, it's noticeably less sharp than my other lenses (a Tamron 17-50 and Sony 18-250). But maybe that's to be expected with a wide angle lens, and maybe it's better than other wide angles on the market. All I can say is that the lens didn't blow me away. I'd be happy to post some sample pics so you can judge for yourself -- if someone can tell me how to do it!
If you find that your sample is worse than these were on Nikon D90, I suggest you've got a rogue lens. Most users report that this lens is amazingly good.
OK, here are some shots using the Tokina 11-16mm. I took a few at home before the trip, and the rest in France. The France pictures are jpegs straight from the camera -- no post-processing at all. As usual, I didn't get the exposure right on some of them, but you can see how the lens does in terms of sharpness.
By the way, David, I followed your recommendation and went to Bercail. It was fantastic -- definitely one of my favorite nights on the whole trip. Thanks for the tip!
I was actually thinking about the Tokina when I saw some write-ups on the Sigma 8-16. Since my main focus for such a wide lens is getting up close and personal to large buildings w/o having to clone out power lines, etc, the Sigma will do much more for me.
Chris, I can't tell much from the Tokina shots. I can only suggest that if you are unhappy with the sharpness, it is a lens with a very high resale value and rarity in Alpha mount. Therefore, you would be able to get back a lot on the outlay.
We photographed Avignon using the 11-18mm Minolta, that visit was just prior to A700 and I was still working with the Alpha 100, full frame on the distant horizon. When using any wide-angle like this, I will try to stop down a small aperture. This comes from 40 years of experience... that wide-angles generally need to be stopped down, whether they were my first Meyer Lydith 30mm in 1970 or my Hasselblad SWC 20 years later, or even the Canon 17mm TS-E lens I was using last month.
Here's a shot taken from just 2/3rds of an Alpha 100 frame, enlarged for Alamy to over 50MB - KM 11-18, 11mm at f/10, ISO 100. The final image size is about the same as a that from an Alpha 900 now. I will admit that it looks very soft to me now, I'm used to larger file sizes and not interpolating up as we had to do then. But the softness has nothing to do with the lens, that has done a good job. It looks great at 1000 pixels wide:
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