A Rewarding Experiment Tomorrow Night With Fujifilm

This is Tuesday the 9th and tomorrow is Wednesday the 10th. It is pretty much as if today was the 24th of December and tomorrow is the 25th, because we get to see the new Fujifilm toys tomorrow.

Not under a tree - in the Camera Electronic shop. There will be a Fujifilm product presentation night with some new items. I can't hint about what one of the items will be because I am officially ignorant, but I will be taking my Fujifilm X-pro1 camera body along just in case there is any new and interesting thing with which to compare it... to paraphrase Sergeant Schultz : I know nothing...officially...".

What I DO know officially because I have just been told is that the Fujifilm 100-400mm lens has already arrived and will be there tomorrow. That is why I popped into the Fujifilm cabinet today and extracted the newest of their standard focal-length lenses and took a test shot. I picked the new 35mm f:2 Fujinon and popped it on the X-T10. The heading shot of this column is the full file in JPEG at 400ISO and Provia setting. Here is a crop of the leafy bit:

I'll do the exact same thing tomorrow with the 100-400mm and post the results in a subsequent column. Then you can judge how well the lens maintains the results achievable with the standard one.

We are used to thinking of the 100-400mm focal length range in terms of zoom lenses from Canon , with a nearly similar range in Nikon or Sigma lenses. In the case of the Nikon or Canon the lenses are of a type that can be mounted on their respective APS-C or full frame camera bodies. They do duty as sports and wildlife lenses and, while they are somewhat large and somewhat heavy, the facility to change the focal length in the field without changing the lens is absolutely invaluable. Now this sort of reach and convenience will come to Fujifilm.

I have experience so far with two other longish Fujinon zooms; the 18-135 and the 55-200. I expect that the new 100-400 will be a faster focus experience, particularly with the newer X-T1 and X-T10 cameras. Heck, the recently re-firmware'd ( A tortured phrase if ever there was one - I shall invent a better one and patent it...) X-E2 will swing a focus like a shot. The zooms are light enough to hold over a long period and precise enough in resolution to do all that may be required up to the considerable capacity of the X-trans sensor.

Do you watch sports? Surf? Airplanes? Birds? Lions and elephants? Race cars? Long-range brides? This may very well be your go-to-and-get-'er-done lens.

Tell us you're coming, come along, enjoy the show, and try out the lens. After work tomorrow at the shop. Talk to me - I'll be gathering titbits for this weblog - tell me a good story I can use...