The Fujinon XF 18-135 has quickly become my favorite travel lens along with the XF23mmF1.4. Since the day I bought it, my XF18-55 and XF55-200 are more or less collecting dust.

Just in these days I was considering to sell the 18-55 and 55-200, but I said to myself: “first, use them again, shoot with them, then decide“.

So it’s a couple of days now that I run around only with my 18-55 and 55-200… and I start to appreciate them again so much, that I don’t want to sell them anymore. Especially the XF18-55 is just crazy for a regualar “kit lens”.

So for now I so much enjoy shooting with these “old” Fujinon lenses again, that I will keep them. But I guess, sooner or later, at least one of these three lenses has to be sold… I need money for this one :-) !

rediscovering my 18-55 and 55-200… and yep, I’m still rocking the good old X-T1… at least until this comes true ;)

But this post is about the XF18-135, since Fujifilm just issued an official press-release about a delivery delay… so if you want one, you better grab one now at AmazonUS, BHphoto or your local dealer (it’s already backordered at Adorama)

Here is the press release

Is Sony stiching 4 separate sensor panels into 1 big MF 44×33 MF sensor? That’s what meshmag suggest. The image you see above is what you get with an 8 minutes exposure and body cap on.

No big deal… it works just great :-)

Btw, stiched or not, the “problem” (if we can speak of “problem” when we get such a terrific IQ) with this huge MF sensor is that it uses the same technology used in the 3 years old Pentax 645. The readout is not fast enough to allow 4K, ultra short black-out times etc.

Sensor readout speed is the main area of improvement needed in the GFX. So please Sony, for the second generation stich together 4 sensors with high read-out speed, and the GFX will be perfect :)

Fujifilm GFX: USA BHphoto, Adorama, AmazonUS

IMAGES

Mike Leung shared here:  Sea of clouds, Hong Kong In the past, I either use a GND filter or combine two +1 EV and -1 EV photos using Photoshop to achieve the same effect. Thanks to the wide dynamic range of GFX, now I only need a single photo to achieve the same result. #GFX #GF32_64 @64mm

Hüseyin Taşkın shared here: 63 mm – available light

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Taner Öner shared here: GFX 50’S GF63/2.8. Nomad Family Raising Goats during to 300 years same mountain at Karaburun in İzmir…

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Matthias Leberle shared here: ISO200 with Zeiss 85/1.2

John Beardsworth created a Lightroom plug-in that you might find interesting :)

The plug-in called “jb-X-LR” reads Fujifilm’s film simulation from your RAW file and automatically applies the corresponding profile in Lightroom.

Here is the description:

““Film simulations” are Fujispeak for the camera settings which fine tune JPEG output and which are recorded in the raw files (just like Nikon’s “picture controls” and Canon “picture styles”). X-LR is designed to automatically apply Fuji film simulations in Lightroom.

In Lightroom you briefly see the Fuji rendering in the Import dialog box and in Library, before Adobe’s raw conversion then takes over. Develop’s Camera Calibration panel does allows you to apply profiles which are modelled on theFuji film simulations, that’s no good if you can’t remember which simulation you chose before you pressed the shutter. You may have shot with more than one film simulation setting that day, and the information is not shown anywhere in Lightroom.”

What X-LR does

• Reads the film simulation from the raw file
• Applies the corresponding Camera Calibration Profile
• Also applies a Develop Preset
• Records the film simulation as a non-exporting keyword under the parent keyword ~MakerNotes

The plug-in is currently in Beta until April 30 and works for many X-Series cameras and also GFX. But consider that the preview only works on 5 images at a time – the unlocked version has no limit.

You can read all the details at lightroomsolutions.com/plugin-preview-jb-x-lr and lightroomsolutions.com/jb-xlr.

Fellow FR-reader Bernd has downloaded it, used it, and shared how it works and his impressions (in German) at bhofoto.blogspot (translation). Make sure to check it out!