Getting comfortable with my Tokina 12-24

[tclune]

I got the Tokina 12-24mm f/4 DX II a few months ago. Like all ultra-wide-angle lenses, it is tricky to learn to use. I think of UWA lenses as the fighter aircraft of lenses -- they are unstable in all directions, which can either add terrific responsiveness or make you crash and burn without warning. I am getting more at-home with this lens, which is very fun but a real challenge. This weekend, my wife and I went up to visit my son at UVM. We spent the night at the Inn at Montpelier, which was the perfect place to work on my technique with this lens. I have posted a few of the shots here: http://www.dpreview.com/galleries/63...FDAF45DA9DCDBF

[tizeye]

Nice. With that slow shutter speed and available light, I trust you were using a tripod. Perspective control nice with straight verticals and horizonals. Does the D5000 have a grid viewfinder that can be turned on? I find that extermemy helpful on the D90 when composing with an UWA.

[tclune]

Originally Posted by tizeye

Nice. With that slow shutter speed and available light, I trust you were using a tripod. Perspective control nice with straight verticals and horizonals. Does the D5000 have a grid viewfinder that can be turned on? I find that extermemy helpful on the D90 when composing with an UWA.

No, they were freestanding. I spent a lot of time looking for different angles for the photos, and a tripod would have driven me to distraction. I'm really in learning mode with this lens still, and need to see all the different ways I can frame the photo through the lens because I just don't have a good internal model of how the lens works yet.

There is a grid that can be enabled, but I just adjusted for what appeared to be straight in the viewfinder, and then did some post-processing to finish the job. It's really hard to find the precise position and angle to make everything completely straight and true with this lens. The side stair photo is the only one of the photos in that small gallery I didn't need to make any adjustment to, but that is intended to be a tad sharp in its lines and was easy to get right. I had some others of the rooms that were aligned straight-on that didn't need any tweaking, but they weren't very interesting -- you can always get pretty straight lines if you keep everything framed like a box. But the photos of the rooms are more interesting at a bit of an angle, and that makes it really hard to get the lines all true. I used PaintShop Pro's perspective adjustment to tweak the alignment in pp. It has a very nice interface for that sort of thing, and works well if the photos aren't too far off to begin with.