Wide Angle Lens Experience: Fujinon 14mm f2.8

This is the third and final part of my wide angle lens experience blog series. If you haven’t read my two wide angle lens write-ups, you can find them here

• Laowa 9mm f2.8
• Fujinon 16mm f1.4 and f2.8

Today my focus is on the Fujinon 14mm f2.8. The lens that I ultimately bought and added to my Fujifilm kit. It is one of the oldest lenses on the X mount lineup, released way back in 2012! It has a similar size, weight and feel as the XF 18-55mm f2.8-4 lens. It even has the same lens hood and filter size. This means all my current ND and polarising filters will fit nicely on this lens. This is a great bonus as I’m planning to use this lens to do landscape and long exposure photography.

Disclaimer: this isn’t a sponsored post. All opinions are my own and this is not intended to be a comprehensive technical lens review. There are plenty of photography websites that are excellent for that. This is simply my experience simply my experience as a enthusiast X shooter

The 14mm f2.8 lens is not a light weight or nimble lens, however it does play nicely with the small X-T10 body. The 2mm difference between the 14mm and the 16mm lenses does make a difference in being able to capture a wider field of view. The 14mm is also a fairly sharp lens even at f2.8, however I’m most likely going to be using higher apertures in the kind of photography I’m interested in doing.

The lens wasn’t really on my radar until I was having a discussion with Fujifilm trainer Warwick Williams regarding what he would recommend for interior and architectural photography. Unfortunately in the Fujifilm X series world, tilt-shift lens isn’t on the cards and that’s a vital piece of equipment for architectural photographers. However he highly recommended the 14mm lens as the next best thing because of it’s minimal distortion. When I did play around with it, he was absolutely right, the distortion was very well controlled.

During my testing period, I used the 14mm lens for urban photography as well as some landscape. It’s challenging using such a wide angle lens on the streets but it forced me to try to think creatively. More recently I used the 14mm lens in a business photography shoot and I thought it performed very well. I was quite pleased with some of the environmental portraits and dynamic scenes that I created using that lens (more in a future blog post). I’m really looking forward to using the 14mm in an upcoming interior photography shoot as that was one of the main reasons for adding it to my kit!

Since transitioning to the Fujifilm X series way back in 2015, Fujifilm has continued to innovate and remain very competitive in the photography market. Hands down one of the best things about Fujifilm is how active they are in the photography community in my own experience. They have been supportive of communities like Fuji X Aus and are encouraging of both pro and hobbyist photographers. The fact that I ended up buying one of Fujifilm oldest lenses goes to show that Fujifilm has a history of producing quality lenses that lasts for a very long time.

Thanks again to Saul and the Camera Electronics for being so generous with their time and for letting me try out all these wide angle lenses.

Thanks for stopping by today.

J.