Tokina AT-X Pro 100: How Many Versions of This Lens?

[timacn]

Hello. I've thought about getting a new or used version of the well regarded Tokina AT-X Pro 100. I've read that a more recent version of this lens has been "reengineered" with coatings designed to minimize reflection issues with certain components on digital cameras. (I think I got that right.) I was wondering when such reengineered coatings first appeared on the lens and if the coatings significantly improve the quality of the glass. (I have a line on a used AT-X Pro 100 at a good price, but am not sure if it has the reengineered glass or not.) If the new coatings are important, I will not buy a used lens without them.

Thanks for your help.

 

[RVT1K]

I'm willing to bet that is more marketing hype than anything else.

 

[Solarflare]

Lens coatings cannot improve a lens except for effects like flare.

You cannot possibly change the type of glas used in a lens without needing a complete redesign of the lens. Different types of glas have different optical qualities.

Lens designers have to juggle and minimize about two douzens of possible lens errors at the same time, plus having to handle constraints such as price, weight, tolerances needed etc. Any nontrivial lens design is uncomputable, thus approximations of the optimal result have to be found and tested.

Thus you cant just randomly change one of these variables without the whole thing brutally falling apart for sure and all these two douzen lens errors coming in hard at the same time, resulting in a really poor lens.

Thats why one of my lenses has a lens design from the 1960s, and most of my other lenses are from the 1980s, 1990s or 2000s. You just dont change great lens designs once somebody found them. And given the extreme complexity of the problem, lens design is really more of an art form than a form of engineering. Given that lenses are used to produce art, thats only appropiate, though.

Tokina has already replaced their quite brilliant 11-16/2.8 with a comparebly weak 11-20/2.8, I sure hope they dont replace their 100/2.8 with something new and likely inferior.