Fujifilm just published a 3 part video where you can learn the history of Fujinon Lens from the past to present and how Fuji goes about designing lenses of various kinds.
Posted also today: RUMOR Fuji X-T1 Super-Firmware Ver. 4.0 to download on June 18th / DOWNLOAD NOW: New Lens Catalogue (shows all Upcoming Lenses) and New AF Handbook ! + X-T10 with 35mmF2!
6 Responses
History of Fujifilm: trying to please Richard Avedon and Galen Rowell all at the same time…
Well it was good for me, was it good for you?
For most of my career Fuji existed somewhere else, in a parallel universe of sorts. Only with the X series they’ve managed to hit the right note. Since then, it was good.
maybe because some of the fuji products were labeled with other brandnames in europe (don’t know where you from 😉 )
I remember a lot of large (and not so large) Fujinons on TV cameras. Techno-stabi binoculars used by mercenaries in Kosovo War. Disposable film cameras. Loupes. Weird GX680, a medium format that wanted to be a view camera. List goes on and on, yet I’ve never before been compelled to own any Fuji gear.
…but I’ve always used Fuji film, especially slide.
It’s interesting but very similar movies claiming the same historical expertise exist from Nikon, Canon, Leica, Zeiss… And all modern lenses across manufacturers have been designed using this kind of design/simulation-applications. Does it make them better? On test-charts it clearly does – perfect sharpness from centre to edge, minimal distortion, CA-aberration and the appliance of perfectionized coatings do the rest. Even the old budget brands like Sigma, Tamron and Tokina now deliver top notch lenses in their categories. Look now at how even a small company like Fuji was capable to develop a complete camera and lens range in only a few years time. Nevertheless a lot of the recent wave of lenses are a bit clinical cool – they are almost too perfect and missing the particular optical charm and characteristics the older glass radiates. My admiration goes the most to the real optical masters that could calculate and develop new lenses using hands, eyes and and a visionary expertise and skill to work out optical formulas that survived many decades and provided a kind of optical consistency that people still perceive as the typical Leica, Zeiss or Nikkor look. Am I the only one, but I’m not so much feeling the Olympus, the new Sony or Fuji look – I think they are all very, really very similar, again… so perfect?