Suggestions for wide angle lens (for landscape/astro/street)

nemendes wrote:

Hi Everyone!

I didn't use wide angle lenses before (i tried few times but not was for me). I have 35mm, 56mm, 90mm, 50-140. Recently i bought x100v to try wider focal length for myself. It is a quite good machine, sharpness, min focus distance and portability are great. I used it for street, indoor events and a little landscapes, architectures too. I realized that 23mm (35mm for FF) focal length is kind a neither wide nor tele for me. So, i wanna buy wider lens for mostly landscape, astro, architecture and street photography. Let me share my knowledge about wide lenses that i observed; (by the way i have X-T4)

XF 10-24mm : Great lens for landscape, sharp and solid. I am not sure that i will need focal length below 14-16mm because i didn't use any wide lens before and its too wide :). f4 worries me about low light situation, because i like shooting at night but i have other lenses for that situation too (as 35mm and 56mm)

XF 14mm: I heard that its a great, sharp lens but i think its too wide for me for a prime. I would like to hear your opinions as well.

XF 16mm f1.4: I was close to this lens for my choice. Because of hearing many positive opinions about it, i would like to try it. I was almost sure till fujifilm announced new xf18mm f1.4 16mm has amazing min focus distance, sharpness but i heard that autofocus is noisy, especially for video.

XF 18mm f1.4: This lens seems to be perfect for me, but it is the most expensive one between options that i observed. Money is not an issue, but i am a little worried that what happens if i buy it and not like using wide lens or wish to buy wider one?

XF 18mm f2: I would like to try that one; cheaper, lighter and i could understand easily that wider than 23mm is suitable for me or not. But people told that this lens is soft and not sharp, i am not a pixel peeper guy but i really dont like softness or ghosting. Of course i can manage if a little, but i heard that this lens has a quite softness. Your opinion?

X100V: I have that machine for trying wide angle. Maybe you could tell me that i dont need wider one. I will not take every week landscape photos or astro, maybe architecture few but i mostly do street and portrait photography. So it would be great if i could use my wide lens for these purposes too. For example could tell me that how much difference between 16mm, 18mm and 23mm? I know there is quite difference but for landscape or astro how much important it is? I didn't take landscape, astro, architecture photos for a purpose, so i really dont have any idea

If you share your opinions, i will be appreciate. Thanks in advance.

You might want to also consider the X100V with the WCL converter - 19mm, f/2, sharp across frame and still very compact. Unscrew it and your back to the great all-purpose 23mm. There’s also the wide end of the 16-55 - as sharp as the 16 f/1.4 for landscapes (and MUCH sharper than the 10-24 in the corners), still sharp across the frame wide open at f/2.8, great for low light interior shooting.

Also, you can shoot very wide with just the X100V if you stitch a bunch of images together - very easy and very high resolution.

X100V pano, handheld

It's not a great choice for astro though, terrible coma wide open...

X100V for astro. It "works" , but bad coma in the corners