“We purchase cameras, but we invest in good glass” BHphoto Guide to Fuji X Mount Lenses!

12 Responses

1. True. But I think you probably don’t need top-tier glass to produce great shots but a top-tier body would be needed.

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   1. False. They are both important of course. If you have a crappy lens, then it doesn’t matter how good your body is, and vice versa. When it comes to guns, it makes CONSIDERABLY more sense to put a $1k scope on a $150 gun than it does to put a $150 scope on a $1k gun.

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      1. Those vintage crappy lens do just fine. In digital photography the body limits room in postprocessing more than a lens. Unless you are talking about not have proper focal length.

         Some of Cartier-Bresson’s famous images are even out of focus. What lens quality you could obtain from that?

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         1. Conversely, If it is out of focus why would you also need a top tier camera for that?

            I’m not sure if you miss the point but what they are saying to the effect that, if you have a limited budget it is wiser to put the money on lens because lens design and tech doesn’t change as fast as digital tech in cameras. Case in point- sony they churn out new sensor tech every year and better than the last. But if you have a great lens already, when the time comes you have enough money for a better camera then you will have the latest and greatest tech at that point in time without sacrificing lens IQ.

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            1. If you continue investing without limit in time frame and budget, you can get rop tiers in both.

               What I learned after acquiring a FF is that the raw files is a huge step forward although the lens i used is average and nothing close to xf1655. My point is, if your budget is really limited, get a good first, then slowly upgrade your lens. Kit lens like 24-85 made these days are good enough for everyday use. In similar prIce tag, d7200+17-55 won’t be as impressive as d750 + 24-85.

      2. This is captured with Df and 50/1.8G, which is a $200 dollar lens…. As you probably can see, how sharp it is at 100% is not that important.

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         1. Price is not necessarily an indicator of quality, quality is an indicator of quality. There are good lenses at all prices, and the skill of choosing and using the right lens for the task is finding the good lenses from the bad.

            The Nikon 50/1.8G is commonly considered to be the best Nikon 50mm lens made today (better than the 50/1.4G, 50/1.4D, 50/1.8D, and the 58/1.4G), and optically one of the best 50mm lenses Nikon has ever made (which is saying a lot). So, describing an image with, ‘woo… cheap lenses rock’ is more like saying, ‘woo… cheap lenses that happen to be brilliant rock’.

            The point is getting the balance right in quality terms, not just in financial ones. Good lens+crappy camera=waste of a good lens. Good camera+crappy lens=accentuates the worst parts of the crappy lens. Between these two extremes, you get the best of both worlds.

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            1. there aren’t many crappy lens made today. I’d hope you could name a few modern crappy lens even when stepped down a bit. I actually find few of them and … some cheap lens are good, as you suggests, so you don’t really need to buy crappy lens.

2. It’s really the opposite, the lens is the beginning of the path to the image so get the best you can afford.

   You can always upgrade your camera body but keep your lenses.

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3. I don’t even own any fuji lenses, I use nothing but classic vintage lenses on X-T1 with focal reducer (lens turbo II) and get awesome results!! One thing missing in the video, XF 90mm f/2 creates better bokeh, very sharp, fast autofocus and why not it been mentioned?

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4. I have 5 Fujifilm lenses, and am hugely impressed with 4 of them, but this good glass is an investment notion seems a bit off the mark. My experience is that it’s quite difficult to sell these lenses at a good price. It seems that Nikon lenses hold
   their value much better. And small accessories (e.g. extension tubes, flash) for most mirrorless brands are much harder to sell used than equivalent products for
   current DSLRs. It puzzles me that the same users who will pay a “mirrorless premium” for new equipment seem tighter than SLR users when it comes to used equipment. Any psychologists care to explain?

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   1. I don’t know why my previous post disappeared, but it did. The CSC market has yet to deliver the proof they can withstand decades of development and that’s actually being calculated in the remaining value. I keep on saying that the second hands market is a major test for the credibility of a system. The older generation of photographers like me still remember how Fujifilm did disappoint several times when they abandoned (bright) ideas, promising systems and (pro-)ranges in which some had invested massive numbers. More important nearly all CSC-concepts have the newest wave of ‘fly by wire’ concepts incorporated and thus require more firmware in the lenses. Is this a solid choice to make glass live forever? I can still use 20 years old Nikkors on the advanced/pro bodies, screw the latest released glass on many film bodies back from the 90’s – well that’s a true investment. The world has changed and almost everything around us is now being considered as a ‘consumable’ but I don’t believe CSC manufacturers will be able to keep this ‘electronic’ up-down compatibility in the air longer than maybe a decade. Is it sin to come to that conclusion? I don’t think so – it’s true for nearly everything we own today.

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