Canon 10-24 vs tokina 12-24

[BobbyT]

I had the Canon 10-22 and returned it.  The copy I had was inconsistent getting good auto focus on images far away.  Up closer it was a great lens.

Now I have the Tokina 12-24 and like it much better.  Focus is good at all ranges and the color and contrast are outstanding. ::

[Khurram]

i'm looking at getting a 20d, but if i do, i will need to get one of the digital wide angle zooms, since my 16-35 will become approximately a 26mm lens.

Does anyone have any experience with the Tokina ATX 12-24mm lens?  back when i was a student and couldn't afford L glass, i did have some of tokina's fast ATX glass lenses, and they did fulfill their purpose back then, but at the time i was shooting mainly sports with high speed film for newsprint and landscapes with high res slide film, so high res and sharpness wasnt as critical back then.

Canon's lens seems pricey for a variable aperture zoom, even compated to sigma's lense (where the price diff is nominal), but the tokina lens is about half the price.  I havn't read a lot of overly good reviews on the canon lens, so not sure how it would stack up agains the tokina.  

if the canon lens was an L lens, then i wouldnt bother asking, but here it seems that the comparsion is between a canon consoumer/prosumer lens vs tokina's high end line

From what I see in the net I conclude that the Nikon 12-24 is the absolute best one (but of course, not relevant to you) and the Canon 10-22 is the best one you can have for the Canon mount. If I had the 20D I'd immediately mate it with the 10-22. In addition, I like USM a lot and this one is the only one with it.

Happy shooting,
Yakim.