aceflibble

It could be worthwile for medium format, assuming it was supported by an appropriate line-up of lenses and accessories. Even if you have a medium format on a tripod, the focal length and pixel pitch is great enough that you can get camera shake from the slightest tremor, be it a slight breeze or simply walking too close to the tripod while the shutter goes off. A 40-80mp sensor with a 105-250mm lens, often shooting below 1/80th to get enough light in from continuous lights, is a magnet for shake even on a clamped tripod. I would have killed to have had some form of IS on my old large format. Canon recently put in a patent for a tilt-shift lens with IS, so that may well be a direction they're heading in, and if they do and it proves successful, I wouldn't be surprised if every other company with a stake in the high-MP game goes for something similar. A higher-mp, medium format Fuji would be a pretty perfect candidate for sensor IS, especially given the weight and cost of medium format lenses with IS. Now, for the sake of space, let us enjoy tiny font. ... is not at all what I said. I'll break this down for you in two simple bullet points: - IBIS does not increase the sales in bodies enough to offset the atrociously low profit margins of camera bodies. - As Canon and Nikon—and so far, Fuji—have proven, making IS exclusive to specific lenses does shift additional lenses, where profit margins are already higher, and increases those margins further. Sony, on the other hand, has not actually managed to make any more money from having IS in both units; the cost of doing so hasn't been made up by their sales yet, so they're still in the red on it. (Sony are also in the red because of a helluva lot of other things about their cameras and general business practices, but that's another story for perhaps another forum.) I already said that yes, if we lived in a perfect fanasty land, we'd have IS in both and that I would love it. I have not said "I don't like the idea" or any variation thereof. If that is what you're getting from this, that is a failing of your own reading comprehension. What I have said is the factual truth: putting IS in both body and lens has not been proven to be at all successful by the market and when you've already begun your product line putting IS in one, it is not financially viable to experiment with putting it in the other as well. I speak a lot with editors at photography magazines, various manufacturers' PR and enough store managers to be aware of what actually works on the marketplace and what does not. Not what works if-a-company-gambles-its-budget-on-unproven-equipment-and-hopes-the-market-takes, or what works out in a mythical faerie tale land of hopes and dreams where IS is included on everything at no extra cost and every consumer on the planet immediately buys ten of everything. The insight I have, the conversations I have, the reports I see, are about what is actually selling in the actual world and what is actually viable. Key word: viable. Not 'possible' or 'impossible'. Not 'new' or 'old'. Viable. Actually worth companies' time. See also: 4k video; extended battery life; EVF in DSLR; larger and higher-resolution rear screens; headphone jacks. All things which would not be bad to have on any camera system and which, you would think, many people would be willing to pay more for. But not enough people do. The actual sales numbers don't jump enough to offset the R&D and manufacturing costs. You can put as many fancy features on a body as you like, you're still only making roughly a 12% profit each sale while even the most basic kit lens is returning over a third of its value. Yes, Fuji physically could put IS in a body. It would be helpful, as an end user. It would be a financial loss, too. You're not going to see it on any body which uses the current lens line-up and form factor. A new medium format body with a new len selection? Quite possible. There, it makes total sense. On a Pro2 or T2 or whatever? Categorically not going to happen. No company* throws money away like that. *Other than Sony**. **Before anybody says I have some sort of anti-Sony bias, I do actually really like Sony, and a couple of my closest, longest friends work for Sony. I just find their business practices absolutely hilarious and it's fun to rag on them.

The only times I'm shooting in the rain or any kind of humid condition is when I'm chasing birds of prey, which the Fuji cameras are not good for anyway. That's the one thing I still keep a Canon DSLR for. So, since my Fujis only get used indoors—typically in a studio—and rarely outdoors unless the weather is clear and mild, no, weather sealing on a Fuji doesn't mean anything to me. The only negative environment my Fujis are ever subjected to is the occasional bit of stage smoke, though considering that's yet to cause problems with my non-sealed X100S, non-sealed lenses, non-sealed medium format camera and the times I've used less rugged DSLRs, I don't consider it to be any threat to any other non-sealed body or lens by any manufacturer.

Ha, true. I'm hoping the 16mm will solve that, though. On 35mm and 6x7 I typically either go wide or go narrow, rarely in the middle. So the 16mm and 56mm should have me sorted, finally. but yeah, then if Fuji put out a 70mm... well then I'd have to trade up again!

