A super hero is as great as how its evil villain is. Therefore a camera is only part of the equation for an amazing set-up. The other missing piece of the equation is the glass of the lens. Generally speaking I would place a little more weight on the glass.
Today I am not talking about the focal length of the lens. As each focal length has it purpose and place in the world of photography. As a X-photographer; I don’t own every lens that I fancy. I only invest on the lenses that I needed. My priority these days are with GF lenses as these are my to go gears for work. Therefore I don’t invest much on XF lenses. In fact in 2021, I only purchase two XF27mm F2.8 lenses. One for myself and the other for my daughter. It’s her first XF lens.
As the title of this blog post already mention, I just recently gotten the XF18mm F1.4 LM WR. Many fellow photographers always love the 18mm (28mm in Full Frame ) focal length but this focal length have never strike a cord with me. Maybe it a little too wide for me. I love the 23mm focal length. My default favorite.
The main reason on the acquisition of this lens is purely base on one particular reason. I love the quality of the glass of this lens. Every future lens should have this level of quality. I could still remember testing a pre-production unit some almost 2 year ago, the first impression have certainly left a very deep foot print with me. Just looking at the image on the screen, I was blow me away. I couldn’t establish why it looks different; but I am sure the different was in a very good way.
I could see the IQ improvement just via the camera’s LCD. Once you upload and view it via a monitor; you will know that this lens is super sharp. The sharpness is of another level up. Zero Chromatic Aberration, this lens control it extremely well. AF is fast and quiet due to the linear motor. Another plus point is distortion. It’s so well correction.
Having said all this; 18mm is still not my cup of tea as my everyday lens. But its been my default lens for a past 2-3 weeks. So I am sharing photos taken with it. If anyone is sitting on the fence; I would highly recommend this lens. You won’t be disappointed. It’s my logical buy; for once I used my head instead of my heart. Ha!
Lastly if you have a couple of minutes more to spare, do check out my Lens Story :
