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

14 2.8

Quindere wrote:

IMHO the best for Architecture, Landscape, Cityscape. Totally optical corrected. It is tack sharp wide open frame to frame. If you crop just 15% you have the same Field of View (FoV) of the 16mm. Could be hand holder around 1/25sec. Valid the same observations about low light as XF 10-24.

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?

Both (16F1.4 and 18F1.4) Best for group portraits, events, low light. At F1.4 could raise the shutter speed to freeze the subject motion blur. IMHO for street and documentary 18mm is a little bit more adequate than 16mm. The choice between each one is subjective, it is more about your FL preference.

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?

You're right. It is soft at edges, but sharp enough at center. It is inadequate for Architecture, Landscape and Cityscape, but adequate for Street, Documentary, Still Life, Travel, All-Around, Walk-Around.

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

My 2 cents contribution.

Great analysis.

I used to try to pick lenses based on how far apart, or wanting lots of coverage... but ended up with lenses that didn't get used much and collecting dust.

It wasn't really until I laid out specific objectives for each lens where I was satisfied.

I picked the 14 2.8 as a dedicated landscape/cityscape lens.

The 27 2.8 is perfect for street and walking around with my XE3.

And the 56 1.2 I picked as a dedicated portrait lens.

All these lenses are kind of niche to specific tasks, but do an excellent job at those tasks.

Now that I've downsized my lenses, I'm not sure what my next lens will be, or if I'll need one...but I'm sure it will present itself to me when the time comes.

I will second the WCL, surprised it didn’t come up more here. Check out some reviews and see if it might be better than bringing along two cameras.

Get yourself a 15-45mm lens to try out the focal lengths and then you’ll have a better idea.

I recently got a Samyang 12mm ($200 used) and am very pleased. It is the same lens as the Rokinon.

Here are some images from my 1st outing. View full size to see the level of detail captured.

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)

I am a big fan of spacing prime lenses "1 stop" apart in terms of focal length. Like 24, 50, 100, 200, etc. I read this in an old book by John Shaw, more than 20 years ago. It makes a lot of sense. Then you adjust to personal taste or requirements, fill in blanks at "1/2 stop" apart.

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)

Yes, wide angle zooms are great for landscapes, as they offer flexibility that is sometimes needed. Low light, use of tripod is recommended anyway for landscapes.

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.

Fantastic lens.

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.

Fantastic lens too. I don't do video, but the AF is silent as far as I can tell.

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?

I don't have this lens, but photos I have seen from it are far from being soft. don't fret and try one. Don't worry too much about other's opinions of "soft". Trust what you see.

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

For astro, the important thing is the light gathering ability of the lens, not so much the focal length. The X100V is a fantastic camera that is suitable for a lot of applications.

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

biza43 wrote:

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)

I am a big fan of spacing prime lenses "1 stop" apart in terms of focal length. Like 24, 50, 100, 200, etc. I read this in an old book by John Shaw, more than 20 years ago. It makes a lot of sense. Then you adjust to personal taste or requirements, fill in blanks at "1/2 stop" apart.

Same here... but like it ever so slightly wider than that 24/50/100(5) set.

I use 21mm 40mm 85mm FF equiv instead. If I did Leica, I'd do 21/40/90.

I used to have 35 AND 50 equiv in the middle...just prefer replacing both with 40mm.

there might be a few shots you can't get, but you also know more when to switch over.

biza43 wrote:

For astro, the important thing is the light gathering ability of the lens, not so much the focal length. The X100V is a fantastic camera that is suitable for a lot of applications.

The wider the focal length, the longer you can expose without seeing the movement of the stars. Depending on the actual light gathering abilities of the lens (lower f-stop is not always a guarantee for more light) and the focal lengths you're comparing, the lens with a wider focal length but somewhat higher f-stop might win in actual light gathering ability.

At some point I downloaded a spreadsheet comparing various camera/lens combos for astro using the NPF rule that calculated actual EV numbers, and started modifying that to add my own lenses and lenses that I was considering. That gave me a table of what settings (camera, ISO, focal length, f-stop) would give me the lowest EV (lower == better in this case).

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

biza43 wrote:

For astro, the important thing is the light gathering ability of the lens, not so much the focal length. The X100V is a fantastic camera that is suitable for a lot of applications.

The wider the focal length, the longer you can expose without seeing the movement of the stars. Depending on the actual light gathering abilities of the lens (lower f-stop is not always a guarantee for more light) and the focal lengths you're comparing, the lens with a wider focal length but somewhat higher f-stop might win in actual light gathering ability.

At some point I downloaded a spreadsheet comparing various camera/lens combos for astro using the NPF rule that calculated actual EV numbers, and started modifying that to add my own lenses and lenses that I was considering. That gave me a table of what settings (camera, ISO, focal length, f-stop) would give me the lowest EV (lower == better in this case).