They don't, though. You're living in a magical make-believe land where people buy everything and use every feature, or buy everything and don't use features but don't mind paying for them anyway. That's not how people shop in the real world. If they have a body with IS built-in, why would they pay double for a lens to have IS, too? And if IS is dropped from a lens, hell breaks loose. You're suggesting they reduce the value of their most profitable products in order to increase the value of their least profitable products and restrict their options further down the road. You are suggesting Fuji undermines their own business and throws money away, and pisses off every shop owner in the process. Yes, in faerie world, every piece of equipment has its own optimised IS and you could choose which form you want to use, or even combine them somehow. In a wonderland where businesses don't need to make money, that is the feature set we get. Also a 8mm-300mm f/1.2 Macro tilt-shift lens exists, a 5TB 1gb/sec SD card with dual folder writing is on the horizon and every camera has solar power backup. That's not the world we actually live in, though.

+1 on everything citral said. Picking up Fuji and then complaining that their video isn't good is just ludicrous. If video was important to you before, you could have easily researched what Fuji's video is like before switching. If you only got interested in video after switching then it's really not on Fuji to change their product line to match what you like now. As far as video goes, that is the one area which makes no sense for Fuji to bother with. There's literally no argument in favour of it. Of all the things Fuji could improve upon, video is the one which will be of least benefit to Fuji. The kinds of people who are looking for great video are already invested in Panasonic, Sony or Canon. Most video fans already jumped from dedicated video cameras to Canon DSLR, then to Panasonic systems, then back to Canon video cameras if they're career professionals. They're not going to now jump to Fuji as well; there's nothing Fuji does or can add which isn't already being done by other systems, systems those people already have in their hands. Fuij could put IBIS in a body or IS on every lens, they could put dampened gear focusing on a zoom lens with a completely free aperture ring, they could put in 4K, mic and headphone jacks, a larger grip with triple battery life and double their noise performance and they still wouldn't be quite up to par with the systems videographers already own. Use your Fujis for stills, pick up a second hand GH4 if you're charging for your video or a GH3 if you think it'll be part of your business but you're not entirely used to video production yet. If video is or becomes your main port of call, get at least a C100. Oh, and you definitely do not need 4k. Nobody does. It's going to be another 5-6 years before 4k displays become accessible to consumers at a price point which will actually shift units. It's still a decade away from being a broadcast standard. Right now its only worth is for cropping and archival purposes, both of which are great if you ever work for a major television or film production, but are near-useless otherwise. I mean, I've done video work for the BBC and that was done with a C100 for one short period and a GH2 for most of it. Mostly shot at ISO 3200, some scenes up to 12,800. That was an hour-long HD BBC television broadcast and the GH2 did fine. At no point did I think "boy, I wish this was a Fuji camera" or "this sucks, oh if only I could get 120fps and 4k."

People asking for Fuji to include IBIS is possibly the most aggravating and downright stupid notion. They put their IS on lenses, they're not going to also put IS in a body. It's not going to happen, not unless they scrap all of their OIS lenses—of which some are yet to even see the light of day—and replace them with non-IS versions so IS can be moved into the bodies. That also then makes the bodies cost more and dictates a drop in lens price, when bodies are not profitable anyway and lenses are where Fuji, and every shop, makes their money. You might as well be asking them to remove the shutter from the bodies and start putting leaf shutters in every lens.

The problem is people don't understand what "kaizen" actually means and they haven't gotten a grasp on the Japanese business trend of having one-word corporate philosophies as part of a marketing strategy. Fuji's is 'Kaizen'; Canon's is 'Kyosei', for example. "Kaizen" is simply shorthand for "we'll try to improve upon our existing product lines until it stops making financial sense to do so." That can mean a firmware update, a software update or a hardware update with a trade-in deal on the previous model. It also means a plain end to the old hardware once it stops being viable from a business perspective. What "kaizen" does not mean: - "The best update ever which will fix every complaint every single person has had" - "Free updates for life" - "We will never release an updated model" Once you understand that, you should never be confused or concerned by Fuji's firmware update strategy (or lack of) again. As for the X100S update to hack in Classic Chrome, you can do it yourself. You just copy the CC profile from a camera which does have it into the X100S in place of a film simulation you don't use. Never use Monochrome + red filter? Swap it for Classic Chrome. Tired of Astia? Paste Classic Chrome directly over it. Go hit up Google for tutorials on how to edit firmware; once you know how to open, edit and save, and what to look for, it becomes a literal copy & paste job to put Classic Chrome on an X100S. Just remember that you also have to trick the camera into think it is an X100T, too, just like if you edit the EXIF of a X100S raw to read as a X100T to get Classic Chrome to show up in Lightroom. (You'll notice Zack Arias' and David Hobby's X100S also read as X100Ts once they had the CC firmware put in.)

