The Tokina AT-X 16.5-135mm f/3.5-5.6 DX features an attractive wide-angle as well as a useful tele-photo zoom range

Tokina's three AT-X digital-only zooms together span focal lengths from 10mm to 400mm. This lens ($450, street)-comparable to Canon's stabilized 18–135mm and Nikon's discontinued 18–135mm kit lenses-is equivalent to about 26–216mm or 25–202mm in fullframe terms, depending on the DSLR.

One of the best aspects of this lens is the fabulous build quality. Zoom operation is a little stiff and image quality is best when when stopped down to f8 or f11. It is only fair on distance shots, but is especially good for close work where it has few rivals in its price range.

The one I got was junk, unlike the other 3 tokina lenses I own which I love and all are 5 star quality.

Tokina's 16.5-135mm zoom might be the only lens that some users ever need. Its 8x zoom range is impressive in its own right but even more so taking into account the 16.5mm wideangle starting point.