My Lyin' Eyes, and a Little Blasphemy

[itchy shutter finger]

I’m a live-and-let-live kinda guy. Very non-judgmental. I have no criticism of whatever you may or may not like. I may not even know what a good photograph is. I may not know good photo gear if it hit me in the head. But I’ve been doing this over forty years, I had formal photo training, and I know what I like, and what gear is good to me. And if your preferences are different, well, that’s OK with me.

I decided a few months ago that I was so happy with my pair of Fujifilm camera bodies that will not buy a new one in 2021, but I would look at some new lenses. When I first got into the X System in 2019, I quickly grew quite fond of small and light, especially the light part. Without much thought, and with so little financial risk, I haphazardly started collecting used XC lenses until such time I could select the criteria on which to buy better lenses.

About three months ago, I tried to develop a list of lenses to acquire and why. That became much more difficult than I expected, so I decided to look at images on internet photo collection sites, without considering anything other than the photos themselves. While collecting information, I did not consider size, weight, or cost. Image quality only. After spending a few hundred hours studying something over ten thousand images, I was able to define the criteria of a good photograph (to me). They are:

• Contrast

• Color saturation

• Separation of the subject focal plane

• Sharpness

• Emotional response (from me)

I then started taking note of which lenses satisfied these criteria, and some patterns began to emerge. A certain group of lenses seemed to consistently produce the images I liked the best based on the criteria above. At that point, I found that from an image quality point of view, Fujifilm lenses fall into two categories: really, really good, and drop ya’ to your knees beautiful. While I think some lenses are clearly better than others, none completely miss the mark. I don’t think you can buy a poor Fuji lens unless it is a defective copy.

Now I get to the part about my Lyin’ Eyes. In my opinion, the XF16 mm f/2.8 and XF18-135 dominate the field in image quality over a wide range of image types. All the red badge lenses were stellar. The macro primes are all magnificent, as were the red badge zooms. Lenses a little less impressive to me were the XF23 f/2 and the XF 50mm f/2. They lacked focal plane separation and rendered poorer color, in my opinion. The XF35 mm f/2 seemed much better to me. The XC version of the 35 mm f/2 was identical to the XF version. Now, I get to the cheaper lenses; XC’s and those that have been kit lenses. I’m not going to tell you any of these lenses will ever be confused with premium or red badge lenses, but they are decent and perfectly acceptable for my amateur purposes. And they are very light! Among these cheaper lenses, the XC15-45, XC50-230, and especially the XC35 prime hit the mark for me. Did I mention they are all incredibly light? It’s a much different story if I were a pro. In addition to the 16 mm f/2.8 and the 18-135, the XF10-24 and XF50-140 were also in the class of the field, and are must-haves if I were earning my living in photography. Other must-haves would be the XF56 mm for portraits and at least one of the macros; 60 mm, 80 mm, or 90 mm.

To summarize so far, the XF16 f/2.8 and XF18-135 are my two favorite lenses. So clearly my eyes are lying to me because the internet says the 18-135 is a bad lens. And we all know the internet has the last word, right? On discovering that I apparently like lenses the internet doesn’t, my advice to lens buyers would be to define what you want, do your due diligence to identify the lenses you think deliver, and buy the lenses you like.

And now for a little blasphemy. There are two lenses are my least for a wide range of scenes. XF18-55 and XF55-200. There, I said it. Both ubiquitous and venerable, both of these lenses render beautifully in bright light and low contrast. When contrast becomes challenging, however, these lenses quickly fail the shadows into black, unless the photographer adjusts camera settings for each shot. On seeing this in the hundreds of images shot with these lenses, I reviewed my own images because I never thought these lenses were less than excellent. And indeed, my images with these lenses were all good, but always shot in bright sun or indoors with a flash array, and never in a high contrast composition. Fujifilm simply has better lenses in this range of focal lengths. In my opinion. I know these lenses are both popular and nearly everyone will disagree with me on this. As I said earlier, that’s OK. I respect your opinion and will not challenge it. Photography is deeply subjective.

With all this said, I am interested in hearing the lens selection experience of others. I am especially interested in hearing from pro photographers, who, I would imagine, select lenses to a different set of criteria.