Overall Concept

Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF is a 400mm super tele lens that adopts catadioptric type optical design with a constant F8 aperture. The lens offers compact alternative to standard tele photo lenses as more and more photographers are looking for easy-to-carry gear. 400mm F8 Reflex MF is designed keeping in mind active travel photographers seeking for outdoor landscape, wild nature or birds by providing compact and lightweight lens to be rediscovered in the new era of also compact but high-tech mirrorless cameras.

Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF is suitable for travel photography since the lens is compact and lightweight, and yet will help you to capture far objects that cannot be reached by standard zoom lenses. This lens can serve you best in different photographic genres, like landscape, people, street snap, macro, wild nature and even sports!

Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF adopts catadioptric type of optical design that is basically similar with the design of the most famous astronomical telescope in the world - the Hubble space telescope.

Photo of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope taken during the fifth servicing mission in 2009
Image: Ruffnax (Crew of STS-125) | https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:HST-SM4.jpeg

About the Series

Back in 1980s Tokina shocked the camera market by releasing two epoch-making lenses – SZ-X 210 (70-210mm f/4-5.6) and SZ-X 270 (28-70mm f/3.5-4.5). Common characteristics that can be applied to those 2 lenses are, by no doubts, extremely compact and extremely lightweight body compared to other zoom lenses of equal focal length. Tokina was the first lens manufacturer that succeeded in developing tele and standard zoom lenses with such valuable advantages for the photographers.

S - Satisfaction
Z - Zest
X - Something unknown or exciting

Giving our respect to Tokina engineers of that time we decided to give a new birth to this legendary series by developing and offering a range of exciting products with specific features and valuable advantages Tokina never produced before.

Borrowing the abbreviation of the legendary Tokina SZ-X series (80s-90s) we aim to provide satisfaction to the photographer through our passion and enthusiasm as an optical manufacturer.

Optical Performance

Long 400mm focal length of Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF while being such a compact and lightweight is realized thanks to catadioptric optical design.

LENS CONSTRUCTION

Mirror lenses are tele photo lenses that incorporate a combination of 3 lenses silvered on the outside of the glass to reflect light back and forth between the ends of the lens. This structure folds the light cutting the tube length in half. In this way the construction makes the physical size of the lens around a third of the size of a conventional lens and allows a lightweight body, because the mirrors are much lighter than the optical glass.

Rediscovering Reflex Lens with Mirrorless Cameras

Reflex type of lenses are used to be considered as out of fashion, inconvenient gear due to fixed aperture, manual focusing and absence of image stabilization. We suggest to rediscover all advantages of reflex type lenses again, by using it with contemporary mirrorless cameras.

Easy to focus

Focus assist functions like focus peaking will help to find the sharpest focus point.

Less shaking

In-build multi-axis advanced image stabilization systems of mirrorless cameras will make you forget about blurred images due to hand shaking.

No slow shutter any more

Newest mirrorless cameras featuring advanced wide ISO settings can offer photographer choosing faster shutter speed with minimum pixel noises on the image.

Main Features

Compact and lightweight

Featuring 400mm focal length lens and weight only 340g (without mount adapter) Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF can be easily carried inside a pocket or small bag. For travel photographers who tend to seek for lightweight gear this feature is highly valuable.

Optics

Lens elements inside the lens are coated with multi-layer anti-reflection coating for effective light intake and as a result, for increasing shutter speed in low light conditions.

Mirrored surfaces of the lens elements incorporate high-reflectivity silvered coating and a protective antioxidant layer on the back side for a longer product lifetime.

Macro shooting

The field of view is 6°8' (by frame diagonal) and min. focusing distance is 1.15m. It gives magnification 1:2.5 to capture an object with size 6x9cm on full frame. These properties help the photographer to avoid shadows while shooting close up images.

Specific bokeh

Optical construction of the lens creates specific donut-shaped and super smooth bokeh that finds support among many artistic photographers.

Easy and precise focusing

Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF is equipped with wide and excellent grip focus ring that provides smooth rotation range 270°. Precise focusing could not be more easy. Thanks to high quality processed metal parts and assembling process focus ring rotates smoothly even in low temperature environments giving no chance for dust to be sucked inside the lens.

Super compression

Thanks to its long focal length Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF can create images with super compression effect, when the background looks close and enlarged compared to the main object. This effect adds to the image enchanting atmosphere.

Hood and filters

Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF comes with a hood and supports 67mm filters. That allows photographer to use any creative filter to enhance the impact.

Versatile mount system

Tokina SZX SUPER TELE 400mm F8 Reflex MF adopts a T-mount standard (pitch 0.75mm, thread 42mm), that allows this lens to be attached to any camera by using mount adapters.