My last post was just me philosophising a little about what X-Mount lenses to buy or not. I still haven’t acquired the Fujinon 10-24 f4 because it’s just too expensive. Can’t justify it, and if I personally say that about a lens then it’s got to be serious. It doesn't mean that I've given up on that lens though, it's just on hold.
I decided to go another route with my X-Mount lenses with a manufacturer that I’ve grown to respect. One point about these lenses that put a lot of people off is the fact that they’re manual focus lenses only. Personally that doesn’t bother me as I’m a slow shooter anyway. I tend to take my time and I find manual focus lenses makes me even slower. Could be a good thing but bad for fast moving action.
The reason behind all this id the price hike announced by Fuji in the last week or so. I was sceptical before but now I'm certain that they have priced me out of their lenses. It's not only Fuji but a lot of the manufacturers these days are bringing lenses out that really priced quite high. Look at Panasonic (the 12 f1.4 and the 100-400 f4.0-6.3) and Olympus (their Pro series 7-14 f2.8 and the 300 f4 prime). Then there's Sony of course with their huge Pro lenses. So much for their small sized FF mirrorless cameras. The lenses are not really small but that's just my opinion. I've stopped acquiring anything for the Sony system at the moment as I can see nothing that really interests me at a reasonable price. I was looking at the 70-200 f4 and the 70-300 f4.5-5.6 but I'm just going to wait; a long time if I have to. I'm not certain in which direction Sony are going with this system but the current lenses are really large for a mirrorless system.
Unwelcome news for us all I think.
Back to my choice lenses. The first is the Samyang 50 f1.2. This lens can be bought in quite a few different mounts and the price is right. I actually bought this one for €380. The 56 f1.2 would have cost me €1030 as of this post.
The Samyang 50 f1.2 mounted on the Fujifilm X-E2
The second lens I bought was the Samyang 12 f2. The lens comes under different names onto the market (Rokinon) but it's actually the same lens. No difference whatsoever. I know the price on the US market is much lower, but I'm not in the US so I have to pay these prices. I paid €270 for it, which isn't bad at all, whereas the XF 14 f2.8 would have cost me €860. Yes the XF lenses do have AF and it's nice to have sometimes, but it's not worth the price difference to me.
Samyang 12 f2 X-Mount mounted on the Fujifilm X-E1
I haven't had much chance to use the 12 f2 yet but I did take a couple indoors at different distances:
Nearest distance
Furthest distance. Impressive just how much you can get in the image.
I took the 50 f1.2 out with me today as my wife and myself went for a lovely walk in glorious summer weather. These were taken on the X-E2 with firmware version 4.01 installed. A little tip for those using the X-E2 in manual mode with focus peaking. Ensure you put the level of peaking to low. This makes it much more accurate to focus. I did a test with it on high and I had a few out of focus shots. With it set to low every image was in focus.
Just some test shots done in the house before going out.
Shot at f1.2
Same shot as above only at f5.6
Shot at f1.2. Nice bokeh here but is not always the case with this lens.
Same shot as above but at f5.6. Amazing the difference between this aperture and f1.2
Very sharp
Gives me a 3D impression
Another image that gives a lot of depth to the scene. Very impressed with this lens.
Look at the detail in that dead branch.
Focusing on the eyes with peaking set to low.
Again using peaking set to low. Hit the eyes again.
