A New 27mm Lens for Fuji… and it’s REALLY Good!

0:00 with the release of this new lens we now have five lenses at the 27 mm focal length for Fuji X Mount and they range in price from $99 all the way up to $579 and they range in size from one of the smallest autofocus lenses that I've ever seen or used up to a reasonably big Behemoth of a lens which is a 27 mm f1.2 so I think for somebody looking for a 27 mm focal length on Fuji X Mount this is going to be pretty confusing so before I get into the details on the newly released lens I'm just going to give you an overview of these different lenses I have used them all and kind of what you can expect and which of these lenses might be kind of the right direction for you now importantly all these lenses except for the Fuji have been sent out to me at no cost to myself at some point

0:46 none of these companies have ever paid me or sponsored my video or Channel at all and I will put links in the description down below to all the different lenses particularly the new release lens by S Artisans the 27 mm f2.8 so once once this video goes live there should be a couple places you can buy it and I will put those links below the first lens we're going to look at is the vro 28 mm f4.5 the headline feature of this lens is the size you can see how incredibly small that lens is it's the smallest autofocus lens I've ever seen might be the one of the smallest of all time it's also cheap it's a $99 lens now it is a fixed f4.5 aperture and that comes with its own challenges but I think it is a super fun lens to use and if you're on an ultratip budget or if

1:31 you want a lens that literally makes your camera pocketable then I think this is a viable option at at f4.5 it does limit your options obviously as far as the aperture goes so it's not going to be for everybody but I think it's a a fun lens particularly uh when you have a restriction like that it kind of makes you think more creatively about your images the next one is the TT Artisan 27 mm F28 this is around mid like 160 bucks or something like that thing I like about this one is first of all it has an aperture ring which is which is very very cool it's still a reasonably small lens it comes with this tiny built-in lens hood that then the lens cap just goes on it's an allmetal body it is still a really really nice lens optically it exhibits reasonably heavy vignette it also has a mix of somewhere

2:18 a look between a vintage lens and a modern lens and it can flare quite strongly at times but it is a very affordable lens and at one point I think it was the cheapest autofocus lens that you could buy from mirrorless camera still a cool lens and still one I would recommend next we're going to look at the Fuji one on its own now you can see the Fuji one's very small it's actually not that much bigger than the pancake lens probably the big disadvantage of the Fuji lens is this is the older version of lens so it doesn't have the weather seiling gasket and it also doesn't have the aperture ring but essentially the Optics are the same and the autofocus system are the same so they have updated this lens they've added weather ceiling and they have added the APT ring and they've increased the price quite dramatically and I think at the current price for that lens it

3:05 doesn't really represent very good value and it's got this Buzzy autofocus motor and the autofocus is not great and uncertain you know it's a cool lens if you got it but I think if we're just looking value for your money it's probably the worst one in the whole lineup now this one is sort of something completely different this is the the vro 27 mm f1.2 this is obviously going to be incredible in low light and it's going to get low light performance you're not going to get out of any of the other ones it's also by far optically the best it is an absolutely clinical lens sharp in the center sharp in the corner good autofocus performance it's the best of the lot but it's also quite expensive and it's also quite heavy so you're really going to feel this when you're carrying it around but the thing about this one is it is going to give you images that look very similar to fullframe photos because going to f1.2

3:53 is going to be somewhere around f1.8 on a fullframe camera so this is this is a type of lens that might eliminate your need to go to a full-frame camera if you want shallow up the field and low light performance and I've done a whole video uh dedicated to that concept as well that brings us to the new release lens by S Artisans this is the S Artisans 27mm f2.8 and this lens is the biggest of the smaller f2.8 lenses in the lineup it's significantly bigger than the Fuji one and it does not have an aperture ring but this lens is is one of the cheapest in fact the only one cheaper than this is the the small bu TRS and optically per dollar I think it is the best in the lineup so if I'm looking at how good your image quality is in a clinical sense per dollar this is going

4:40 to be the best lens and importantly I have tested the autofocus performance on my Fujifilm xt1 as well as my Fujifilm xt5 which is something people ask about does it work on the older cameras and the lens to me Works equally well on the older and the new cameras so if you got like an old X 1 or you know even one of the or the new xm5 any of these cameras of any generation it should work reasonably well for you and it worked perfectly on those two cameras for me and overall it's a all metal body polished metal lens mount the build on this lens is absolutely excellent it even has a USBC port for updating the firmware the build quality certainly feels well above the price point and I think you'll be quite surprised when you take it out of the box given what you pay for it I just

