So, the 18mm

C

celluloidprop

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/copen880/

A photostream with a number of 18mm shots processed with Silver Efex Pro (I assume via Silkypix and then into LR3 or CS5). It still doesn't appear to be the sharpest lens going, and suffers in color - but it just seems to work in B&W. Largely because they're interesting street shots and well done in SEP2, sure - but at the same time the rendering and relative softness make the lens look more film-like to me than I'd expect.
 
...

I really don't think the 18mm lens is soft or suffers in color at all. Fujifilm allowed the press to play with samples that were evolutionary prototypes when we saw the first pictures from the 18mm lenses, and they even told the press that the production lens would be very different.

Have you seen these?
http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/xpro1/07.html
http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/xpro1/08.html
http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/xpro1/10.html
http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/xpro1/12.html
http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/xpro1/32.html
http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/xpro1/34.html

- all from http://photo.yodobashi.com/fujix/gallery/index.html

Doesn't look soft to me at all. Looks cuttingly sharp to the edges actually. If it's anything like the 23mm f2 on my x100 it'll make you want to stop using your SLR lenses because they underperform in comparison (I just sold the 35mm lenses for my 5d for this reason)

The MTF chart looks pretty good too...
img_about0402_02.gif
 
Keith, the top left is out of focus, but the tarmac in the bottom right looks fine to me. All the examples look fine to me really.
 
The 18mm is the only lens I would consider getting right now with that camera - because I want to shoot the damn thing with manual focus m-mount lenses... that's all that matters to me right now... I am dying to find out how it does with those... :)

Cheers,
Dave
 
I don't think you can discern much from the B&W Flickr shots; they look highly processed to me. He was going for a grainy, vignetted look, and he achieved it.
 
For a 1.5x crop camera a 18mm focal length lens is an important lens for me, as my favorite field of view on 35mm is delivered by a 28mm lens although I really like a 25mm field of view too. On medium format 6x6 my most often used lens is a 40mm Schneider. I'm willing to pay a little more for a good lens. I'm willing to pay a modest amount for an OK lens. I'm not too happy about paying more than a modest amount for a just-OK lens even if it offers other features like more speed or AF.

It'd be nice to know what aperture the MTF performance data represents, and whether the MTF data is merely computer modeled data or is measured using actual lenses. Regardless, the MTF charts for the Fujinon 18 show mostly OK performance in the centre 2/3s of the frame and not quite OK at the edges.

Those beach scenes like the overwhelming majority of Fujinon 18mm samples seen so far, to me, continue to leave doubts in my mind about the 18mm Fujinon. It merely looks just-OK, never really approaching great. At least it has speed on its side - that's a plus. My 18mm is f/4. It'd be nice to have two stops of speed advantage in a lens I use all the time. That, not IQ, and not auto-focus, might be a reason why I'd eventually buy this lens.

I like the look of the ZM18 very much on both crop digital and full-frame film; I'm not seeing anything that reminds me of that look in almost all of the 18mm Fujinon shots I've seen so far. I'm not expecting 1:1 IQ parity from the Fujinon 18mm compared to the Zeiss ZM18 which is just over twice the cost of the Fuji 18, and is than twice the weight and size. Maybe if they'd made the Fuji 18 a little bigger and heavier I'd like it more, as perhaps those changes would have allowed designers to improve this lens that much more. :D

I'm interested in the X-Pro 1 as a host for M lenses but if I were to buy into such a system no doubt I would also be a buyer of some of its AF lenses to. From what I've seen of the Fujinon 18mm, it wouldn't be a focal length I'd be willing to trade in a good manual focus lens for or even augment for AF benefits. The other lenses in the current line up do interest me more.

Hopefully the utility of focusing and using M lenses on the X-Pro 1 will not remain a mystery too much longer. We need see some good samples from a wide variety of M lenses on this platform to answer the question as to whether the new sensor arrangement will solve the edge problems seen with some RF lenses in cameras like the NEX-7.
 
