X-E2 + 23mm f2

larsbc wrote:

misterodd wrote:

For those of you who have some experience with this combo, is this pair fast enough for street action? Thanks in advance!

I've been shooting with an X100V for over a year now, going out almost every weekend. Generally speaking, when I've used AF to try to focus on someone while I am walking and that person is walking towards me, the focus can be quite hit or miss.

I’ve found the X100V is pretty usable for rapid AF but it depends how the AF is set up. On most models I’ve found that using the smallest 9-area “zone” (Fuji unhelpfully calls it “zone AF” which is a pain in the rear when you’re in the midst of a conversation involving zone focusing…) seems to give the fastest lock.

Obviously, compared to single point focus it doesn’t give the same ability to target something accurately, and compared to a wider AF zone it doesn’t give the same confidence to shoot from the hip, but I find it the best compromise a lot of the time on the street. (I use single point a lot too, and I’m most familiar with that.)

I’m personally not fond of (manual) zone focusing with focus-by-wire lenses because it’s too easy to knock them out of place—the X100 series being the worst offender because it’s so hard to adjust aperture without nudging the focus/function ring. But there are plenty of cheap 25mm native-mount manual lenses which have good optical performance when stopped down (as you’d generally want to do for depth of field when zone focusing) but have more character when opened up. I quite like having the option of an AF lens and a MF lens in the same focal length: the AF lenses just don’t cut it in manual focus for me.

Getting back to the original point: I had the X-E2 and the 23/2 together for a short while and although I didn’t use that combination for street, I’d have no concerns at all about the AF speed. But I should probably caveat that with the fact that I found the X-E1 and the 27/2.8 perfectly fine for AF on the street, so maybe I’m just doing it differently.