5:26 want to quickly touch on like why would you get a 27 million lens like this or any of these instead of the kit lens well to start with a 27 mm at f2.8 is going to have a wider maximum aperture than your kit lens when you're shooting at 28 mm and in general it is going to be a sharper lens overall although the Fuji zoom lenses are quite sharp I still think this lens is going to be sharper and when just looking at the focal length 23 mm is the common all-purpose focal length for apsc sensor cameras is going to get you a 35mm fullframe field of view equivalent 28 mm is the equivalent to 40 mm and I prefer 40 mm over the 35 mm focal length and in fact I like that full frame equivalent to 28 mm and 40 mm so either side of that 35

6:15 so I think the 40 mm field of view is just a bit more interesting I think it's also easier for new photographers to compose good compelling images with because you have less of a field of view to work with I just think this makes things a little bit easier easier to get clean edges of frame easier to draw the attention to the subject in frame so I think this is a great travel do everything particularly street photography lens 40 mm is one of my favorite lenses for street photography looking at the image quality the lens does exhibit a very moderate amount of barrel Distortion it's nothing I would worry about and all the photos that you've seen in this video have not been corrected at all but it would be quite easy to correct in Lightroom if you want to but it does have a very moderate amount of barrel Distortion one of the things it does have which is an optical

7:00 trait of this lens that you may like or not like is it does have heavy vignette particularly at f2.8 I am a big fan of vignette and I've only realized how much a fan of vignette I am in recent times particularly at the 40mm focal length or around there because I'm kind of trying to draw the viewer's eye to what's closer or more in the middle of frame and when I'm editing these photos I often add vignette anyway so heavy vignette is one of the optical traits of this lens that you really really notice and it does add a specific look to your images probably the most shocking thing that I found about this lens was the fact that it just doesn't have any chromatic aberration I mean it is crazy and I would say maybe this is the most clinical chromatic aberration performance I've ever seen out of a sub

7:46 $200 lens you have literally zero color fringing it's just incredible how clinical this thing is and this incredibly high contrast image so if you're somebody who worries about that purple fringing yep cheap lenses you're not going to have to worry about it this one it is absolutely perfect now when it comes to longitudinal chromatic aberration and this is a change in Color cast before and after the plane of focus you do get a very minor amount and in all real world situations I really didn't notice it I actually had to shoot some trees back lit to bring on a bit of fringing in the out of focus areas and when I did that I got a very very minor amount of color fringing but it's nothing once again that I would really worry about and I really had to go looking for it to find it probably the

8:33 weakest Optical performance of this lens is the flare performance and I would say it has a confusing flare performance cuz there were situations where I had light coming directly into the lens and the lens actually held its color and contrast reasonably well but then there were other times where I didn't even know where the light was coming from and it seemed to wash out the image completely so it was a bit of a funny one particularly when you get like white Skies or those like overcast days where the sky is acting like a giant soft box and the sun is shining into it from behind I was getting these weird Whited out images so the flare performance was reasonably imperfect the one thing that this lens did do for me in this really cool creative flare style is in certain

9:20 situations particularly at night where I had a street light or a colored light just outside a frame it would give this washed over color to the image just like you'd see out of maybe your favorite Hollywood movie and I thought this was really amazing and super cool now some people aren't going to like this some people are going to love it it's just something you got to be aware of the flare performance is imperfect but it's something you can use creatively and it looks pretty cool but other times it might completely ruin your image looking at close-up image quality you can get reasonably close to a subject and when you did the image quality was very good it was very similar to how it is at infinity and you had very good color and contrast so if you're out traveling and you see a detail in a scene or something you want to get close to and take a photo of you're going to be able to do

10:05 that you're going to have a ton of detail and it's going to be a nice photo just looking at the bokeh and background blur it's fine it's nothing to write home about I wouldn't say it's good I wouldn't say it's bad I would just say it's kind of middle of the road given it's an f2.8 lens you're not going to get deeply out of focused areas but when you do take a photo and you have some areas out of focus they look fine and pleasing and are a nice backdrop for whatever is in the frame looking look at sharpness this is the other place this lens really shines it is ultra sharp particularly for a lens of this price in the center frame starting right from f2.8 the image is incredibly sharp high contrast no chromatic aberration whatsoever as you stop it down it gets a little bit punchier maybe a little bit sharper but it is so sharp from f2.8

10:52 it's really hardly noticeable because it is razor sharp and even in the corners of frame at f2.8 it is incredibly sharp and this is a big difference compared to the TT Artis lens which generally is a little bit softer in the corners than this one this thing is sharp even pixel peepers are going to be very happy with this there's going to be no issues there I just thrown a video on screen now this is the vro 27 mm f1.2 lens and this is going to give you a blurry background and low light performance which is very very similar to a full-frame camera