Right now I use the 14, 35 and 56 and that does me fine, other than the 14 being 1-1.5 stops too slow indoors sometimes. The 14 will be sold once my 16 arrives, though. The 35 could easily be switched for the 23, or ditched completely, as I hardly ever go for a middle length. The 56 could be switched for the 60 if only the 60 was just a hair faster; the 56 doesn't offer enough compresson and I'll sell it straight away if a 70mm f/2 is ever released. Assuming the 16mm does work out well, I'm confident I could use just the 16mm and 56mm and be fine. No need for a third lens, other than a desire to replace the 56 with something a tiny bit longer.

The X-T10's manual isn't out yet and the only units which have found their way to peoples' hands are pre-production units, which could differ in minor functionality from the actual consumer unit. So there's no way to tell exactly what will or won't be assignable on the X-T10. The X-T1's firmware update is for the focusing modes and optimisation. There's no suggestion that it will change how any buttons are assigned, other than the Macro button which is now obsolete. That said, I'm getting an X-T10 on launch day and I have an X-T1 which I will of course be updating to the latest firmware the moment that is released, so I'm replying now so I have this topic in mind and I will report back the moment the T1 firmware and T10 are in my hands.

That sort of works, but it's based on very clinical/theoretical/lab subjects and conditions, which makes it biased in favour of medium input perimeters. (Until the very extremes, where nothing can deny the blurry of a 200mm f/2 or 400mm f/4.) It also doesn't seem to quite have crop factor figured out correctly. Not bad, and great if you like DxO and all that kind of thing, but I think the point at the bottom of the page about interpreting the info should be the thing you pay most attention to. edit: I'm an idiot (and it's half past 2 in the morning), I left a decimal point in the crop factor box. That explains why its maths seemed off. Nevermind, seems to check out okay!

Smoothness and 'size', as you put it, are not independent. Or, at least, they do not have to be. The apodization filter dulls the harsh edges of out of focus highlights whereas more compression enlarges them. Up to a point, enlarging background highlights is going to make those edges more obvious, if anything, but beyond that you're compressing the background so far that out of focus highlights get completely blown out; you don't need to darken the harsh rings because there simply aren't any left, they've been destroyed by the ridiculous compression. It's past 2am here, and I'm not sure how well this is getting through, so if you'll excuse me a very simple and extreme example: look up a 200mm f/2, an 85mm f/1.2 and then compare with the 56mm f/1.2 APD. Again, I am not saying the APD in any way fails to do its job, but it is highly situational while considerably longer and faster lenses do you get you the same or better results in 99.99% of situations. The one and only circumstance I can think of where the 56mm APD would manage to smooth out a background when a longer lens couldn't would be if you were so restricted on space that you couldn't change your angle of view at all and the longer lens simply couldn't frame the image to begin with. That, I would concede, would be the one and only instance in which the APD would be doing a better job than changing to a longer focal length. (Not counting: not knowing how to use either lens, framing a shot exceptionally poorly, etc.) And, again, an apodization filter can be bought (If you've got about £150/$300 to spare) or even made, very simply (a medium format film camera is all you need), for any lens, and there are other methods of OOF highlight softening which do achieve the same thing in slightly different ways. (Typically working on the basis of feathered focus.) So the APD is, categorically, not the only thing that can do this "like nothing else". Fuji did not invent apodization filters and apodization filters themselves have historically not been a very popular method of smoothing backgrounds because of the drawbacks of light loss and the fact there are other methods of smoothing things out which still allow the same light through at any distance and are effective at all apertures, not just the widest. Feathering focus is an easier, cheaper and more effective method of achieving the gaussian blur look, and has been for decades. Combine it with a long lens shooting to a large transparency and you'll find the 56mm APD's look most certainly is not at all unique. Or I mean, hell, thanks to Photoshop you can literally run a gaussian blur filter on whatever you want. The one area where an apodization filter genuinely is the only viable option is precision beam operation, such as laser eye surgery and optically-guided motion tracking or cutting. You don't want inconsistent light to cause any unwanted motion and you want everything centered, so you use apodization filters to even out the beam pattern and ensure the center of the beam is the clearest. But unless you're planning on using your 56mm lens to track someone's pupils for motion control, this isn't of much use to us! edit: and your graph is incorrect, but I'll respond to that there