RayPA said:
That's one I noticed too, Keith. This one stuck out as well. Not sure what's happening in the oof areas, but it's kind of ugly.



/
Click to expand...

This is the disadvantage of crop sensor cameras - you're not seeing bokeh from a 28mm lens, just a cropped 18mm. Still, looks fine to me personally.
 
Adanac said:
I'm not expecting 1:1 IQ parity from the Fujinon 18mm compared to the Zeiss ZM18 which is just over twice the cost of the Fuji 18, and is than twice the weight and size.
Click to expand...

Adnac: Could you expand on this thought? I would actually expect the IQ from a native lens to be higher, because I assume that the firmware/hardware has been optimized for the OEM's camera/lens performance. You saw some of this in early m-4/3 tests of expensive Leica wides, for instance, when compared to OEM m-4/3 lenses on those cameras.
 
Benjamin makes a valid point.

Weight is irrelevant to optical performance. Weight may be relevant to physical robustness.

Fuji states the rear element to sensor distance is as short as possible to keep the lens size down an to minimize distance dependent abberations caused by separation of light frequencies. This keeps manufacturing costs down.

One important factor in lens quality is manufacturing tolerances. It is possible more expensive lenses have a smaller variation in manufacturing.

I would be pleased if the Fujinon 18 is as good as the CV 28 mm M/LTM lens.
 
dcsang said:
The 18mm is the only lens I would consider getting right now with that camera - because I want to shoot the damn thing with manual focus m-mount lenses... that's all that matters to me right now... I am dying to find out how it does with those... :)
Click to expand...

To be honest I'm still a bit unsure whether this is THE camera for manual focus lens, and the response of a real rangefinder. I don't buy it for that.

(The 18mm is tempting, but I settled for the 35 on the preorder)
 
hub said:
To be honest I'm still a bit unsure whether this is THE camera for manual focus lens, and the response of a real rangefinder. I don't buy it for that.
Click to expand...

It actually seems like a bit of an odd choice, what with the Ricoh and Sony options out there.

I'm interested in seeing a couple of real reviews from this camera. If it looks as good as it's looking so far, I'll probably pick one up as my first real digital camera since 2005. If not, I might just have to get a 5DIII (different camera for different purposes, I know...). Oh, and the 18mm would be at the top of my list - I love 28mm.
 
hub said:
To be honest I'm still a bit unsure whether this is THE camera for manual focus lens, and the response of a real rangefinder. I don't buy it for that.

(The 18mm is tempting, but I settled for the 35 on the preorder)
Click to expand...

I bought mine with the idea that it would be best used with native lenses in AF mode.

Now, I don't have to worry about being disappointed or betrayed and can concentrate on learning how to get the most out of the camera.

And in the future when I can slap an M lens on it, I may be pleasantly surprised. (I still have a freezer full of film and a small quiver of bodies, film and digital Ms and a wholly MF SLR, for that). But that was definitely not a major factor in my decision to purchase this camera.

There is a possibility that the XP1 may render my M8 superfluous in most circumstances, though it won't replace any of my film cameras, and I plan to keep shooting film as long as I can.

I really bought this for sensor+form factor+the optical VF with view outside the framelines. I'm not very excited about using the EVF no matter what they implement. The infinite adjustability of OVF framelines is, admittedly, extremely suggestive for adapted-lens use. As is, it will certainly be a whole lot of fun to use M mount wides in zone mode on this body--at least as far as the OVF is concerned; we still don't know how well the X-Trans sensor will handle lenses for which it apparently was not designed. Edit: first photos out of Hong Kong suggest the color shift is minimal on wides. Wow!

Now, if Fuji could produce a sensor that handles M mounts and also eventually figure out how to make that OVF provide aperture and focus confirmation/feedback on non-native manually-focused lenses, THAT would be huge.
 
Is there a thread about this camera where someone doesn't bitch about the capatibility of m lenses?
 
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