Love is the Fuji 35mm 1.4

The 35mm 1.4 and hood

Ok so from the title of the blog you can probably surmise that I have a bit of a thing for the 35mm 1.4 from Fuji, guess I'd better tell you why.

I've had the 35mm (53mm equivalent.) since late November 2014 when Fuji UK sent me a demo model and it's given me the chance to put it through it's paces as a portrait lens on the X-T1.

35mm on the X-T1

Love the size and feel of this combo

The lens like all of the Fuji range is very well made and to compliment the lens construction Fuji provides a metal hood that with it's rectangular shape has divided opinion - personally I love it, I think it makes the setup very cool looking with a nod to the kind of design that were available on vintage Leica & Voightlander glass.

The aperture ring has a nice click to it and the manual focus is smooth, however being one of the elder statesman of the Fuji lens lineup it can when used in autofocus mode hunt around now and again and sometimes fail to achieve focus in very low light conditions. However for the vast majority of normal shooting it is fast and silent.

Being a 1.4 lens it achieves a very shallow depth of field, which is something us crop sensor shooters are always after and stopped down to F2.8 the lens is sharp and provides excellent results.

Dave Fulton

Above is the photo that made fall in love with the 35mm, it is of American Comedian and Actor Dave Fulton, currently staring in the Comedy Central sitcom I Live With Models.  It was taken at my usual portrait spot on the balcony at the Glee Club in Cardiff with a Yongnuo 560ii speedlight at about 1/32nd, shot through a white brolly.

The colour rendition, detail and that Fuji.......something jumped out of the LCD at me and from that moment on the 35mm has become my main portrait lens combined with the 23mm on the X100 (the 23mm XF being next on my hit-list.)

So far all of my portraits have been done at night with similar lighting setups but from reading other blogs and reviews around the net it's clear that I'm not the only Photographer that feels this way about the quality of the pictures this little gem produces.

Jack Dee

I'm really looking forward to getting some environmental portraits with the 35mm in the paddock and on track as soon as the 2015 Motorsport season kicks off and I'll also be using it on a new project that I am working on that I'll document over the next few months.

Kevin Bridges

Having a close focus distance of 28cm makes this lens extremely versatile and enables quite intimate portraiture, distortion is minimal with no real chromatic aberrations that I can see and nothing that could not be easily remedied Photoshop/Lightroom.

Ian Cognito

Fuji made some of the best films and paper available, we now have the film simulations loaded into our X cameras. They made lenses for Hasselblad and we now have them for out X bodies.

I can't recommend this lens enough it is tack sharp with beautiful bokeh, great build quality and sprinkled with Fuji magic it's also available for about £399GBP a snip when compared to its DSLR equivalents.

Andy Robinson

I'm afraid there is not much more I can say about the Fuji 35mm 1.4 apart from this, if your a fuji X-Series shooter then this lens should be on your camera or in you camera bag - Highly recommended.

Dave Johns