Wild rooster in Velvia or way you really need that nice lens
I'll admit it: I'm a total Fujifilm fan boy. Not because of some misplaced loyalty and I'm not above criticizing them when they make a mistake which they do like the poorly fitting rubber door on the early X-T1 bodies or using a bayer array on the XF10 (pro-tip: get a used X70 instead) but I love the images their cameras can create. Images like no other camera in the world thanks to the X-Trans color array; an array much beloved by still photographers and much despised with good reason by videographers. Their old-school controls remind me so much of my early beginnings in film and their lenses are oh so sweet.
Fujifilm had to make great cameras and lenses as they wanted to woo professional photographers away from the titans that are Nikon and Canon, both of which make excellent cameras and lenses. Camera bodies are relatively cheap but lenses are not. While a professional like me might have a couple of thousand sunk into bodies we can have multiple times that into our lenses. The one used to capture the above image, the Fujifilm XF 50-140mm f/2.8 R LM OIS WR "red label" zoom lens which cost me about $1,800 is a prime (no pun intended) example of that. Let that sink in for a moment where in this world you can still buy a dependable used car for that price we're dropping that on a piece of fancy glass that will be ruined if dropped (pun intended). So why do we spend that kind of change on something that most folks would see as complete overkill? Because it can capture an image that no other lens can. I should say that Fujifilm lenses while just as good and if I dare say sometimes better than the titans of photography produce are a bit better and cost about 20% less. Where the very popular and very good Canon EF 24-70mm f/2.8L II USM can be a bit soft wide open the Fujifilm version remains tack sharp. Fujifilm had to make what many see as the best photography gear lest no one would make the investment in switching platforms.
To quote Ferris Bueller about Cameron's father's 1961 Ferrari 250 GT California: "If you have the means, I highly recommend picking one up."
Image: Wild rooster in Velvia. Mulberry Street, Worcester, Massachusetts. Fujifilm X-T1, 120sec, f/2.8 with the Fujifilm XF 50-140mm f/2.8 R LM OIS WR lens.
