Just a note about the Fuji 35mm ƒ/1.4 R, which is "fast" becoming my main lens (fast, yageddit? Oh, I am funny*), because it and the 18mm are with the X-T1 in the car. The bokeh of this lens is at its best wide open to my eye. So I've progressed to shooting this lens either wide open or stopped down to ƒ/5.6 and smaller, the latter in pictures where blur isn't important. This is not a recommendation necessarily, it's just what I do.
With any lens, you need to learn its foibles. Or should I say, its specific performance as it relates to your own visual tastes. Say for instance you have a lens with blurry corners at the widest apertures. It's just something you become aware of. On the (probably rare) occasions that you need the corners to be sharp, you know to stop down a few stops...because of course you know at exactly which aperture the corners sharpen up. On pictures with central subjects where the corners are "back in the bokeh" anyway, you know it doesn't matter if you're opened up.
Things like that.
One thing I wouldn't recommend is something I see all too many people doing in this new era—shooting a fast lens wide open all the time. Not a good idea! Yes, you paid for all that "bokeh" the maximum aperture can give you, but that doesn't mean you should apply it indiscriminately to every shot. (Many pictures I see are ruined by not enough depth of field—things that should be in focus aren't.) Wide open is only the best aperture for some shots, not all of them.
Even though today's lenses are highly corrected for decent sharpness wide open, many, especially faster lenses, are better still stopped down. With the Fuji 35mm ƒ/1.4R (Amazon.com, B&H), for instance, ƒ/5.6 and ƒ/8 are where it really sings (in my opinion). Don't deny yourself the wonderful performance of a lens like this in the middle apertures, because that's where it will give you some of its greatest gifts.
Mike
*Not
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Featured Comments from:
s.wolters: "Here’s Alex Drummeroff from Kiev who shoots wide open all the time. Not a good idea? Click on the images twice to enlarge."
Mike replies: I think he makes it work very well for most of his work, don't you? Although it's a very specific type of shot that he makes over and over (and nothing wrong with that; as I say it works very well). But there are even a few examples of what I'm talking about, for instance this one. The littler (darker-haired) boy is clearly out of focus wide open—but not enough out of focus to make it look intentional. So that's one example of using too wide an aperture.
Of course I wouldn't pick on him for just one shot on a sharing site—I'm only pointing it out because we're talking about it. I enjoyed looking at this work; thanks for posting it!
Dan Khong: "I actually bought it for the bokeh, and ƒ/1.4 is where it sings. So I actually use it 99.9% of the time wide open. In the past, Leica glass boasted that 'all' their lenses are usable wide open and I tend to agree. So when the Fuji 35mm ƒ/1.4R came to pursue the holy grail, I was initially sceptical but am now a fervent convert. And at $499, the price sings too."
Albert Smith: "Re '...I've progressed to shooting this lens either wide open or stopped down to ƒ/5.6 and smaller...': Me too. I learned this maybe 30 years ago in an article from Roger W. Hicks in Shutterbug when he was explaining his love of the pre-aspheric 35mm Summilux M. His reasoning was that at ƒ/1.4, it was clear that distinct selective focus was what you were going for. If you went to say ƒ/2 or ƒ/2.8, then all you have is slightly more d-o-f, but it could just look like a slightly soft image...things aren't quite blurry or sharp. After ƒ/5.6, lots of things in the frame are sharp.
"I am so glad that I bought the 35mm ƒ/1.4 Fujifilm lens. I fought the urge for three years doing just fine with the excellent ƒ/2 lens. Went I gave in and got it I put the ƒ/1.4 lens on my camera and didn't change lenses for thousands of shots. The hype is well deserved for this lens regarding the rendering. One tip...set your shutter operation in your menu for mixed mechanical/electrical so that you can freely go to full aperture in any light. After 1/8000th, the shutter goes electrical and you can shoot at ƒ/1.4 on the sunniest of sunny-16 days."
My favorite prime lens (I only own two) is the Nikkor 58mm 1.4G that is perpetually on my D750. I use it similarly. I use f/1.4-2.8 for subject isolation, bokeh, etc. And then f/5.6-f/11 for more dof. The 58 seems sharpest across the frame at f/11. To me, it's a special lens at f/1.4-f/2.8 and a more typical sharp 50 from f/5.6 and smaller.
I really love this lens. My other prime is the 28mm 1.8G. This is all I have for full frame. For zooms I prefer DX/APS-C.
Posted by: SteveW | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 03:28 PM
My father thought much the same way about his TV. The original format(s) of the source material didn't matter to him, because so far as he was concerned, he paid for every square inch of its large screen and, by god, he was going to make full use of every one of them, regardless of what format the director intended for him to see!
Of course, I'm no less quirky in other ways. For example, I owned for a while four Sigma Art lenses having f1.4 apertures (and a fifth having an f2 aperture) yet I never took even one photo wide-open with any of them.
I photograph mostly at night and found the f1.4 apertures helpful when it came to composing and focusing my photos, even though the photos themselves were always taken with the aperture set at f8 (or on rare occasions, between f7.1 and f9.)
