This is not a review, but I love the 14mm.
Just a few images from my 2nd day out with the 14mm. The first image was chosen as POTD on igersbirmingham/Instagram and seems to generally well received – which is nice.
XF14mm
Best Nine – Kebablog Instagram
It’s that time of year, when you get all reflective and look back – fortunately with Instagram you can be lazy and use 3rd party websites to check back and report how your images were received during the past year. For a few years I’ve simply posted the result, but this year as I’ve gone a bit Instax mad I thought I’d get creative…….
There you go, 9 Instax prints, a Fuji X-E3 with external flash and a bit of Photoshop later the result I think is quite pleasing. If you think it’s awful, let me know. I’ve posted it on my Instagram feed to drop me a note there 🙂
Fujifilm XF14mm f/2.8 R
I’ve been looking for a while to pick up another lens, but was waiting for the right time etc. However the marketing people at Fujifilm know this so a well timed £100 voucher and the winter cash back tempted me.
I was looking at picking up the XF18mm to accompany my X-E3 and 27mm. Unfortunately the 18mm (along with the 23, 35, and 50) was excluded in the £100 voucher offer so I had to look elsewhere (I could’ve simply just not bothered, but a £100+Cashback saving is hard to turn down).
Why the 14mm? I’ve toyed with a few different lenses such as the 56mm and 90mm. The 56mm is a choice of many portrait photographers (matches roughly the 85mm on a Full Frame sensor) – but as I don’t really shoot portraits it’s probably not a great choice at the moment.
The 90mm is a bit of an odd size (similar to the 135mm on FF), but having previously owned the Canon EF135 f/2 L it’s a type of lens I loved. Still at this moment I consider it to be a nice to have lens rather than something that would get a lot of use.
Package wise, the XF14mm is a small compact unit – although not as small as the 18mm or the 27mm lenses. It’s compact enough to fit in my small bag which I take to work in my rucksack. The hood adds a little to the bulk, but it’s an item you’d need to carry around as being a wide lens you may get a bit of flare in the sun light.
One of the annoyances with the 27mm pancake lens is the lack of the aperture ring, its a welcome addition on the 14mm. Feature wise the 14mm is a little sparse, no IS and no obvious manual focus option. The latter is available – the switch is actually the focus ring. The ring can be pushed forward to enable auto focus and pulled back to switch to manual. It’s a bit odd, but you do get used to it.
Unfortunatley I purchased the lens on one the most miserable days of the year so far – hence testing have been limited. The above image shows the what the extra 4mm gives you. Granted it’s not a super wide angle (around 21mm on FF) but for most of my street/architecture images it’ll allow me to get a bit more in.
In the end after the discount I picked the lens up for £644, plus after 30 days I’ll be able to claim back an additional £135 – so £509 for a nice wide angle was worth it. Initial testing looks good, but I’ll be a better position to do some real testing next week when I’m back in the city centre.
Christmas possible lens indecision
Well, it’s coming up that time of year were I think about spending money once more – I had planned to save up a bit of cash and pick up a 56mm lens but funds aren’t there at the moment. But Fuji are running cash back offers again – typically £45 for cheaper lenses moving up to £90 and higher for expensive glass. For some reason because they like me* they’re also offering an extra £100 off as well so that’s got me thinking once more!
The 90mm is currently at £799 so that’s another temptation (as it’s a replacement for my old Canon EF135 F2), but also some shorter ranges are superb
I’ve been thinking about the 18mm for a while to use on my X-E3. Currently that gets at £45 cash back, so with the £100 extra off it’s available for around £300 which on the face of it is a steal, but it can be obtained 2nd hand via MPB for £259!
One other option is a bit of a gap filler – the 55-200. It’s a small zoom and ideal as a carry around lens instead of the monster 100-400 – that has the advantage of being available at John Lewis so I can get 12% discount, plus £90 and £100 cash back. It ends up around £360 give of take a quid or so – but do I actually need it?
*Probably a generic email
/edit Just noticed the t’s & c’s:
Excludes XF8-16mm, XF200mm, XF18mmF2, XF23mmF2, XF27mmF2.8, XF35mmF2 and XF50mmF2 lenses.
That that knackers my idea of a discount on a short lens!!
/edit 2 Just noticed John Lewis isn’t on the retailer list either!!
/edit 3 Decided to get the 14mm in the end. Not bought it yet – but Wex are getting one in for me and hopefully I’ll pick it up at the weekend 🙂
Results in from the confused jury…..
No not that euro thing, the 2nd Quarterly at YPS – A bit of a mixed bag for me One print was Commended (possibly highly commended – i really lost count as the judge gave out so many of them). Digital was better as I scored a 2nd place with my Chesterton image.
The tables are quite tight at the moment as both print and digital are separated by 3-4 points amongst the top 4.
It’s the John Bate competition on Tuesday so no points up for grabs, we’ll wait and see what the judge thinks.