Help me choose the right lens

[JKR]

Hi everyone,

This is my first post here. I'm in doubt about selecting the right lens, so I calling for your help. This is my situation:

What I usually shoot:
- Travel
- Family (two children)
- Street and daily life 
- Portrait (not often)
- No video

Most of the time I shoot with hand held and no flash, so I think OIS is a big benefit. I also prefer fast AF, so manual focus lens is out of sort list. Of course f/1.4 is ideal for hand held but I can live with f/2, no big deal. The most important factor is fast and lightweight.

I only print pictures in small size, so image quality and sharpness is not critical. However I don’t use Photoshop so I prefer no retouching, just use the JPG images right out of camera, maybe just crop/rotate if need. I also can live with noise of high ISO.

Currently I use a XE3 with 23mm f/2 and super happy with this combo. Thinking about add one or two lenses because sometime I see 23mm is not wide enough (small room, group picture, or on a mountain that I can't step back), sometime it is too wide (family portrait, children playing around). So I see two options:

Option 1 - zoom lens, buy one of these
- 18-55 f/2.8-4: A lot of recommendation on this lens. It's cheap and has OIS. I just wonder if 18 is wide enough? 
- Waiting for 16-80 f/4: has OIS, fast AF (hopefully), 80mm for portrait is better than 55mm. Internal zoom and WR also very nice for long term investment. 
- 16-55 f/2.8: this one is expensive and way too big to go with XE3, and no OIS.
- 18-135 f/3.5-5.6: Slow aperture, and 135mm is too long for me. I'd rather have 16mm. Also many negative review about this lens.

Option 2 - buy two prime lens 
- 16 f/2.8 and 50 f/2: Fast AF, fast aperture, lightweight, optical excellence and WR. Super match with 23 f/2. But no OIS and cost a bit more money.

Would you please share your experience? What do you recommend? 

Thank you very much!

JK.

[jwascher]

I have the 18-135 lens with and XT-2. As a walk around travel lens, it hits all the basis. Maybe not the fastest lens, but for a walk around travel lens, I would have a hard time beating it. The 18mm is wide enough for most situations, and the 135 comes in handy for many situations. A 16-80 would also be a great lens, and f/4 isn't too bad. 

I shoot a lot of sports with my grandsons in Lacrosse and live with the 100-400, but that is probably way too much glass on an XE3. Traveling in old cities or for landscape work, the 10-24 is great also.

Good luck on a choice. You can rent a lens for awhile and try it out to see if it works for you also.

 

[Cyrtis]

I'm new to Fuji and very much an amateur. I've got an 18-55, 10-24 and 100-400 on an X-T3. For generally walking round, street and landscape, I'm tending to use the 10-24 and very impressed with results. I might change over to using the 18-55 as my standard, but I just love the huge wide 10mm for landscape and would miss not having that to hand? 

I've also got an X100F and like you, finding the 23mm just a tad too narrow for me, I'd prefer it was 18mm. 

16-80 would be great, but 18-55 is pretty good also, that's what I'd go with given one choice, guess that's why it's often bundled as a standard. It has OIS, but not WR which isn't much of an issue to me cause if it's bad weather I'm inside!