Announced: Tokina Reflex 300mm F6.3 MF MACRO

Tokina announced earlier today a new lens – Reflex 300mm F6.3 MF MACRO – aimed at the micro 4/3 camera market. The new lens is a small, light, manual macro lens which uses a mirror to gain its long telephoto capability.

Back in January, Tokina announced a new version of its popular AT-X 116 PRO DX wide angle lens but also showed an upcoming 300mm compact mirror lens for micro 4/3 but gave almost no other details. Three months later and the company is now ready to announce the new lens which should be available next month.

The Reflex 300mm F6.3 MF MACRO – small but extremely long macro

Here are the main features of the lens:

• 300mm focal length (600mm equivalent on micro 4/3 format).
• Aperture: f/6.3 (fixed).
• Simple construction – 7 elements in 3 groups (mirror based – as can be seen in the pictures).
• Manual focus (but with focus confirmation in supported cameras).
• 80 cm focus distance (very long for a macro lens).
• Macro magnification 1:2.
• Weight: 298 grams.
• length: 66 mm.
• Availability: May 2012
• Price: 40,000¥ (officially less than 500$ in Japan. probably much lower street price).

This lens, despite the mirror which typically isn't exactly a favorite by many photographers due to many inherit issues, might be ideal for long macro photography (butterfly photographers come to mind). Its cheap enough and small enough to just buy and throw in the bag and use in the field on a sunny day (probably on a tripod). Build quality based on our past experience with Tokina should be very good, but we will need to test test the actual performance to say something about its optical quality.

The Reflex 300mm F6.3 MF MACRO on Olympus PEN camera

More information can be found on Tokina's website.