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Lenses

Sample Images: Tokina 20mm f2 FiRIN Lens (Food and Street Photography in Bangkok)

Chris Gampat
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03/14/2017
2 Mins read
Chris Gampat The Phoblographer Tokina 20mm f2 FiRIN extra images from Thailand 9

I’m wrapping up the tail end of a Sony Press media excursion, and while here I’ve been testing the new Tokina 20mm f2 FiRIN a whole lot. After getting some initial thoughts after Photokina, I was really excited to play with the lens. It has much going for it as a wide angle, manual aperture, manual focus, and fairly compact prime lens. But one of the things that’s really great about it is how low the distortion is. In fact, it’s so low that I was confident in using it for shooting video of people.

Food Features on the Streets of Bangkok

While out here in Bangkok, we were taken into the streets of the city’s Chinatown. When I say we, I mean me and maybe around 12 other journalists from 10 or so outlets. So I put together the video above and got permission and clearance from everyone in the video. As you can see, when combined with the Sony a7r II’s image stabilization, it’s really good. The bokeh is nice, the distortion is kept fairly low, and when using my own methods of emulating the look of film, the colors are pretty great.

Because of this experience, I’m actually really confident in its use for videographers, not only due to the quality but also when you consider that the aperture can be set to be declicked. You can also use gears on the focus and aperture rings because of the grooved designs.

Mind you, this video was just shot for fun due to my having just a bit more creative freedom. I really like shooting video and before I got into stills, I was primarily a video guy. And to remind everyone, when you’re having fun and using your own creative freedom, you’ll enjoy it too.

Street Photography in Bangkok with the Tokina 20mm f2 FiRIN

Look at the woman’s expression on the left
Now when you consider the lens for street photography, you, wait…yes I’m talking about the Tokina 20mm f2 FiRIN lens for street photography and Urban Geometry (reminder: we’ve got two workshops for street photographers coming up and one is online). When used with zone focusing, it’s really effective. Plus when you consider its colors, sharpness, and the peaking system inside of Sony’s cameras then you’ve got a winner.

With this lens you’ll need to get really close to subjects and, because it’s so wide, they’ll seem like you’re further away from them than you actually are. For this reason, focusing pretty close up, around four to six feet (and stopping the lens down beyond f4 or f5.6) is ideal. Just walk up to someone about four feet away from you and shoot the photo. Otherwise, you should be zone focusing.

If you want more bokeh then realize that due to the f2 aperture  you’ll be shooting and focusing really carefully. Most of the video was shot at f2. Here are more samples.

Stay tuned for our review and more reports.

bangkok first impressions food image quality samples sony Sony A7 sony a7r II street photography Tokina 20mm f2 FiRIN video zone focusing
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Chris Gampat is the Editor in Chief, Founder, and Publisher of the Phoblographer. He provides oversight to all of the daily tasks, including editorial, administrative, and advertising work. Chris's editorial work includes not only editing and scheduling articles but also writing them himself. He's the author of various product guides, educational pieces, product reviews, and interviews with photographers. He's fascinated by how photographers create, considering the fact that he's legally blind./ HIGHLIGHTS: Chris used to work in Men's lifestyle and tech. He's a veteran technology writer, editor, and reviewer with more than 15 years experience. He's also a Photographer that has had his share of bylines and viral projects like "Secret Order of the Slice." PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. EXPERIENCE: Chris Gampat began working in tech and art journalism both in 2008. He started at PCMag, Magnum Photos, and Geek.com. He founded the Phoblographer in 2009 after working at places like PDN and Photography Bay. He left his day job as the Social Media Content Developer at B&H Photo in the early 2010s. Since then, he's evolved as a publisher using AI ethically, coming up with ethical ways to bring in affiliate income, and preaching the word of diversity in the photo industry. His background and work has spread to non-profits like American Photographic Arts where he's done work to get photographers various benefits. His skills are in SEO, app development, content planning, ethics management, photography, Wordpress, and other things. EDUCATION: Chris graduated Magna Cum Laude from Adelphi University with a degree in Communications in Journalism in 2009. Since then, he's learned and adapted to various things in the fields of social media, SEO, app development, e-commerce development, HTML, etc. FAVORITE SUBJECT TO PHOTOGRAPH: Chris enjoys creating conceptual work that makes people stare at his photos. But he doesn't get to do much of this because of the high demand of photography content. / BEST PHOTOGRAPHY TIP: Don't do it in post-production when you can do it in-camera.
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