Light gathering ability from the subject:

https://clarkvision.com/articles/characteristics-of-best-cameras-and-lenses-for-nightscape-astro-photography/

Example provided: a 35mm f/1.4 lens has a light gathering ability from the subject 21x higher, compared to a 15mm f/2.8 lens.

biza43 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

biza43 wrote:

For astro, the important thing is the light gathering ability of the lens, not so much the focal length. The X100V is a fantastic camera that is suitable for a lot of applications.

The wider the focal length, the longer you can expose without seeing the movement of the stars. Depending on the actual light gathering abilities of the lens (lower f-stop is not always a guarantee for more light) and the focal lengths you're comparing, the lens with a wider focal length but somewhat higher f-stop might win in actual light gathering ability.

At some point I downloaded a spreadsheet comparing various camera/lens combos for astro using the NPF rule that calculated actual EV numbers, and started modifying that to add my own lenses and lenses that I was considering. That gave me a table of what settings (camera, ISO, focal length, f-stop) would give me the lowest EV (lower == better in this case).

Light gathering ability from the subject:

https://clarkvision.com/articles/characteristics-of-best-cameras-and-lenses-for-nightscape-astro-photography/

Example provided: a 35mm f/1.4 lens has a light gathering ability from the subject 21x higher, compared to a 15mm f/2.8 lens.

But from what I can see, is that this article doesn't take exposure-time into account. If you can have a 4x longer exposure (8 seconds instead of 2 seconds) that makes up for 2 stops of exposure difference.

I'll need to do a bit more digging myself as well now, and next night out I should perhaps remember to do some more-or-less controlled experiments.

Edit:

Reading a bit more into the article, he assumes you can use a star-tracker so that evens out differences in exposure time a lot. If you're not using a star-tracker then a longer exposure is often better.

Also, he compares a 30 second shot from the 35mm lens to a 20 second shot from the 200mm lens but does not explain why he didn't shoot a 30 second exposure at 200mm...

He also goes into mosaicing, by which I assume he means panorama-stitching or something similar. That is getting into advanced astro photography subjects and at that point the wider focal lengths are less interesting indeed, but the shots will also require more and more dedication!

In my opinion, a wider angle and wide aperture are best for getting started in astro photography. 16mm f/1.4, or 12mm f/2.0 are great for that. Or even 7.5mm f/2.8 fisheye.

(Or the Meike 6.5mm f/2.0 circular fisheye but I've never shot with that myself! )

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

biza43 wrote:

Tim van der Leeuw wrote:

biza43 wrote:

For astro, the important thing is the light gathering ability of the lens, not so much the focal length. The X100V is a fantastic camera that is suitable for a lot of applications.

The wider the focal length, the longer you can expose without seeing the movement of the stars. Depending on the actual light gathering abilities of the lens (lower f-stop is not always a guarantee for more light) and the focal lengths you're comparing, the lens with a wider focal length but somewhat higher f-stop might win in actual light gathering ability.

At some point I downloaded a spreadsheet comparing various camera/lens combos for astro using the NPF rule that calculated actual EV numbers, and started modifying that to add my own lenses and lenses that I was considering. That gave me a table of what settings (camera, ISO, focal length, f-stop) would give me the lowest EV (lower == better in this case).

Light gathering ability from the subject:

https://clarkvision.com/articles/characteristics-of-best-cameras-and-lenses-for-nightscape-astro-photography/

Example provided: a 35mm f/1.4 lens has a light gathering ability from the subject 21x higher, compared to a 15mm f/2.8 lens.

But from what I can see, is that this article doesn't take exposure-time into account. If you can have a 4x longer exposure (8 seconds instead of 2 seconds) that makes up for 2 stops of exposure difference.

I'll need to do a bit more digging myself as well now, and next night out I should perhaps remember to do some more-or-less controlled experiments.

Edit:

Reading a bit more into the article, he assumes you can use a star-tracker so that evens out differences in exposure time a lot. If you're not using a star-tracker then a longer exposure is often better.

Also, he compares a 30 second shot from the 35mm lens to a 20 second shot from the 200mm lens but does not explain why he didn't shoot a 30 second exposure at 200mm...

He also goes into mosaicing, by which I assume he means panorama-stitching or something similar. That is getting into advanced astro photography subjects and at that point the wider focal lengths are less interesting indeed, but the shots will also require more and more dedication!

In my opinion, a wider angle and wide aperture are best for getting started in astro photography. 16mm f/1.4, or 12mm f/2.0 are great for that. Or even 7.5mm f/2.8 fisheye.

(Or the Meike 6.5mm f/2.0 circular fisheye but I've never shot with that myself! )

Just used the 8-16 f/2.8 for some widefield astro work at 8mm and was very impressed with the results.  It's far from a cheap lens, but very well suited to this application and will pretty well replace my Zeiss 12/f2.8 for most of my astro work.

With the market for X100V’s being as hot as it is right now, I would lean towards selling. Lot of people looking to get their hands on a camera you might not be so sure you love.

That, or try out the Wide Conversion Lens (WCL) and see if you would prefer keeping the X100V for that.