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IBC 2016: Tokina jumps into the Cinema Prime race with 35mm, 50mm, 85mm T1.5 Lenses

During the IBC 2016 show, Tokina has come out swinging with some brand new all-metal full-frame cinema primes — 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm T1.5 lenses. While many of the newer cinema primes are rehoused from stills glass, Tokina has purpose-built these just for cinema, with all new elements inside.

Tokina Cinema Prime 50mm 85mm 35mm
The new Tokina Cinema Prime lenses — 35mm, 50mm, 85mm T1.5

Featuring 9 blade apertures and 300 degree focus rotation, these speedy lenses all have identical 114mm diameter fronts, as well as built-in 112mm filter threads. These lenses also have matching iris and focus positions, making it much simpler to switch lenses when using a follow focus. Tokina is claiming these are 8K sensor-capable, and as you can see from this sample, there’s minimal breathing, and pretty minimal chromatic aberration:

These will come in PL, EF, MFT, and E-Mount, but apparently won’t be user switchable. Weight-wise the 35mm is 1.95kg to 2.12kg depending on the mount (PL vs E-mount in this case), 50mm is 2.11kg to 2.28kg, and 85mm is 2.15kg to 2.32kg. Tokina is pricing these at $3999 for the 35mm and 50mm, and $4,499 for the 85mm. Delivery is expected in January 2017. To make things even more exciting, Tokina has said that they’ve got an 18mm and 25mm T1.5 coming later in 2017, also covering full-frame.

Tokina’s other new lens announcement is the improved full-frame 16-28mm II T3 zoom, which will come in PL, EF, MFT, and E mounts (the weights with these different mounts range from 1.75kg (3.9lbs.) for PL up to 1.89kg (4.2lbs.) for MFT and E-mount). While Tokina already made a cinema version of this lens, they’ve redesigned the colors of the witness marks:

Tokina 16-28mm II T3 Cinema Zoom
The witness marks have been modified for this new 16-28mm T3 zoom.

The 16-28mm T3 should be released around the same time as the primes.

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