----- Original Message ----- From: "Joseph Tainter" Subject: Re: SV: Tokina AT-X 165 PRO DX 16-50mm and AT-X 535 PRODXlenses50-135mmf2.8
> Adam, I would have to check further on this, but my information (from a > Pentax unit) is that the coatings are the same. One difference is that > Tokina's lens bodies have been poor at using internal design to reduce > light bouncing around, even before the joint lenses. Also, Tokina has in > the past been pretty poor in the coating area. Now they advertise their > new, advanced finger- and waterproof coating on the front element. Guess > whose coating that really is? > > But your point about the color signature would make one wonder. As I > said, the information comes from a national Pentax distributor, but they > have gotten things wrong in the past. > It's entirely possible that the Tokina lenses have multi coated front and rear elements similar to SMC, but single coated internal elements. This would explain the outer elements being smudge resistant, while still leaving them somewhat wanting in flare control. When I was selling this stuff, Pentax reintroduced the Takumar name on a couple of popular zoom lens lengths as a lower end lens designed to compete with the likes of Tokina. I believe they had a 28-80 and a 70(80?)-200 mm lens in each line. At that time, I was told by our Pentax rep that the only difference between those Takumars and the SMC Pentax lenses was the coatings. The Takumars were multi coated on the external elements, and only single coated on the internal ones, and uncoated on the internal surfaces of grouped elements, whereas the SMC lenses were multicoated on every glass surface. I'm fairly certain that SMC is still proprietary, and isn't showing up on third party lenses, even if some of them are codesigned/comanufactured by third party manufacturers. William Robb -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
