Oh man, oh man - yesterday my second free lens popped in through the post. Braving the foul weather I staggered around town, clicking off shots at market vendors, horrible architecture and what-not. I even took a food shot of an unnaturally mammoth hoagie I was eating at New York deli. Yes, I took a photograph of my food. That's how unbalanced I became with this lens in my hands. Because this lens is the Fuji 35mm f/1.4 and it is sharp as hell. I see now that all the cruel asides the poor old 18mm has suffered regarding sharpness clearly came from being in the shadow of its wider sibling here. It's unfairly sharp. And in being so makes the pretty-reasonably-sharp 18mm look a little bit blunter by comparison. The above photo was taken at f/1.4 - wide open!

Combine this with the X-Pro1's jpeg engine and you've got a match made in heaven. I went round shooting RAF files and then converting them inside the camera to the two types of pro-neg films, standard and high colour. These two film simulations really are something special. The standard is perfect for portraits and the high colour great for urban situations and landscapes when the uber-satuation of velvia would just be too much. All the files in this image are straight out of camera, with only a quick pass in Lightroom to straighten and add some vignettes and a tiny bit of dodging and burning.

Here's three more from the day...

One more thing, I remember hearing about aperture chatter with the lens. Well, the latest firmware it came with must have fixed it because I heard nothing when using it. It's fast to focus too, and with the camera firmware no one can say anymore that it's anything of a slouch. I actually think that the 18mm, despite not being as sharp, will still spend more time on my camera however - it's just a perfect 28mm angle for street work. But I'll be busting my 35mm out for portraits, details and gigs, that's for sure. I'll end with a mediocre shot of Cardiff stadium, straight out of camera again, no post processing at all with this one. But you can see what it can achieve at f/4 - which seems to be its sweet spot.