In Between...

I'm sure I'm not the only guy who secretly (and not so secretly) lusts after a Leica Q, QP, Q2, Q Mono- hell, I don't give 2Q's which Q!. It's one of the (very) few gorgeous digital cameras ever produced, and 28mm is my favorite everyday focal length. But I'm a long ways from dealing out even $3k for a nicely used one. Besides my GR and its 18mm equivalent is one heck of an adequate, poor man's substitute!

Fujifilm 16mm f2.8

What really ticks me off most though is that Fujifilm has such a piss poor 18mm- if they had a decent offering to begin with, I wouldn't be indulging in such masturbatory fantasies about any Q! I'm hardly the pixel peeper, I just want the tool to do the job unnoticed. And I do love pancake lenses- but on too many occasions my eye has annoyingly noticed what a shit poor job that 18mm does when it strays off center- from soft... to lard ass soft (not to mention the chromatic abomination)! Ricoh's tiny 18mm kicks its butt- Big time! And I really can't believe that Fujifilm has actually gotten away with such a mediocre (at best) offering, for such a popular focal length, for such a dreadfully long period of time... 

Now, I understand they are finally going to come out with a new and improved 1.4 18mm come next year, but it's not something I would probably be up for; the question being... why the hell not? Because it's going to be: 1) Big, 2) Heavy, 3) Expensive; three of the things I hate most! Wow, a lotta exclamation marks here...

So... I'm starting to think about getting the Fujifilm 16mm 2.8, a 24mm equivalent. It's a small jewel of a lens, with the accompanying cute as a button lens hood (and I hate lotus shaped lens hoods), not too expensive, and has gotten decent optical reviews- but then, anything's better than their 18! Although I'll probably wait till the new 18 comes out anyway- I had a FF 24mm back in the day and it was like using a 28mm that was just a little too short, or a 20 that was just a little too long. Sometimes you got lucky and it just fit, but most of the time it just fell in between and I could never adequately read just how it would render a particular scene. But that 16 is just so awful cute...

PS- I am an avid fan of Fuji's 14mm f2.8- one ugly duckling of a lens with impeccable Primo optics! Which is why I can't for the life of me understand why they did such a miserable job on what is traditionally a considerably easier design.

ADDENDUM: Just pulled the trigger on a used 16mm. We'll see how it performs optically, though without anything to seriously shoot until later next year, it'll be hard to properly assess if it becomes part of the regular lens rotation. At this point it could be: a viable contender, something to be sold to help finance a viable contender (the 18mm 1.4?), something to be sold for beer money, or maybe just a handy-dandy, light and tiny travel lens for the last grand tour of Europe, whenever that occurs...