Hello everyone, I am looking for some good wide angle lens for under $700 and I pretty much narrowed it down to these two lenses. I watched all the reviews and sample videos of both Tokina 11-16 as well as Samyang/Rokinon 14mm but I still don't know which one to choose.

I will primarily use it on a slider for some nice indoor b-roll shots. I'm shooting on the T3i so their performance on a full frame camera is pretty much irrelevant for me. For those who have the Rokinon/Samyang, it distortion that bad? Since I would go for the Cine version of that lens, is the manual aperture worth it or should I just buy the Tokina with electronic aperture and auto focus? (I don't plan on taking photos with it)

Thank you.

Generally auto focus for video is pretty useless. So I'd not even put that down as a consideration.

In Canon cameras the aperture steps in 1/3 stops. So changing the aperture electronically during shooting is no good as you'll notice the change. This makes the declicked manual aperture on cine lens more useful.

I've not used the Samyang lens so can't comment on the distortion. I do own the Tokina 11-16 tho. It's a great lens and fore the money can't really be faulted. I have the Nikon mount version. I've used it on Nikon D300 shooting time lapse, on the Sony NEX-FS100 (with Novoflex Nikon G to Sony E adaptor) shooting wide shot in 1080p and more recently I've been using it on my Blackmagic Cinema Camera (with Novoflex Nikon G to Canon EF adaptor). BMCC samples here: http://philipbloom.net/forum/index.php?threads/Tokina-11-16mm-Nikon-mount-test.7566/

I've been very happy with the results.

Thank You Adam. I really appreciate it . I ended up buying Tokina and it should arrive tomorrow. I'm really excited to see it in action.