Alan Sircom

Well, the hood on the photograph is the one for the 35mm. Presumably Fuji will either dual use this hood, or release a similar one for the 23/2 nearer the time of the launch of the 23/2.

Great image. But yes, 'part' of the reason why you don't find using a 14mm that difficult to use is those years of familiarity working with super wides. And this image is a perfect example as it exhibits all of that familiarity in action. If you are used to working with a lens like the 14mm, you will know almost instinctually to get very close to that front sun-lounger, you will know the depth of field required, the importance of those vanishing points and the horizontal, and the placement of the horizon. Someone who hasn't got that depth of experience working with super wides will miss one or more of these compositional elements until they start to nail using the lens. Most commonly, they will remain a step or two too far away from the subject. They might not be thinking of images in terms of vanishing points (especially twin vanishing points as you have done here) and may be so surprised by the perspective from a super wide, they make the rookie error of not getting the horizon perfectly level or place it badly. All of these points can and do fall into place with understanding how to use a super wide, but if the photographer's widest lens to date is the 18-55 fuji zoom (or equivalent), their composition will at first be informed by that experience.

I disagree. A superwide lens like the 14mm does take some getting used to from a compositional sense. It's not as daunting as some claim, but it is both daunting and perceived as daunting by people starting out. The old school method of learning to compose one focal length at a time wasn't a bad one because you usually started with the standard lens, then went moderately wide, then either even wider, or a moderate tele depending on your tastes. This gave you the compositional skills to best use the more extreme focal lengths. Without that, a supersede is hard to handle. It's not that hard to learn once you set to it, but you need to learn to use it.

Mine has a stiffness around f/8 on the aperture ring. I can only describe it as being like 'muscle stiffness' - it feels like there is grit in the aperture ring at first, but 30 seconds or so of repeatedly moving the ring from 'A' to 'f/2' and back warms it up and the stiffness almost goes away. It's useable, but no-one's sure if it's standard issue for the 18mm (and I'm being fussy) and my sample is at the worst end of 'acceptable'. Fuji has offered to fix it, but the cost is almost as much as a new one. I really like the lens, though. It seems to be gaining new friends as people try it on the X-Pro2, too. What do other 18mm users get here? I've tried a couple of second-hand examples and I think it might be my lens is at the outer edges of what is acceptable. But it certainly doesn't feel as intrinsically 'right' as lenses like the 35/2. I'd be keen to know the views of other 18mm users.

Yep. My i40 died on me suddenly, while 'on assignment' in Warsaw. I wasn't doing anything heavy duty with it, but it just went red-LED of death and stopped working. That was a shame, because it's so small and handy. Fortunately, I got a deal on a new Fuji EF-42 that was almost too good to be true. I expect it will also die on me at one point. It's no big deal either way, though: I mostly use Cactus flashes off camera.

With the launch of the 100-400 XF zoom, the current roadmap has just one lens - the 120 Macro. That's not really a roadmap anymore. What would you like to see on the next roadmap? As I'm enjoying the 35mm f/2 'Fujicron' more and more each time I use it, I'd love to see more of the same. I'd like to see a 23mm f/2 WR in a similar form factor, and maybe a revised 60mm and 18mm (both f/2 and WR, and if the 120 covers the macro market, Fuji could dispense with the 60mm macro functions, just make it small and fast-focus). That would make an outstanding quartet of lenses to go with the X-Pro2. I also think Fuji would be good making a T/S lens and possibly a fast tele (like a 200mm f/2.8). And of course the 33mm f/1 everyone's keen to talk about. What would be your additions to the next roadmap? Who knows, maybe Fuji is watching...

Thanks for the reply, and your suggestion of the 23mm is where I'm going, too. I work both print media and blogging, so I prefer to stay this side of ISO1600 for safety. My 'go to' lens for detail work is the 60mm, but I think it's going to struggle in the kind of gloomy rooms you get here. The 'specialty audio' section of CES is quieter than most now and I have been able to use a tripod at times, but this time it stays at home. And yes, putting humans in the picture is always a good plan. It doesn't work so well when it's the designer is too arthritic to crouch down to get close to their new product, but otherwise it's a sure-fire icebreaker. Which explains the use of the 56mm and OCF.