All an apodization filter does is darken the brighter, harsh edges of out of focus highlights, so it makes sense that the in focus areas are just as sharp. There's no reason to expect to it be sharper, other than the in focus areas may appear sharper in comparison to the slightly softer out of focus areas. According to Damien Lovegrove, the APD is no more or less sharp than the regular 56mm, and his examples back that up. His examples don't include the 90mm, yet, but you can compare the other lenses and see for yourself what effect the APD lens has compared to the regular 56mm. http://www.prophotonut.com/2015/01/05/fuji-x-series-portrait-lenses-compared-inc-56-apd-50-140-zoom/

You're confusing depth of field, specular diffusion and bokeh. Apodization filters only remove the harsh edge of out of focus highlights. The highlights themselves can still be harsh due to the angle of view, distance between the subject, the foreground, the background and the lens, and the simple nature of whatever it is being thrown out of focus. A person in drab clothes standing 15' in front of a tree? Okay, yes, an APD filter is going to smooth out that background a little. Now put that person in something sparkly and stand them 5' in front of a pebbledash wall at an angle and the filter isn't going to achieve anything that the basic 56mm f/1.2 lens wouldn't also do; a busy background is still going to look busy. The 90mm, on the other hand, is going to at least give you a bit more compression so things get blown out just that tiny bit more. (Okay, maybe not at just 5' separation. That's an exaggeration. But you get the idea.) Using a longer focal length—at a wide aperture, of course—can smooth out both instances. If I may nick a couple of examples from prophotonut: http://www.prophotonut.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/XF50-140mmF2.8-R-at-140-mm-at-f-2.8-Close-shot-L.jpg http://www.prophotonut.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/XF56mmF1.2-R-APD-at-f-1.2-Close-shot-L.jpg 140mm f/2.8 followed by the 56mm f/1.2 APD. Both wide open. Same subject, angle of view changed to compensate for the difference in focal length. Same degree of diffusion and neither shows any hard edges to the out of focus highlights, but the longer lens successfully blows out the background more because it's doing that and giving you more compression. I'm not saying that the APD is utterly useless in all situations or that the 90mm will magically give you smoother backgrounds only because it's longer. You do have to know what you're doing with each lens and you do have to change how you shoot with the longer lens to actually see the effects. I'm simply highlighting that if somebody is really, really focused on smooth backgrounds, using a longer lens is going to be a better fit for them in the vast majority of circumstances. The 56mm f/1.2 APD is as situational a lens as a tilt-shift or super-macro. Oh and just to be more helpful to the actual issue at hand: you can get separate apodization filters and various highlight halation filters which will do the same thing as the APD. They're incredibly expensive, but they do exist and have done for decades. You can also make your own with a medium format film camera. So it's not technically accurate to say the 56mm APD produces images "like nothing else"

Categorically not an option. Other than flash looking horrible for live music—and, as a musician myself, horrible to have going off as you play—these are people who are so used to total darkness that any lighter brighter than the end of a lit cigarette will blind them. (And being the 'tortured artistes' that they are, you better not dare suggest they do something as 'mainstream' as using a lightswitch. )

Buffer: usable if you shoot .JPG and the slower burst speed. Useless if you use raw and the highest continuous burst speed. You'll get just under one second. When I used the camera I tried it set to raw and shot normally (not continuous burst, but still taking frames fairly rapidly) and I ran the buffer down in about 8 or 9 shots. That's good enough for how I typically shoot, but if speed is important to you, the X-T1 completely smashes it as far as buffer depth goes. But even then, if you're looking for something which is very fast, tracks well and has a large buffer, honestly you should go pick up a DSLR to have as your sports/wildlife/action/whatever camera. My X-T1 doesn't feel slow, but I still keep a Canon 7D for wildlife because even the fastest mirrorless still isn't quite as fast as the fastest DSLRs. I think the X-T2 will probably be when mirrorless finally catches up in speed. Balance: I'm used to very unbalanced cameras (a 1D X with small primes and a 7D with gigantic telephotos), so it's a little hard for me to judge how it will feel for other people. The X-T10 felt lighter than the X-E cameras. To me, the 14mm, 18mm, 27mm, 35mm and 60mm hardly feel any different to handling the camera with no lens on at all. The 18-55mm feels like a 'normal' fit. The 16mm, 23mm and 56mm out-weigh the X-T10. I was happy handling them on it, but other people may find those lenses just a little bit awkward. The 50-140mm is so much larger and heavier than the X-T10, putting the X-T10 on it barely affects the feel; you might as well just be holding the lens on its own. So I would not say there is any lens which feels bad with the X-T10, but it certainly can feel odd if you switch between lenses and with one lens it's front-heavy and the other it's back-heavy. There's less of a difference with the X-T1, which feels the same with all lenses except the 50-140.

