image courtesy: photozone

photozone published his technical review of the XF18-55 zoom lens (read it here).

“The Fujinon XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 R LM OIS may be the hottest reason to enter the Fuji system. It is amazingly sharp throughout the zoom and relevant aperture range. The amount of lateral CAs is generally quite low with the exception of 55mm @ f/4. The Fujinon is not without flaws, of course. Technically it suffers from a high barrel distortion at 18mm and the vignetting is a bit too high at max. aperture. However, these aspects are taken care of either by the camera itself or external RAW converters so you don’t need to worry from a user perspective. The quality of the bokeh (out-of-focus) blur is pretty good for a standard zoom lens but it cannot rival the best prime lenses, of course… In a nutshell – you can’t go wrong with the Fujinon XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 R LM OIS“

This was just a part of photozone’s verdict about the 18-55 zoom lens. Click here to read the whole review.

The big show in Yokohama started but there is no really big news this year. No camera manufacturer really launched something extraordinary new (No FF DSLR, no new Mirrorless camera). So let’s see what happened around the Fuji world. On top you can see the image of the Kipon Tilt Shift adapter to use with Nikon or Hasselblad lenses on Fuji X cameras (Source: DC.watch).

And here are two of the three new Zeiss lenses that will be on market in April-May. As you know we will have the 12mm f/2.8, 32mm f/1.8 and 50mm f/2.8 with a price of around 1.000 Euro.

And let’s end with a new Fuji product that has nothing to do with cameras but it shows how innovative the company can be: Fujifilm’s flexible Beat speaker diaphragm lets us roll up the rhythm (Engadget).

William Eggleston, Nan Goldin, Ryan McGinley, Martin Parr, Terry Richardson, and Stephen Shore shoot with the X-Series for a show at Aperture Gallery simply called “Photography”. Look at the images here. (thanks for the link Adam).

Slidoo notified me! The XF14mm is now available in the USA through ebay (direct link to ebay shop).

And now also Amazon US is listing the 14mm (not 3rd party). However quoting 1-3 months delivery. Click here to preorder.

“The XF 14mm seems essentially free from any sort of field curvature, there is virtually no detectable chromatic aberration and only the barest hint of purple fringing along extremely high-contrast boundaries, for example, with power lines or branches against a white, blown out sky. Even the edges of the frame are essentially tack sharp wide open at f/2.8, with the extreme corners following by f/4 already.” Read more and see a lot of test shots (X-E1 and XF14mm) on Mike Manders website here.

Some samples of this “very, very sharp and distortion free” lens can be seen here at sgoldswoblog.

You know the quality of riflessifotografici reviews. Now, Massimiliano Angeloni has the 14mm and is shooting with it. Let’s wait for the results. In the meantime you can read his very first considerations here (translated version).

XF14mm in stock status at AmazonUS/ B&H / Adorama / Amazon GERMANY / Amazon ITALY / or on ebay worldwide via slidoo