A mural at one of the downtown Austin Google Buildings.
Yes, we have two or three other Google buildings sprinkled around town...
Here's a short and sweet review of the 14mm f2.8 Fuji lens for the X series cameras. It's sharp over most of the frame at f2.8. It's sharp every where by f4.0 and it's very, very sharp all across the frame at f5.6. I know the camera automatically corrects for vignetting but I don't see any artifacts in the corners due to correction so I'm super happy about that. The lens is deceptively small and light, focuses very quickly (at least in the good light I was given today) and is extremely sharp.
I'd asked a Fuji expert about which lens to buy given that I don't use wide angles nearly as much as various normal and telephoto lenses. I was deliberating between the Fuji 14mm and the 10-24mm. His advice for me was to go with the 14mm for its better "ultimate optical performance." His idea was that the 10-24mm isn't quite as good optically but is a better compromise for people who spend more time mining the wider end of the visual scale. I think he got his advice for me just right. This is a focal length I like to have in the bag for those times while on annual report projects when an art director turns to me after we've done a bushel of wonderful environmental portraits to ask, 'can you get some wide shots that show off: the whole factory, the exterior of the building, the length of the production line, the (cramped) labs and ..... can you make our facility look ...bigger? '
This is the lens that's in the rarely disturbed corner of the bag which bursts into stardom when you just can't back up any further with your next widest lens. The 10-24mm is wonderfully flexible when it comes to dishing out different angles of view but I'm a slow learner; not disposed to keeping good track of wide frames and it's more effective for me to learn the ins and out of one angle of view than to stand around and try to decide just how wide I should go. Give me one focal length and you've taken the guess work out of the equation...
I tried this one in black and white to eliminate potential color contamination of my
evaluation process. I used a yellow filter in Lightroom's B&W conversion.
See. I'm hopeless most of the time with ultra wide lenses. All the buildings fall over...
Yes. It's true. I tried the Eterna profile on a still photo. I hope Fuji doesn't demand
that I return the cameras citing misuse of their products.... I'd do the same with any other brand lens.
So, my impression of the 14mm lens from Fuji is favorable. I'm glad I didn't go the cheap route and get a 7Artisans, or Rokinon 12mm but I could have bought a lot of coffee with the difference in price between those lenses and the Fuji... I guess that's the constant trade off. But I did see a sign the other day that said, "The sting of low quality lingers long after the memory of the money saved...."
On another note: Still shopping for new cars. The Suburu Forester is still near the top of the list but now I'm also considering the 2019 Honda CRV, the Toyota Highlander and the Mercedes AMG GT C Coupe; it's a bit peppier. The Mercedes seems like a good candidate for quickly getting on and off freeways plagued with short entry/exit ramps....haven't compared prices yet but they can be too expensive. Right? The only mark against the Mercedes is the lack of trunk space....
