Category Archives: Nightlife

During the last couple of photo shoots at Lipgloss, I finally got a chance to play with my new Tokina 11-16mm lens in a nightclub environment. I love the ultra-wide angle and fast F2.8 aperture it provides (although, I almost never go down to F2.8 and usually hover around F3.5-F4 to keep things a little bit more in focus).

As most people know, nightclub photography is especially challenging due to a variety of factors that range from technical issues such as extreme low-light and constantly-changing ambiance to logistical annoyances (impenetrable crowds of drunk people, noise, spilled drinks and etc). There is no time to mess with focus or other settings – a nightclub photographer needs to be able to grab shots on the fly. It’s a battlefield out there! One advantage of the Tokina is that it’s built like a tank. And, even though it doesn’t have a silent motor and focusing is therefore not as fast or smooth as with my Canon EF-S 17-55mm lens, because of Tokina’s narrow ultra-wide range, it’s usually not a problem. The glass is pretty sharp, even if that is not always evident from my quarter-second exposures :) I do wish it had IS, but even without stabilization the lens performs quite well.

I really like the extreme wide angles you can get with ATX-116, such as this shot of former Lipgloss resident DJ Chase Dobson, who came back to play a set on August 19th:

And, even though it’s a wide lens, you can still a little bit of bokeh effect when you get really close to your subject, zoomed in to 16mm at F2.8:

Of course, vertical people shots at 11mm can look pretty distorted, in a fun way :)

At 16mm (below-right), distortion isn’t too bad:

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