New to the kit

I've been playing with three lenses for the last month or so. One is the Contax 85mm f/1.4 that I picked up before Christmas. It's a lovely piece of glass, hefty (more so with the Zhongyi Lens Turbo II attached), with that nice mechanical feel of old MF lenses. IQ is sweet, much better than what I get from the Nikon 85mm f/1.8G. I'll have to borrow a friend's Nikon 85mm f/1.4D to do a comparison on the Fuji X-E2 one of these days.

The second lens is a Nikon 35mm f/2.8PC that I bought earlier in 2016 but haven't used much. This is the non-AI version, and it flares quite a bit. It doesn't feel as well put-together as the Contax 85mm, but the shift movement is smooth, albeit with a bit of play at the start. The rotation mechanism is very smooth though. I've been using it hand held, but one of these days I'm going to bring a tripod and do perspective correction the right way. In my opinion, 35mm (or 38mm-equivalent with the Lens Turbo II) isn't wide enough with city streets. I have been looking around for a 28mm PC and almost snagged one on Craigslist. It's too bad that Nikon's current PC lenses are over $1k new, otherwise I would consider buying one. I did spot a Canon 24mm for $600 on eBay, but not being able to set the aperture is a pain (no, I will not buy a Canon film body and bring it with me just to set the aperture).

The final lens of the trio is a Fujinon XF 23mm f/1.4. This is the newest design of the three, and so far it's been tack sharp with fast AF. It doesn't quite have the character of the Zonlai 25mm f/1.8 though, and doesn't focus nearly as close. It's also much bigger, and the petal hood merely serves to emphasize its size. On the other, hand it doesn't suffer from the focus shift issues that plague the Zonlai. 

Look for more images from these three as I put them through their paces.

Oh, I forgot one more lens that arrived before Christmas: the Fujinon XC 50-230mm f/4.5-6.7 OIS. It's pretty sharp for such a cheap lens, sharper than the Nikon 70-300mm VR. The VR also does a good job of keeping the camera steady. It's at 230mm that things start to fall apart, with autofocus slowing down due to being at f/6.7, massive vignetting despite the small aperture and built-in lens corrections, and the rather long length of the lens coupled with a plastic lens mount. Still, for the price I paid for it used, it's well worth the money.