Hi all, I'm heading off to CES in Las Vegas on Monday. My regular beat is high-end audio. Unlike many exhibitors, audio companies try to replicate the late-night home listening experience. This typically means very low available light. At its worst, this means a series of black products on a black rack with a black background in a badly lit room. Or, in photographic terms, a subject made up of shadow noise, in a sea of shadow noise. Normally, I resolve this with a combination of tripod, fast lenses, and off-camera flash. This year, however, attendees have been warned security will be substantially tightened in the wake of recent terrorist activities. This means bags are subject to search on entering CES-related sectors, and the CEA recommends a KISS approach (the fewer pouches and pockets to search, the quicker the process). As typically you will pass through checkpoints at least two or three times a day (press launches are at prearranged times at different parts of CES), this could make the job almost impossible for the week. So what do I go for? I think I can get away with a simple bag that gives me a lens change, or off camera flash, but probably not a tripod (although a monopod might be possible). Do I go with the 23/56 as a combo, or the 18-55 with off-camera flash? I will be using an X-T1.

I don't think tautology matters anymore. In this ever-changing world in which we live in, all that matters is getting in the right number of the same preposition in a single sentence.

I disagree. Practically every press photographer I know of has a 1.4x tele in his or her bag because it gives them extra reach on their 70-200 without having to carry the extra load of a 300mm and a monopod. As many of them are now freelancers, the 'extra load' of a 300mm can be translated to 'additional cost I can no longer justify'. Two bodies, three lenses, a flash or two, a teleconverter, a laptop, and associated gubbins can all fit in a Think Tank ShapeShifter. Anything that cannot fit into that bag is excess baggage for a press photographer... unless it's a step-ladder!

Thank you so much for doing this. +1 Internets to you, sir!

I had this problem on a MacBook Air after it survived a minor adult beverage spill over the keys. The spill didn't kill the electronics (I'd say it continues to work to this day, but it was stolen earlier this year) but it did erode both the legends on the keys and leave a keyboard-shaped wear mark on the anti-glare coating on the screen. There was nothing I could do to remove it. This might be a good excuse for screen protectors. As milandro rightly points out, the cost of replacement is likely economically unviable given the resale value of the camera. Consider those smudges like battle scars worn proudly by a veteran fighter.

Having tried to use a Leica M6 with a 135mm lens in the film era, you really don't want the OVF to reach too far into the telephoto. The bright frame for 135mm is tiny in the viewfinder, magnifiers never seem to work as well as you would expect, and parallax errors plague your picture taking, no matter how good the parallax compensation system.

Well, yes... that's exactly my point. Most prospective camera buyers don't go to Ken Rockwell's site for a review. They go to Google and type the name of the camera they are about to buy, with the word "review" tacked on the end, They then hit on the one nearest the top of the first page of results that looks 'authentic', 'independent', and 'expert' to them. In many cases, if Rockwell's readers are similar to most review readers, their mind has already been all but made up, and visiting a site like Ken Rockwell's is simply a part of the buyer building a barrier against post-purchase anxiety. It's more to do with confirmation than differentiation or selection. His livelihood depends on getting enough people to click on his review page, and some of those visitors being hyped up from that review to buy on a click-thru from his site.

If you read Ken Rockwell's standalone review of the Fuji X-T10, you wouldn't think of buying any other camera. If you read the Sony RX100 Mk IV, you wouldn't think of buying any other camera. And probably if you read any of his other reviews, you wouldn't think of buying any other camera aside from the one he's reviewing at the time. This is perhaps one of the reasons why he gets such high site traffic. People don't necessarily read Rockwell synoptically, but go Googling for reviews of products they have zoned in on, and his site comes up. In such cases, often they are trying to confirm their buying decision with an independent review, rather than trying to discover good and bad points of a product in a shortlist. So, someone reading Ken Rockwell's review of the Sony RX100 Mk IV is probably not in the market for another camera, and any other cameras brought into the review are there to show the RX100 in a good light. The best thing is the one in his hands right now, and will remain so until he gets the next thing. Then that's the best. Anything else just gets in the way of people reading his review and then clicking through to buy. That is the way Ken Rockwell gets paid, and we'd all do the same under the same circumstances. People with too much time on their hands will read someone like Ken Rockwell synoptically, and find the inconsistencies, the repetitions, and the contradictions. And those with way too much time on their hands will use all of this as some kind of argument ammo in forums. In fact, what Ken Rockwell is doing is just a by-product of being handmaiden to Google. What Ken Rockwell does extremely well is pre- and post-purchase reinforcement. He staves off buyer's remorse very effectively. Those products on his site where he receives a lot of hits and click-throughs will get free user-guides and more coverage than those less successful ones, so people come back for more. As such, he's almost a bell-weather on how successful a product line is doing in his territory. While I don't necessarily like or agree with his methods, his photographic style, and his conclusions, I can't help respecting the guy for continuing to carve out a living in this manner. His ability to read the market and adapt accordingly is almost preternatural, and his SEO skills are off the chart!