HSS is nice if you only need to cut the ambient light that much vey rarely, but if you're doing it a lot, tbh just get some ND filters. A 1 stop, 3 stop and 5 stop (or 2, 4 and 6) will have you covered for all conditions. If you ever shoot wide open in daylight then you should probably have some ND filters with you anyway.

It's something to brag about. It's something to compare to the Leica 50mm f/0.95. It's a showpiece just to say you have it. I don't see any reason why they wouldn't make it. Not practical? Irrelevant. Expensive? Irrelevant. Nobody needs a 6.0-litre, 510BHP DB9, either, but that's not going to stop Aston Martin from making them.

Ha, I sold my 1D X specifically after trying Fuji here and there. Incredible camera otherwise, but once I bought an X100S and then tried the X-T1, the 1D X just felt like a waste in terms of size and weight, and it sold for enough to buy an X-T1, three lenses and some non-camera treats! You've definitely made the right decision. Not everybody in the world would agree, I'm sure, but as an ex-1D X owner myself, I would say you picked wisely. The X-T10 is 95% of the camera the X-T1 is at 50% of the price and both are so much more useable than the 1D X, and I don't feel I've lost anything in image quality, either. If the 1D X was the only other camera you were considering, going for the X-T10 is smart. (Funny, I used to have a Canon A-1, too. Loved that thing. Keep thinking I should buy another just to have some fun with.)

Even Fuji staff will tell you, the APD version is only worth using if you know you'll be shooting at f/1.2, or near to it, all of the time. Otherwise the regular version will actually do a better job. The 'creamier' APD comes at the cost of some light. If smoother background blur is what you want, you should really be looking at longer focal lengths. 85mm (equivalent), at any aperture and APD or otherwise, is never going to give you as smooth a background as a 135mm equivalent. (I.e. the 90mm or 50-140mm lenses.)

I doubt the 14mm is going to drop in price or come up second hand much any time soon. Maybe once the X-Pro2 is out, but right now there's a lot of people who are still saving up for the 16mm and not already to ditch their 14mm yet, or they're just plain not impressed enough by the 16mm to switch. The two shops here have reported absolutely ZERO orders for the 16mm. Haven't seen many X-Pro1s around, either, now that I think about it, though I suppose there will be a flood of those once the Pro2 hits. No, just to be clear: the examples you posted are nowhere near representative of the conditions I was talking about. I won't derail this thread with more images unrelated to the 14mm lens being discussed, but suffice to say, you are severely overestimating the amount of light I'm saying is available and massively underestimating the motion of the subjects and the need to keep things sharp. Suffice to say, the heavy metal scene is not a place for people relying on vintage techniques

