About to dive in: Is X-E3 + 35mm f1.4 a good 'single prime' camera choice?

Tom Schum wrote:

tokumeino wrote:

BUT there is a very interesting post here : https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1226781-REG/mitakon_zhongyi_mtk35m95m2fx_speedmaster_35mm_f_0_95_mark.html comment "I stand corrected"

I previously gave this lens a 2 star review due to its price and apparent lack of exposure benefit. While it's true that the lens appears maybe .2-.3 stops brighter than the Fuji 35mm f1.4 (on an X-T2), I have come to realize that's not because of any deficiencies on the part of this lens. It has come to my attention that Fuji (and apparently many manufacturers) artificially increase the sensor gain when shooting at large apertures--even in RAW. This is due to diminishing returns when using large aperture lenses in combination with digital sensors. Something to do with pixel pitch and the angle of light coming through the lens.

In any case, what this means is that the camera does not artificially increase the exposure of images captured by the Mitakon since the lens has no chip in it to tell the camera aperture information. This means that images from the Mitakon show approximately 1-stop less grain than images from large aperture Fuji lenses.

This means that if I use my 23mm F1.4 lens without electronic contacts mated, I might be able to get a richer, smoother image but will need a little bit longer exposure. Right?

It makes no sense to me that a camera maker would want to increase gain at low apertures. The exposure is already short enough because of the low aperture!

This stuff also makes sense in the Mitakon reviews when they talk about the rich character of the images.

I'd like to get the most out of my 23mm F1.4 lens (and others from their 35mm F1.4) and it looks like I need to skew the electronic contacts to do this. Just strange!

Is there a way to turn off this compensation in any of the menus? Does the compensation operate on the raws as well as the JPGs?

No, I don't believe that's true, even though one might be want to draw that conclusion from the comments in the review linked to above - and even my comments above as well.

The problem is that Fuji does some odd things to the aperture opening when the camera is on, but you are not pressing the shutter button. It's almost never at the aperture you have selected on the lens ring. In most cases, if the lens is set to wide-open, the actual opening will be stopped down somewhat when the shutter button is neither at half-press or full-press.

And, when you unscrew the lens a little to break contact (presumably with your finger off the shutter button), it stays in this stopped-down state, so the shot you take in this state will use a slower shutter speed (as required by the smaller aperture) than if you had the lens properly attached. So the testing methodology used by the person who commented on the Mitakon is flawed.

Interestingly, if you have the camera in manual focus mode, it does not do this weird aperture switching, and indeed you can validate that in MF mode, the exposure time does not change when you break the electrical contacts.

Tl;DR: No, Fuji does not appear to be "boosting" exposure artificially when shooting wide-open.  If you want to validate this yourself I suggest putting the camera in MF mode first.