Should I bother with this specific lens?

[Kaempferi]

I'm looking at some TOKINA AT-X 90mm f2.5 macros & extenders which I've seen looks great. A seller has sent me some samples with and without. I know dust is normal but would you buy this specific one given the images sampled? He sent me an imgur link and i can see the dust quite clearly.

Imgur

I'm looking at a minimum of it being 280 shipped. Others are pushing about 300-400 and I've looked at the Vivitar "Bokina" but can't seem to find the macro extender for it as much as I do with the Tokina.

I'm just snapping whatever I find usually, but it seems to be portraits mainly with sometimes random long exposures and macros with a cheap B+W 10x on an A6000. Everything will most likely be on some adapter. Other suggestions are appreciated as well hopefully less than 500 USD

Your opinions are much welcomed and if you could state your reasoning as well.

Thanks

 

[Derrel]

The dust is from the camera's SENSOR, and at small aperture sizes, like f/16 or f/22, the dust on the sensor makes pretty bad spots or specs. The dust is NOT from inside of the lens. Trust me on this. I have a lot of digital SLR experience. These shots are NOT that bad; the seller's sensor is actually relatively clean! Again: the dust spots you see are NOT from the lens, they are literally shadows of dust specs that are located on the front plane of the camera's imaging sensor filter array!

It's pretty easy to make a decent 90mm, or 100mm macro lens. Tamron and Tokina and Sigma have all made some fine performers. A short-telephoto macro lens is relatively simple and easy to design and manufacture.

If the price is competitive for your area, I see no reason not to buy the lens. Keep in mind that there are MANY decades' worth pf used macro lenses on the market; depending on your camera brand/model, you might be able to buy a used manual focus macro lens for far less than $280, like say a Nikon "Micro~NIKKOR" (SIC) 105mm f/4 manual focusing macro lens for a lot less money than this Tokina 90mm.

 

[Kaempferi]

Thank you for the prompt response. I'll take the advice of the dust being on the sensor. During the time between the first post and this, I managed to find a Vivitar model with adapter supposedly with a very light amount of haze for 220 which I will hope to win. Only reason I'm trying to stick to a wider aperture (maybe I'm wrong or not doing things right..as I'm new to all this) was when shooting in an indoor gym even at f1.7 and 1/800 @3200 iso may still have looked a tad dark while at f3.5 I could hardly see and keep up.