Hello, it has been almost 2 years since my last post. During the pandemic, I was struggling from a mental wellness perspective and photography fell out my list of priorities. Now that we’re almost back to a semi-normal life – I have begun to start to rekindle my interest in street photography.
After camping on various pre-loved marketplaces, I was able to secure a used Fujinon XF35mm F1.4 for a song. This is a lens that I have heard much about – primarily that it has ‘magic dust’ and takes amazing photos. So although I already owned the XF35mm F2 WR – I was always curious and now I have my own copy of the fabled F1.4 version.
The copy of the lens I got was really cheap. I was hesitating because I wasn’t secure if there was something wrong with it. However it came from a reputable store, and was missing its hood and box, so that’s why it was cheap. I tested it quite extensively in the store, because paying for it so I think I got a good deal.
So early on Sunday morning, I parked my car at Joo Chiat road and had nice breakfast before heading out to test my new lens.
The lens shows its age – the focus is noisy and sometimes misses the mark. I had to be patient and made sure that I had time to catch focus before taking the shot.
One thing which I could not resist doing was shooting wide-open at F1.4 – none of the lenses in my collection are this fast, and I simply wanted to try it as much as I could. However, the reality is that doing street photography at F1.4 probably isn’t the best idea especially with an old lens.
So while I was missing shots because of the slow focusing of the lens, I was also able to take great shots in darker areas because of the faster aperture. And I was able to push down my ISO as well!
This will be a great lens to shoot with at night and I can’t wait to try this out.
When I got home and had a look at the shots I had taken in Lightroom, I almost fell off my chair in delight. There truly is some kind of magic dust on the photos the XF33mmF1.4 takes. Consider me impressed and I will definitely be shooting a lot more with this lens in the future.
The City Beautiful 