The Fujifilm 23 - the 2.0 or the 1.4?

gdanmitchell wrote:

I'm going to comment on two aspects of your post below.

Ozmoose wrote:

Admittedly, it's (the 23mm f/1.4) one of the older lenses. I've read all about the various problems with this lens, the softness in the corners, color shifts, wobblies et al. None of these apply to my baby - it works well, I've put it thru its paces at my usual f/5.6-f/8 settings, and all's good. Excellent results. Other than the extra weight, I'm happy with it.

Two points about this.

First, my assessment of this lens matches yours. I've been using it since about the time it was released, and it has been a consistently excellent performer. I'm confused and mystified by the bad mouthing it gets from some.

Actually, I'm not as mystified as I used to be. Some of that kind of stuff is hyperbole and posturing, and some of it is cover for believing that every new thing is miles ahead of every old thing and must therefore replace the old thing.

From my experience I found the old 23mm f1.4 to produce the best results out of all the 23mm lenses I’ve owned. I thought the rendering and contrast were just superb. My issue was getting those results time in time out. My copy had the back focussing issue which I was happy to put up with in the early stages but I grew tired of always having to second guess where focus would land. 
Of course I appreciate that not every copy of the lens had this issue but it’s been reported widely enough that I couldn’t be bothered trying multiple copies just to get a good one.