Tokina SZX Super Tele 400mm f8 Reflex MF – Review by Jarvis

The Tokina SZX f8.0 400mm, a new mirror lens released by Tokina from august 2020.

Mirror lenses where popular in the 70’s and 80’s – by the 90’s, nobody wanted them anymore.
What has changed ?
The digital camera has come and broken trough, but that has been a while now.
Especially the arrival of mirrorless cameras with improved manual focusing (focus peaking), higher ISO settings, image stabilisation, and a constant demand for lighter and more compact gear, makes it interesting to experiment with this again.
And the lens builders know that, Tokina and Samyang have both started making mirror lenses again.

But they don’t have real success yet, is it the less good memories of the quality of these lenses in the past?
Or are we not ready yet?
Could a lens that is much smaller, much lighter and much cheaper be as good as their heavy and more expensive glass version ?

No – but much better than before.
They are more compact and lighter, and the image quality has improved significantly.
So how good are they really?
Well, below you will find the review made by JARVIS, I didn’t had time, I had to shoot some Pulitzer prize winning …, well you get the picture 🙂
I hope you like it !

Note : The quality of the pictures in de video isn’t that good – so I have included a few below in a gallery – Also, when you look at the exif in the pictures, there will be 300mm as a lens, well that’s my mistake, I forgot to adjust this in the camera.

All unaltered, exept resized for web – In the Gallery : click the “i” and below for full resolution or to enlarge !

Some examples of what only adjusting the curve does for this type of photos – no further adjustments.
Look at the watch, no sharpening has been applied – this picture was shot with the Tokina SZX 400 + Fuji 1.4 TC WR at macro setting.