And now we are diving in and testing the waters of the flipside of focal lengths – behold! Fuji 10-24mm f/4 wide angle lens. If we are talking full frame it would be 15 – 36mm.
Although we have 16mm f/1.4 and we absolutely love it, but there are times when it’s just not wide enough. With 10-24mm we have so many more options to be creative and get those dramatic shots that we are always looking for. Surprisingly but it is also noticeably sharper than our 16mm.
This lens is made for shooting landscapes and epic environmental portraits.
The wider the shot, the more breathtaking is the effect. At 10mm and especially when shooting from low or high angles it creates this surreal world around a person. Here we shot long exposure pictures at our photography group where we do steel wool spinning and light painting. And the lens was just perfect for this setting. When using a tripod, the limit of f/4 is not an issue. Just use longer exposure time (side note – when using a tripod, turn off the image stabilization on the lens).
It’s a different story when you don’t have that tripod handy. The f/4 will probably get you fuming at times. I know that it does that to us.
It’s important to remember that every situation is different and in a lot of cases you don’t need those low apertures. This shot of New Years Eve fireworks in Singapore was captured at 10mm, 1/60 sec, f/4, ISO 2500. With faster lens we could lower the aperture and ISO accordingly but this particular situation required f/4, maybe even f/5.6 to get all the action in focus.
We tend to shoot wide at 10mm most of the time because that’s the biggest selling point of the lens anyway, but it’s nice to have the option to zoom in all the way to 24mm for a bit closer shots when that ultra-wide scenery is not needed.
We have actually used this lens for most of our travels, and when needed just cropped in to get those tighter shots – as cameras have plenty of resolution to still look good.
A few nice features – zooming is internal so lens doesn’t get bigger or smaller and filter size is 72 mill. We love that most of the Fuji lenses are in that range, so we can have one nd filter with few adapter rings.
It’s actually funny. While writing the post, making a video for YouTube and selecting the pictures for it, we realised that our 10-24mm lens is most often used in portrait photo shoots. It would not be the first lens of our choice for all portraits but for a specific effect in a specific scenarios this lens has been exceptional.
Similar like it was with environmental portraits – we shoot from low angle to give that feeling of exaggeration and distorted reality.
Here our friend and model Nok seems like a fashion goddess. The focal length and angle makes her seem unreachable, superior and fierce.
This lens is also a life savior with photo shoots in cramped spaces. It allows you to get close but at the same time you can still get the whole person into frame not only the face. As this example shows –
the bathroom was tiny and Kristine was shooting from above the bathtub and yet with at 10mm we have model in the shot from head to toe.
Here we shot at 14mm.
Subject separation on this lens is a challenge – you need to get very close up to see it, but then you get a lot of distortion as it is a wide lens. Do remember that when you’re shooting portraits. At 10mm try to position the person away from the edges of the composition otherwise you can get really weird proportions.
Shooting at 10mm. Legs are too close to the edge and got distorted
Shooting at 10mm . Had is stretched and made disproportional.
And be careful while dangling your camera and yourself above bathtubs :)
Stabilisation
This lens has something somewhat odd – it is stabilised. It is really unusual for wide lenses to be stabilised as they do not suffer as much from shake. This on the other hand has a really good stabilisation which makes recording video pretty smooth – providing you don’t want subject separation.
Cons
No weather sealing – a bit of an issue every time we shoot landscape seem to always catch the lovely rain. Especially when hiking and trying to get that perfect shot of the sunrise or sunset.
It is rather bulky so if you want a light travel lens and providing you don’t need the wide range I would say kit 18-55mm is pretty good all around lens.
It is F4 so expect to bump up your ISO at night or slow down your shutter.
Bokeh – the softness of out-of-focus areas – isn’t significant with a wide, slow lens like this.
Almost nothing is ever out of focus. But then again for landscapes it is not a con in any way.
The only real caveat is that there is complex distortion which is dealt with by most raw converters automatically and by the camera via the JPEG engine, but you will lose the very edges through this correction and still be left with some distortion. This may mean that for architectural shoots (e.g. real estate work) you may be better off with one of the primes that has less distortion.
Conclusion
If you are on the market for a super wide lens and would like flexibility – then this is the one. On the other hand if you shoot more in the dark or would like some bokeh, then I would recommend looking into the 16mm f/1.4 lens, and for the very few out there who have buckets of money and want the widest possible lens – 8-16mm f2.8 is simply a beast!
There are a lot of great options in the manual lens shelf, they are slightly cheaper and very sharp, like for example Rokinon 12mm F2, but you lose autofocus. At the end of the day the choice is yours. Evaluate what is it that you want to shoot and go for it. Lens is just a tool, you are the one creating art.
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