Photography Gear News

I know you guys LOVE these crazy comparisons..and some of you get all up in a roar over them but that doesn’t mean I am not going to post more! Today I was out and about with the OM-D, X-Pro 1 and NEX-7. Now, I could not use the same lenses on all of these so I used what I had on hand.

This is the first time that I have written an article for Luminous Landscape so it probably makes sense to introduce myself first so that you can get an idea where I am coming from as a photographer and decide for yourself whether my views, likes and dislikes are likely to chime with your own...

"The mirrorless market is red-hot at the moment and the stakes are correspondingly high. Mirco-Four-Thirds did a jump-start in late 2008 and it is certainly the most successful system at the moment - hunted by Sony NEX. Fuji is almost dangerously late in this game but it seems as if they are betting their fortunes on the very high end of the market with a spice of retromania. The Fujifilm X-Pro1 tries to offer the benefits of the mainstream while offering exclusivity similar to Leica. The market will decide whether this is no-man's land or a successful niche.
In our first Fuji review we will cover the Fujinon XF 18mm f/2 R - one of the three initial lenses for the X-mount. Following a Fuji tradition these lenses are called "Fujinon" XF. This may be news to some but Fuji is actually a long time player in the system camera market but they were mostly active in the large- and medium format league and their Fujinon lenses earned quite a reputation till the decline of the film business - maybe google for "Fuji GX" if you are interested.

Anyway, the Fujinon XF 18mm f/2 R is a so-called pancake lens - it's just about 4cm long and weights only 116g. In full format terms it is a standard wide-angle lens. An equivalent focal length of "27mm" is not so hot nowadays but it is certainly generic enough to be suitable for a couple of applications such as landscape or street photography. It is a surprisingly fast lens so it has some decent capabilities to achieve a quite shallow depth-of-field when using short focus distances."

"Compared to other mirrorless AF systems Fuji is providing very fast prime lenses straight from the beginning which is certainly a smart approach considering the premium brand claim. The Fujinon XF 35mm f/1.4 R represents the standard lens of Fuji's new X-mount system. Covering an APS-C image field the field-of-view is equivalent to about 53mm. The combination of 18mm f/2, 35mm f/1.4 and 60mm f/2.4 makes this "gang of three" a highly attractive setup for street and travel photography."