Saturday 15th of August 2015

I finally saved up enough to get a lens I’ve wanted for quite a while now: the Fuji XF 14mm f/2.8 R. This article is some of my first thoughts about the lens, in no particular order.

Here’s my lens family now:

Fuji lenses: 14mm, 35mm f/1.4, 18 – 55mm 14mm f/2.8, 35mm f/1.4, 18 – 55mm

It’s about half way between the 35 and 18 – 55 in size and weight, and balances just fine on my X-E1. It comes with a plastic hood that can also be used on the 18 – 55, and it’s fine really, possibly a bit big but oh well. I actually like the fact that it’s plastic, as it makes a better shock absorber than a metal one would (unless it’s really thin like the 35mm’s).

It focuses pretty close, so you can blur the background a bit:

pedestrian crossing lights not even minimum focus distance

It’s super sharp! Here’s a full picture, then some 100% zoom crops from the middle and then bottom-left corner.

graveyard full bonus flying insect in the top right

graveyard centre crop

graveyard corner crop

These are at f/8. I actually had to turn down my usual sharpening a bit for the centre crop.

It also seems a bit more contrasty than the 35mm f/1.4 – I’ve noticed in Capture One that my usual preset requires a bit more shadow boosting, or some contrast reduction, but then again it was pretty bright and sunny today so we’ll see how it fares in less clement weather.

One thing’s clear: I’m not at all used to using a lens this wide. Almost every time I brought the camera up to take a picture, I was too far away. Too much in the frame, need to get closer. It’s going to be fun learning how to get the best out of this field of view.

It certainly does interesting things to fingers!

fingers like E.T.