Posted by: JG | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 03:37 PM
This was the first Fuji lens I bought paired with my X-T1 back in 2015. And I agree - they just work together. Still use them both regularly.
I like the 50mm equiv (I use the combo mainly for 'street' stuff) I rarely use it wide open - but when I need it, if I want the subject separation, or if the light requires it, then it delivers.
I'm amused to read your comments about corner sharpness. I always crease myself when people complain about fast-lens wide-open corner-sharpness - what are ya doin? Shooting brick walls in semi-darkness without a tripod?
Only complaint I have? Maybe it's a teeny bit bulky on the X-T1 wuth the lens hood attached. Again, I'm thinking of my OM bodies with Zuiko primes here. But that's a minor quibble
Posted by: Richard Tugwell | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 03:59 PM
So, so weird; I buy fast lenses to let more light in. Very often I'm at max aperture, juggling shutter speed (worried about subject motion blur primarily) against ISO (worried about noise). Sometimes at 1/350 sec (roller derby), sometimes at 1/15 sec (music jam sessions). Going back to TRI-X pushed to 1200 or 1600 or 4000, in the day. (I think not experimenting with Diafine may be one of my worst mistakes photographically; I'm unlikely to ever really know, I don't think I'll go to the trouble to try to do such experiments now when I've got better technology, just to know how bad I should feel about past-me's stupidity!)
Admittedly there are rare occasions when there's all the light in the world (I shot some of my Words Over Windows photos at ISO 64 since it was so bright; also so contrasty, so using the "extended", below "minimum", low ISO helped a bit there). I really appreciate the high shutter speeds of modern cameras for that! 1/1000 is no longer the upper limit, and out in the Big Room it's sometimes useful to shoot faster.
Posted by: David Dyer-Bennet | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 05:00 PM
"younger audience alert"
The creator of Camera Conspiracies - a Toronto based satirical youtube channel - coined the word "Toneh" in reference of another famous youtuber Tony Northrup overdoing it a bit with blurred backgrounds. Corrosive but memorable way to cover the issue :-)
"Toneh is the amount of hatred you'll receive in your videos if you chose to abuse the power of Toneh". He proposes a Toneh scale of anger too.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQ8VodC19-g
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tfd3ntgagc
Hilarious IMHO...
Posted by: Sylvain G. | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 06:06 PM
I saw the photo of the lens you were extolling and my first reaction was (think The Dude): “Well, they finally did it. They killed all the f**kin’ info on the lens barrel.” Sigh. I did go to B&H and saw in fact there is an aperture ring on the lens. No doubt just a token effort to keep us old guys from complaining too much. “Throw ‘em a bone to keep ‘em quiet!”
But it did get me wondering if that day is coming. I’m talking about “real lenses,” the interchangeable type. Primes, zooms, all of them. It seems with auto everything, what’s the point of printed info on the barrel? Who uses that?!?!
Of course, on the iPhone, et al, there’s not even a barrel to put that info (aperture, distance, hyperfocal scale) one would find on an old school lens. The push for miniaturization and automation does probably mean the info on the barrel is more and more superfluous. Or, to be more cruel, more and more useless.
And one day, it will just disappear. If they don’t “kill the f**kin’ lenses” first.
Posted by: Ernest Zarate | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 08:43 PM
Occasionally you read an article where the author will write something that has you bouncing around the room going yes, yes, yes and here it's this "shooting a fast lens wide open all the time. Not a good idea!"
Camera jockeys whose idea of a product shoot is not about the product but about showing off their new fast lens so only 50%ish of the product is in focus, the product you're interested in buying if you can see if it's what you want.....
I've had bokeh up to my eyeballs, I know it has its place but really isn't it easier to shoot wide open and not have to worry about the rest of the shot beyond the subject than try to get the whole shot correctly shot an in focus?
I'm a deadset amateur so I'm sure there'll be holes in my argument so just take it in the general spirit it's meant please.
Posted by: David Robinson | Friday, 23 October 2020 at 09:21 PM
Question (since you mentioned it): What are your thoughts on the 18 f/2? I have read some fairly negative reviews of it (Thom Hogan didn't like it), and I have also heard from some people who love it.
Posted by: Yonatan Katznelson | Saturday, 24 October 2020 at 08:16 PM
I'll chip in with a reply to Yonatan Katznelson about the 18mm f/2. I think it's much maligned. I often have it on the camera when I'm out shooting townscape stuff and want to travel light. It's very compact.
Personally I've had no image problems considering that for this type of work a lot of the images are architectural. Many are intended for stock photo libraries. (Not suggesting that is always a criteria for image quality though!)
Also good for street photography if you prefer the get-in-close approach and want an unthreatening camera combination
Posted by: Richard Tugwell | Sunday, 25 October 2020 at 06:46 AM
This is my favorite X-mount Fuji lens.
Posted by: Ricardo Hernandez | Sunday, 25 October 2020 at 10:01 PM
Sorry Mike, Drummeroff is from Lviv, not Kiev. My mistake.
(For those who want to go there after seeing these photos).
Posted by: s.wolters | Tuesday, 27 October 2020 at 04:06 AM