Tokina ATX-Pro 80-200/2.8 AF

When I started shooting more indoor sport-events I found the reach of the FA50 not long enough and my FA100-300/4-5.6 at that time not fast enough. Even 800Asa wasn't enough and 1600 Asa color-film gave a lot grain. So I bought this lens new from B&H. At that time I found it heavy and big and it didn't fit in my bag. Overall this lens looks great. It's well build and feels very solid, like most Tokina's do. I did consider a Sigma at that time but they suffered with firmware issues when new body's where released. This lens is still working perfectly on digital body's being a good thing. One of my Metz flashes and a Sigma AF 400/5.6 (non Apo) from that time doesn't work on the Ist D. Tokina and Tamron doesn't seem to have similar problems.

AF performance of this lens is good, but not great, my Tamron 300/2.8 and FA50/1.4 are faster. I found it faster on the Z1p then on the Ist D. The K20 and K7 should be a better, but no Pentax has a fast AF. Handling is very good and there is a tri-pod mount which I found very useful with a mono-pod.
Also when switching to MF (both camera and lens) there is a good amount of friction making it very useful for MF.

Performance
First I have to note that this lens does suffer from a little of back-focus on my Ist-D (about 1cm at 2m distance) , which I found-out after doing this tests. I think the score wide open could be 5 to 10% higher. This can be corrected in the newer body's.

Overall the sharpness is good wide open, but you need f4 to become great. I mostly use it at f3.5 to f5.6 and I think it performs a bit like it's Sigma equivalent. I recently bought a Canon 70-200/2.8 IS and when comparing day-live shot, I must say that at f4 they are quiet equal in performance (6mp Ist D vs a 10mp 1DIII). At f2.8 the canon is way better but also more the twice the price.
Like most telezooms vignetting isn't a problem but CA isn't that great especially wide open at 80mm. It only got a 7 wide open (about 3 pixels),. The good thing is that it's a lot better at f4 and gone by f5.6 (<1pixel) and CA is not that difficult to fix post process. I would expect it to perform better because of the SLD lens elements.

On digital crop body this lens becomes a great 100-300/2.8 lens! ($$$) I could only dream of
this focal length at f2.8 some years ago. This lens even works with teleconvertors (TC), but I would only recommend a 1.4x (on a crop-camera with <12Mpix). The 2x Sigma EX doesn't do very well with this lens because it add's some more CA and you have to stop it down to f5.6 (f11) to get sharp images (good enough for 20x30cm prints), AF needs to be very precise at f2.8 with a focal length of 400mm. On a K20D and K7 you don't need a TC, cropping the picture will do in 95% of the cases. Only in very bright light a 1.4x TC could be better.

Overall I like this lens and would recommend it to others how don't need blistering fast AF.The Nikon, Canon and Sony is better but are two to three times the prices. I find it nicer then the newer DA*50-135/2.8 in focal length, looking at other tests it seems to have less CA. I don't think the new Sigma 70-200/2.8 are better, but they have HSM motor's in them, making them quieter and probably fast (although no Pentax body has fast AF).