Looking for a secondary lens for X-S10 with the XF18-55 kit lens

[Tim Cabbage]

Hello:)

So I'm doing a little bit of photography for quite some time now, my first camera was a Canon powershot A495 compact, I later swiched to an Olympus E-PL1 with its kit lens, then started using my Samsung S7 then S10 and recently I got myself a fuji X-S10 also with the kit lens (the XF 18-55 f/2.8-4)
https://sivael.gensys.pl/

The first 10 images (~two top rows) are from fuji.

I want to do more portaits, shoot and film weddings/events as well as do some macro stuff(with a 16mm ring I think?)

I'm thinking about a second lens and my main contenders are

35mm f/2 - for shallower DOF when shooting portaits, great video quality (kit lens at 35mm is f/3.6)

23mm f/2 - is this better or worse for portaits? (kit lens is f/3.2)

50mm f/1 - portaits should be very interesting with this one, but would they not be *too* shallow for good results? (kit lens is at f/4)

90mm f/2 - a long lens but some said it's very good for portaits. It would also give me more range for shooting nature.

Maybe one of the zoom lenses? I find that having the ability to zoom gives more flexibility to catch that event and frame it just a little bit wider than needed to cut to size later.

I also don't want too many large lenses so the kit + something small + a zoom telephoto seems attractive to me but I don't have much experience there so I don't really know.

I'm looking for practical advice on which lenses to look at for portaits and event shooting in both picture and video format.

[andrei89]

If you‘re thinking of the 50 f1 or the 90 f2 then i assume your budget is considerable :))

if you‘re not sure, i suggest renting, if possible, if not, buying second hand if you can find any good offers…used lenses keep their value and are quite easy to resell if you‘re not pleased with them

something in between what you want would be the 60 f2.4

if you‘re on a tighter budget, you might want to take a look at what viltrox is offering. I got an 85 1.8 for 300€ used but as new

alternatively, you could try adapting vintage lenses to get a feel of the different focal lenghts…vintage lenses can be found quite cheap and so are the adapters

[Tim Cabbage]

Budget - yes, it's something I plan on getting in half a year after gathering a larger stack of funds.
However, because I do not want to invest and be disappointed, rental services seem like a **really** good advice.

That viltrox looks like a great value lens and I see one new relatively cheap, that is great advice, thank You.

I don't see reviews for its video performance though; any info on that?

Thanks.

[andrei89]

No clue about video as i don‘t care about it at all

Edited January 2, 2022 by andrei89

[Tim Cabbage]

o7 Thanks, Will most likely go to a rental place for lenses and see what I can get there

 

[Herco]

The 50/f1 and the 90/f2 are quite specialist lenses. Esp. the 90 is great, but for portraits you'd have to maintain a fair distance to get a classic portrait. It's also a difficult lens to nail focus at f2. I consider the 50/f1 as a 'hype' lens. It's very expensive and the image quality trails that of the 56/f1.2. I guess Fuji just needed something with an f1 aperture as a halo-product, when they realized that the previously announced 33/f1 became too big. For weddings and events an f1 is close to useless, since the DOF is so shallow, it becomes hard to nail focus in fast changing environments. You'll find yourself stopping down to f2.8 or f4 most of the time.

Three lenses come to mind: the 50/f2 is highly underrated and can get you a bit better background separation compared to the 18-55 at f4. However, if you really want to experiment with shallow DOF, the 56/f1.2 is a great lens. Second-hand prices have dropped somewhat since the 50/f1 (but not much). A bit more universal might be the 33/f1.4. That gives you a clear distance from the f3.6 the kit lens offers at 35mm. A similar choice would be the 35/f1.4 (buy it second-hand, prices are dropping now).

For video use, the 35/f1.4 and the 56/f1.2 are less practical. They have a slow AF performance, suffer a bit from focus breathing and are quite noisy when focusing. In that case, use a directional mic instead of the build-in mics and refrain from focus pulling. The 33/f1.4 and the 50/f2 work perfect for video. 

[Tim Cabbage]

Exactly what I was worried about when it comes to the 50mm/f1was the unpracticality of the faster aperture there.

33/f1.4 - Didn't really look at it that much, will research more.

It seems then that I'll be hovering around the 50mm f/2 as the second lens then.

I'm also looking for rentals but most rentals don't rent like I thought they do so might take a while until I have a chance to test that out.

Thanks! Great info!

[OCD Dawg]

I think the 23mm f/2 or 35mm f/2 would be a logical choice.  Set your 18-55 to 23mm and shoot for a week, and then set it to 35mm and shoot for a week and see which FOV you prefer.  

 

Move slow adding lenses....

[Tim Cabbage]

I'm loving the kit lens at 23mm but since the aperture is similar, 23mm would be kind of reduntant IMO.
The 35mm was the lens I was most leaning towards but looking at the 50mm, at two stops lower it's a very tempting proposition.

I've been shooting specifically at 18, 23, 35 and 55mm checking out the images and I love them all in different ways. loved the 18mm's width for "action" recording or "full house" pictures.
23 was nice when I wanted to do a kind of a portait but heavily in context (subject takes a smaller part of the shot)

35mm was great for portaits from close up but it was a bit **too** close to the subject. It yielded great pictures though. A bit grainy due to higher ISO.

at 55mm was at a good distance to the subject, good pictures, different than the 35mm. Higher ISO though and was hunting for focus a bit.

Both 35mm and 50mm f/2 sound great and it's a difficult decision tbh but I get more difference out of the 50mm f/2 (vs f/4) than out of the 35mm f/3.6

I know both 50 and 35mm do great for video and are nice and fast when focusing.

I'm also considering the 33 f/1.4 because it's roughly at the same distance from the kit lens as the 50mm f/2 is and I might like the 33mm more than than the 50 but unsure yet.

Thanks!