On the new one, the focus ring gets frequently stuck when pulling it to MF, I'd say about 1/8 times. It basically sometimes doesn't pull down all the way in one place, and then locks the whole mechanism (AF motor isn't disengaged). If you then try to turn it, it fights the AF motor. That never happens on my old DX version, but I'm on my 2nd DX II with the same problem.

Is that normal for the DX IIs or have I got 2 duff ones in a row?

$400 OBO. Will ship internationally at buyer's expense. Please let me know if you're interested at:

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I did three comparisons each with the lenses at f/2.8 and f/5.6. The uncropped shots are resized, but I only wanted to demonstrate the barrel distortion and vignetting with those. There are also 100% crops of each. All shots were done with the wide converter on the 14mm (sorry, forgot label it properly), and with the Tokina at it's widest setting. I used RAW on the GH2 for all shots.

As expected, the Panny combo had worse vignetting and barrel distortion than the Tokina. The GH2 corrects the distortion for the 14mm, but it can't do anything about the wide converter. At F/2.8, the Panny combo was clearly sharper than the Tokina which had some noticeable coma. At F/5.6, the sharpness is about even in the center, but the Tokina slightly beats out the Panny combo at the edges. You can also notice the purple fringing is pretty bad on the Tokina at the edge of that white book.