Well, my 60mm f/2.4 came in today. I had the 18-55 f/2.8-4 for a while, and while my first copy was OK, it wasn't great at 55mm, and every once in a while it would throw out a complete garbage image for no good reason, and I suspected potential problems with the IS mechanism. So I sent it back for an exchange, and the second copy I got was absolutely abysmal at 55mm. I mean horridly soft... I'm sure an element was severely out of alignment. Anyway, I had that copy for 2 days before requesting another RMA. While I generally liked the convenience of the 18-55, I didn't really want to take another chance on it, and B&H was great in accepting the return again. I opted to have them send the 60mm f/2.4 instead, so I'd have a good setup with the 14/35/60. I've only taken about 6 test shots, but wow...did I make the right choice.
While the AF on the 60/2.4 is dog slow if you need to go through the whole range, it's OK if you're in the vicinity, so for most work it should be fine. But this thing is SHARP. Really sharp. Build quality is really exceptional as well and the hood (while huge) is all metal and clicks into place great. Makes me want to shake Olympus and say "See...Fuji can include a high quality metal hood with their telephoto lenses....stop charging $80 for the hood for the 75mm."
Need to take more images, but this is a seriously impressive optic.
It's an excellent lens. I've had it since day one. It's fine for manual focus, given the constraints associated with the X-Pro 1 EVF that I use. It works just fine when you use old-school manual focus techniques to home-in on the right place.
The dog slow focus is only if you're going through a big range, at least in good light. If your anywhere near your intended focus point, it focuses moderately quickly. Not blazing, but decent. Manual focus looks to be really easy given how sharp and contrasty the lens is.
Looking forward to hearing how you like it, I've heard a lot of great things about the image quality this lens can deliver. The specs just don't really fit for my uses, so I've never bought or tried a copy.
Sorry to hear about your 18-55 experience, my copy appears to be problem free. I don't use it all the time, since I prefer to use primes generally, but in some situations it's handy.
And while 2.4 isn't as much light as say 1.8 or 1.4 ... it is still better than 2.8+ (or does that even matter with EVF vs. OVF (I've not used EVF yet).
I can live with slow AF as long as it MF's nicely.
Yep, it is rather slow but the optics are very good. My It is great for head to shoulder portraits and intended for macro I believe but I never really used it as a macro lens. Would get another for sure if I get another XE1. I like the convenience of the 18-55 and seemed like my copy was good but had to get a good distance between the subject and background to get a decent blur with it where as the 60 was obviously better for that. The 35 though is just ridiculous good for the price and so versatile as a 50mm effective length which is now my favorite...
I might be able to take some portraits tonight. Right now, I've just taken some very random test shots of no photographic value, but they're enough to see that it's blazingly sharp and has really nice bokeh.
Here are some of my random test shots. I hope to actually take something of worth later today.
Full scene @ f/2.4, more distant. This is a torture test for bokeh, as the area behind this tree is just a mess of brambles, sticks, some leaves, grass, etc. Most lenses render that like garbage, and I'm really quite pleased with how the 60/2.4 does on it, given how awful most lenses render this sort of detritus. http://www.jordansteele.com/2013/f60_farbokeh.jpg
I've heard good things about it and even put it on my amazon wish list (for my wife to see) but my main purpose would be strictly for portraits (not macro, I have other things for macro) and I search and search and I cannot find many examples of portraits with goog bokeh. What I am looking for is examples of great portraits with background/foreground thrown off, and I just dont see any. So I settled for waiting on that 56/1.2 which is coming in January of 2014.
Now I would love to see some examples of portraits with the 60 to convince me otherwise
Jman13 wrote:
I'll try and take some portraits tonight if I can (no guarantees). I found some decent street portraits in this thread, though: http://www.dpreview.com/forums/thread/3195193
great find, finally I saw some real portraits taken against background on the photos in dpreview link, thank you very much!
hmm.. this is the 1st time i hear of image issues with the 18-55
most of the time, folks praise the 18-55, much more than Sony's nex kit lens.
anybody else encounter issues at 55mm?
Now you've got my attention ... nice set, including the torture test, this seems nicely corrected.
To me, these look nothing like the XE-1 images we saw in the other thread ... I like these way better and could be enticed to leave FF at home as long as I'd be getting these kind of files.
Are these, raw, jpg (camera profile/settings ) or raw processed?
) or raw processed?