Guess what? I just bought a 2nd hand Tokina 28-80mm F2.8 ATX-Pro after selling my 2nd hand Nikon 28-105mm F3.5-4.5 zoom lens! The reason was I got it at a great price and I felt that I still needed the F2.8 in a standard zoom. Reviews of that lens has been rather mixed, but I decided to bite the bullet and just get it because of the attractive price. Initial testing seems to show a lens that isn't too shabby! Comparisons with its newer and very popular 3rd party lens competitor, the Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 would surely abound. I happened to own that lens before and I feel that the Tokina has a vastly better built and feel, it balances great on my D700, and the AF collar doesnt rotate when focussing. Sharpness wise, the Tokina loses out a bit to the Tamron, especially at the 80mm end, but not by a lot. The Tokina is definitely sharp enough for me even at wide open. Both have nice bokeh, but the Tokina seems to have higher contrast and saturation then the Tamron. It also focuses a bit faster than the Tamron. All in all a very decent walk around lens that I can finally put to use in my next event shoot! I went to the Chinese Garden for a trial run this morning so stay tuned for the uploads in a few days time!
A tree can symbolise Life on Earth. Here I try to showcase textures, perspectives and Bokeh.
A Portrait of this Handsome Young Man, taken indoors where the wide aperture helps. The AF was fast enough to capture kids who tend to be in constant motion!
I listen to a wide range of music, from Bach to the Beatles, from Jamiroquai to Diana Krall, and even from Prodigy to Pantera, depending on the mood. My old Marantz amplifier of about 10 years finally sang its swan song recently and so I decided to update my system, which is almost a decade old. First up was the excellent Monitor Audio RS1 bookshelf speakers. These handsome speakers were in rosewood finish and they sound fantastic to my ears at their price level. Detailed and extended treble, a very transparent midrange and a wonderful tight bass, perfect for my smallish room. For the amplifier, I got the Creek Evolution 1 after auditioning a few amps that I shortlisted with in my budget. It trounced the other similarly priced amps that I considered, so it was a no brainer. With that I knew I have secured the engine of the system. Besides being rather long in the tooth, my Rotel RCD-951 is working fine after all these years, and I have no other reason to upgrade it, other than to make myself broke! Just kidding! But its a great piece of equipment to be able to last as long as it did. If it did break down, I probably would not hesitate to get another Rotel CD player! I also changed my corroded interconnects with the Van Den Hul Integration. I wonder how it would compare with my old resident interconnect. It gave my many years of musical enjoyment, and it was the best sounding interconnect I could afford at that time, some many years ago. I thought I would let the VDH Integration burn in a bit to have a fair comparison. The moment I plugged in the VDH Integration, it has stayed there ever since. There was absolutely no fight. A wealth of detail begain to swamth me, and the awesome yet precise soundstage seemed to extend way beyond the boundaries of the speakers and walls. I described the holographic images as "ghosts", so errie was the midrange presence and transparency. These holographic imaging, especially percussions at the foreground, gave me a few scares while listening to music late at night, so realistic was the reproduction! Tonal balance remained quite similar with the old interconnect, but with a slightly more powerful and tighter bass and a bit more forward presentation. But as far as soundstaging width and especially depth, detail levels and separation and layering of vocals and instruments, the VDH Integration is my new top dog. Isn't it great when you can enjoy your music to the next level, where every music you play is a sonic journey and you can have your live performance right in front of you in your room or hall? It makes every CD I have worth so much more. Music is Food for the Soul. With a budget hifi, you can have good food everyday! Haha! 
