Notes on the 14mm f/2.8

[Dante_Stella]

I have posted some comments on this lens here:

http://wp.me/p2RAff-XI

Anything else you want to know about it? I will try to post a bunch of sample pictures.

Dante

 

[FA Limited]

thanks dante, was really looking forward to your report on this lens. big fan of your review style.

questions that you leave unanswered (for me):

The optical resolution of the lens and the microscopic details it can resolve mercilessly expose the sorry state of ACR conversion of X-Trans RAF files.

even with LR4.4 you feel you're not getting the best detail out of the RAF files? have you looked at any alternatives?

people do not fully understand that the point of a wide-angle lens is dynamic composition, not simply making the field of view wider and everything in it tinier.

ultra wides are tricky lenses, can you talk more about about dynamic composition. are you talking about creating images that are more engaging between the photographer and the subject

 

[Dante_Stella]

thanks dante, was really looking forward to your report on this lens. big fan of your review style.

questions that you leave unanswered (for me):

even with LR4.4 you feel you're not getting the best detail out of the RAF files? have you looked at any alternatives?

ultra wides are tricky lenses, can you talk more about about dynamic composition. are you talking about creating images that are more engaging between the photographer and the subject

FA, two quick answers:

1. The white-to-blue overexposure bleed was present in LR4.4 RC and continued in the release version (4.4 did kill pretty much every other type of X-Trans bleed). I am trying to control for whether this is processing or some kind of flare (though I doubt flare). It's not tremendously obtrusive, and I am rerunning the conversions with a couple other things just to see if this can be sidestepped. It's not the worst thing I have seen in a RAW conversion. But except for the most critical use, it's a real pain to get outside the LR workflow for a RAW conversion.

2. By dynamic composition, I mean foreground/background relationships that add something to the picture. Not necessarily motion, but largely point of view, exploitation of greater depth of field, etc. The opposite would be a distant landscape shot wide.

One comment I have not put in yet is that I actually shot for a day - and the same pictures largely - using both the X-Pro1 with the 14mm and a Fuji G690 with a 50mm lens. In terms of convenience level, the EVF is much, much easier to align for verticals than any optical finder (X-Pro or Leica). That's not so say that DxO Optics Viewpoint is not a solid investment - or that you can't do a lot with a 96Mp scanned image...

Dante

 

[FA Limited]

interesting thoughts Dante, the whole X-Trans things still scares me a bit, more reason to stick with the X100

i kind of wish that fuji would just stuff the new 24 MP sensors from Toshiba / Sony and run their own processing like they did in the X100 and not deal with this complex demosaicing business

 

[Dante_Stella]

Put it in context - glitches aside, the performance is top 1%.

Dante