Tokina 90/2.5 Marco vs. Tamron 90/2.5 Marco vs. Contax 85/2.8MM

[fredlee70x7]

I want to get a compact short tele for portrait to be used on my

Contax S2. Tokina and Tamron, both discontinued, offer benefit of

marco. Which is a better choice? Which one has better/smooth boken?

 

A local store has a brand new (old stock)Tamron for $300 (adaptor

extra). It also has a like-new used Tokina for same price but with

the 1:1 marco extender. Are these two lens the same but different

badging?

[awahlster]

These two lenses have been compared a number of times on the canon Fd group on Yahoo and the verdict is that image quality wise they are the same. I own the Tokina and would not use it as a portrait lens unless I wanted every tiny itty bitty pore blemish wrinkle flaw etc in my subjects face to show in macro detail. As it is a VERY VERY VERY sharp lens. And yes the background has that smooth blended look you want.

 

Just I opinion I would look more towards the 85mm f1.8 nFD for a portrait lens the sell on ebay for around $160-180.00 a little hard to find but worth it as wide open it is slightly soft with very shallow DOF.

 

Hope this helps

[fredlee70x7]

Mark, could you provide the link to that forum please?

[awahlster]

Fred the Yahoo Canon FD group is at:

 

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/CanonFD/

 

930 of the nicest Canon nuts your likely to run into on the net. we talk everything from screwmount to nikons once and a while but we always talk Canon FD

 

stop by have a chat ask a question join we don't bite.

[sander_pronk]

The price of the tokina, if used, seems a bit high. I would think $200 is more realistic. As a portrait lens, the tokina is really as sharp as a previous poster mentioned; I have it and it seems at least as sharp as my Zeiss lenses. The bokeh, however, is less smooth (but still not bad) and the colour of the slides made with it has a slight tendency to be more cold compared to those made with the Zeiss lenses. I'm now trying whether a skylight filter corrects this, but if you shoot print film you won't be able to see any difference.

 

Both macro lenses are also big and heavy compared to the 85mm. Zeiss; the tokina is heavier than the 135 Sonnar.

[bernhard]

I haven't used any of those lenses myself, but for a short portrait lens for a Contax, IMHO the first choice is the 85/1.4, not because of its max aperture, but for it's character: wonderful bokeh and gently soft from 1.4 to 2.8. If you want it for portraits you can find a used one for $400-500 (not much more than the Tamron). Mine is pretty beaten up, far from mint, but perfect for portraits and still damn sharp @5.6-8. There should be plenty of pics from this lens in my portfolio. I can compare the 85/1.4 to my 100/2 which is sharp but much more clinical and I would expect the two macro lenses to be the same, so IMHO not my first choice for portaits.