There's basically two ways the ISO and image brightness can appear to increase or decrease with a digital sensor. The first way is, like with film, to increase the actual sensitivity of the sensor to exaggerate the light it is seeing. Most digital cameras can only do this within a very limited range, and some do not do this at all. These cameras are sometimes called 'ISOless' because the ISO isn't actually changing. The second way is for the sensor to record the same light at the same sensitivity and to use software to increase the brightness of the image. This can either be done within the camera, after the sensor has produced an image but before that image has been saved, or it can be done outside of the camera, where you import a dark image into a program like Lightroom or Photoshop and raise the exposure level. Or, of course, you can do a bit of both, and you can only increase the brightness in certain parts of the image. The Fuji cameras, for example, say their base ISO is 200. Really their base ISO is 140, but the camera raises the brightness of the shadow areas after the image has been captured but before the image has been saved. The effect is shadows look like they were captured at ISO 200 but highlights look like they were captured at ISO 140, in total expanding the dynamic range of the image. When you load the image up in Lightroom, or anywhere else, the file has been written to say it was shot at ISO 200, which is a bit of a lie. Now, I'm not a sensor developer. (Shocking surprise, I know!) I can't explain exactly at what point different companies' sensors start amplifying the signal (first method) and at which point they start amplifying the image (second method). The Fuji ISO 200/140 thing has been common knowledge for years and tested by many sites, so we do know that is one ISO where Fuji are increasing the image brightness after capture. Since that is the lowest ISO they allow a raw file to record, it is fair to assume this is happening at every other ISO, too. edit: I know I am simplifying things greatly, but I hope you get the idea of how these things basically work, anyway. Nissin i40 flashes work TTL either on-camera or through Canon-compatable cords. There's no wireless TTL for Fuji, but if you use something like the Cactus system, you can still control power and zoom remotely. Best thing is, both systems are really cheap. A Cactus flashgun costs about one quarter what a Canon or Nikon flashgun of the same size costs. I don't remember the price of the Nissin units, but I do know they're cheap, too. So you can have full control remotely or full TTL corded and spend far less than you would if you used any other brand. The Cactus system can even mix in Canon and Nikon flashes, so if you have any existing flashguns you can keep using those. Of course, if you get into bigger studio units, they all work fine with Fuji already.

Well, 100 years ago, people weren't trying to shoot moody artists in sticky-floored goth metal clubs with nothing but a dying fluorescent strip light from the next room lighting the scene. But yes, to put it in a less snarky fashion, I'm never going to cripple my own shooting if a more suitable option is available. I delayed moving to digital because I preferred shooting film (and I went back to film a few years ago), and I have a lot of experience shooting medium-format and large-format film. I know what it means to have a slow system with strictly limited ASA! It's the year 2015, though, and we have lots of advantages now which we might as well make use of. For me, that most often means using a faster lens wide open, which is where the 14mm starts to have issues. It's sharp as a wide-angle gets and f/2.8 is fast by general standards, but when even f/1.4 isn't quite giving you enough light, f/2.8 starts to feel like a real hinderance. But like I said, that's just me. It doesn't mean the 14mm is an incapable lens for most people, and it absolutely should find a place in most peoples' kit bags. Now, a 14mm f/2? I'd be all over that. Gimmie gimmie gimmie. That'd be enough, I could get use out of that. That's one of those few lenses I'd really pay top whack for.

Fujilove.com did a big post about it recently, but it's info that has floated around since I first began paying attention to Fuji cameras, so I don't remember where I first read about it. Testing it myself, it does seem to be true and I see no reason to doubt it considering most digital sensors do either only have one true ISO or a more limited ISO range than they claim to have. (Hence 'boost' ISO settings.)

Well, yeah, I think we're all agreed there. Sort of. The best zoom in the world categorically can not be as sharp as the best prime in the world, all other things being equal. And a lens made and for and being used with a specific sensor is going to do a better job than a lens designed for a different type of sensor than the one it is being used with. But I still think Fuji shooters are in a weird position because the image quality from the current Fuji zooms is so close to the primes. (Or better, in the case of the 18-55mm and the 18mm prime.) So us Fuji users probably are not the best people to try to work out which is better! It's a much bigger issue on other systems where there is a wider range of lenses with more variation in quality. Like, that Sigma lens does out-resolve those Nikon primes, but there are a bunch of other Nikon primes and Canon primes which do beat the Sigma zoom. So you've really got to pay attention to exactly which model of lens you're talking about and how they're being used. Lab tests vs reality, different price ranges, different uses. There's a lot more going on than simply "Sigma made a nice zoom lens so I guess primes are dead."

I like the 14mm, I just rarely have much use for it. f/2.8 may be fast in general terms, but when you're shooting other primes at f/1.4, ISO 3200 and 1/60th and still getting an underexposed image, f/2.8 becomes totally useless. My 14mm will be sold soon and replaced by the 16mm, 'cause with two extra stops I might actually get a chance to use it more than once every other month. That's my use, though; I'm very rarely outdoors and not allowed to use flash in most circumstances, whilst also needing to catch motion sharply. Other people would probably get much more use out of the 14mm than I do. It's certainly sharp enough and I've not noticed any particular difference in contrast compared to the other primes. Not heard or seen anybody else complain about it, either. Its niché application is its only downfall, just as with any extra-wide prime lens.