I have decided to ditch my 42MP, full-frame, IBIS equipped Sony camera for the non stabilized, 24MP, crop sensor Fujifilm. On paper it’s a downgrade no matter how you look at it, but in real life, in day-to-day use it’s a definite upgrade as far as I’m concerned.
I have also decided to stop using and making reviews of manual, vintage lenses, which were cheap and readily available, which generated more views on my YouTube channel than anything else, in favour of modern, native Fuji glass, of which just one costs about the same as three or four vintage lenses.
While I’m delighted to hear you’ll be reviewing Fuji lenses — and I’m really looking forward to viewing the videos! — I’ll be sad to see your reviews of vintage lenses go — for affordability reasons, I tend to shoot with vintage glass 90% of the time, and I loved hearing your thoughts on them.
Unfortunately, I only use a modest X-T10 (again, affordability is a big issue for me; I simply have to make the most of what I already have).
I hope you’ll still be reviewing the beers at the same time, though — I already have a few of them on my Christmas list.
Anywho, thanks for all the great vintage reviews; looking forward to the Fuji ones!
Welcome to Fujiland. What was your main concern with the Sony that prompted your leaving?
Nowadays cameras in general are so good across the board, it’s becoming really hard to justify such expensive changes. The grass is usually only greener by pretty small margins.
I talk about my reasoning in the video linked at the bottom of my original post, but in short, it was in an effort to downsize and simplify. It certainly helped that the XTRANS sensor is so wonderful.
The ‘problem’ I have with some modern lenses is that their shortcomings are corrected for by the camera; while this isn’t to much of an issue if you shoot JPEGs, it can be a bit of a pain if you shoot RAW.
When I first loaded some RAW files into RawTherapee that I shot with the XC 35mm 2.0, I was taken aback — while the crazy barel distortion was easy enough to sort out, the purple fringing that appeared in some of the images was challenging to deal with.
Vintage lenses come with their own challenges, of course (and some of them aren’t too great in general), but on the whole, I find them to be a lot easier to deal with personally. And, of course, not all Fuji lenses follow this trait — some rely on very little (if any?) in-camera correction (but, alas, this is reflected in their relatively high price tags).
Anywho, it’s just a personal preference on my part (and, indeed, one of many). ‘Horses for courses,’ as they say.
It may or may not be relevant depending on your OS, but currently being on Windows I used the free (but now discontinued / deprecated) Adobe Lens Profile Creator to make a series of LCP files for my lenses, each at a different focal length. I have to choose the nearest focal length since I don’t know how to make a continuous / multi-FL LCP file – which can be done since I’ve seen them. I asked on the Adobe Community Support forum but got nothing.
Anyway, I just load the closest focal length match LCP and it seems to do a pretty good job at both geometric and chromatic correction. One thing to note is generally not to have CA correction turned on in raw as well as the LCP or elsewhere or you’ll over-correct. In ART and RT, raw correction so far works pretty well for me. I occasionally use the Defringe module but it’s not required all that often.
Darktable (from 4.2.0) may be able to read lens correction data from metadata of Fujifilm Raw Files.
Nikon NX Studio has very strong CA correction function which can even manage TIFF photo images taken with any company cameras. If you want to apply CA correction of NX Studio to other company camera’s images, there are some conditions. 1. NX Studio can only read uncompressed or LZW compressed TIFF files. 2. To make TIFF files, you should not apply any CA correction with other Raw Processors.
Lens design is about finding the trade-offs between various objectives (weight, manufacturing cost, axial CA, lateral CA, vignetting, radial distortion, flare, etc). Relaxing some of these allows better results on others, which is why lenses for digital cameras have unprecedented distortion and vignetting when compared to vintage lenses (easy to correct), and to some extent lateral CA (software correction has some trade-offs, but those are reasonable).
@zerosapte, I hope you continue to have fun with your Fuji camera. I agree that full frame is becoming less and less justifiable for most purposes. The other day I was talking to a landscape photographer in a camera store, he said that he sold all full-frame gear and kept the APS-C and medium-format Fuji bodies and lenses, as full frame no longer made much sense.
I hope Fuji keeps doing well with their GFX system. Maybe in a few years it will be in a good price range for “regular” people. Even a used GFX50R is quite expensive. I can’t deny that every time I see an image taken with it, and others of the same system, I’m surprised. They have great lenses like the 110mm f2, and whilst expensive, third party manual lenses have started to show up and seem to perform great.
600€ more for the 33 1.4 I like what they did with the XC, same glass as the metal version but made of plastic and half the price, wish they did this with more lenses.
The fact that they didn’t release another XC prime might hint that it was in fact very successful, and cannibalized their XF sales.
That said, now that Sigma and Samyang and Viltrox and 7artisans are producing affordable autofocus primes, and even some very good zooms, perhaps there’s no longer so pressing a need for the XC line.
For quite a few years I shot vintage lenses exclussively and didn’t even own a single AF lens. I was the biggest proponent of vintage glass, I just loved it. It has made me a better photographer, it has taught me a lot about how optics work, how light behaves, what effects different aperture sizes have on the resulting image. I was a fanboi.
I fell hard into the rabbit hole that is looking for, getting and shooting vintage lenses. There is quite a lot to be said about the adrenaline of the never-ending chase for that next legendary piece of glass, or the next unsung hero… it was a ride and I loved it.
Until I thought long and hard about it and I realised it had actually begun distracting me from photography. I was becoming more of a collector and less of a photographer and I didn’t like that.
I am alreay having a blast with my X-T2. And I have also found, much to my surprise and with a big sigh of relief, that my concerns about crop sensors and their poor effective performance and unbearably high-ISO noise (especially compared to full-frame), were quite unfounded. The X-TRANS III sensor is a performer! For what I do it has met and even surpassed my expections.
Quite true and that was a big reason for the switch. While certainly lighter and smaller than a full-frame DSLR and a lens, my previous setup was quite a chonky boy. The a7Rii is a significant bit of kit and when coupled with lots of glass and metal, because I favoured large aperture, metal lenses, it made for rather a bit of heft.
In comparison, my X-T2 and the XF 23mm f2 weighs just a bit more than a bag of peanuts.
There is also something to be said about downsizing, about cutting down and reducing to the essentials. I currently own a single camera and a single lens. While I do plan to purchase the 50 f2 and the 35 f2 in the future, the feeling right now is quite freeing. It’s very pleasant.
I… umm… may have a problem with compact Fuji lenses.
Let’s start differently: I like small lenses as well. And I found the original set of the 18 f/2, 35 f/1.4, and 60 f/2.4 just outstanding in their compactness, while retaining good rendering. Later lenses are “better”, but they achieve that by being bigger, or more expensive, or dimmer. Actually, the next lens released after the original three, the 27 f/2.8 was a compact gem as well, as was the 14 f/2.8 after that. Only the next one, the 23 f/1.4 strayed from the compact-but-good formula.
So, without further hemming and hawing about my gear collection problem, here are these lenses, sorted by release date:
Some of these will need to go, as I just don’t use them enough. Anyone interested in a 14 f/2.8 or 60 f/2.4, shipping from Europe? Anyway, as I said, I think these early Fujifilm lenses are really special in their tradeoff between compactness, price, and optics. They are true gems.
I wish there were more compact, affordable, semi-perfect lenses out there. On the other hand, my favorite of the above bunch actually is the 23 f/1.4, which is optically much better than the others, but also a bit of a big boy in comparison. (I wish Fuji made a 27 f/1.8)
I like what they did with the XC, same glass as the metal version but made of plastic and half the price, wish they did this with more lenses.