Re-Thinking Zoom Lenses (And Getting A Fuji 90mm Prime)

Buying a zoom lens for the X-E4 has been in the Pending tray over the winter, and I've taken it out now. Which means watching more YT reviews. Now play this (for about ten seconds to get the point)



and if that doesn't remind you of an extending p***s to you, I can guarantee it will to someone on a London street. Those zooms look like a neat package tucked away, but whip one out and give it a yank, and it's damn nearly fourteen inches long. That's going to make the ladies turn their heads and not in a good way. Everyone for about fifty yards around will see you waving it around, peering down the EVF and think you are going to invade their... privacy. On a tripod, with the flip-screen flipped, and operating the shutter with a cable so there's no obvious contact between you and the camera, it may just pass, but tripods mean "professional photography" for which you may need a licence from the Council - you need one from the Port of London Authority to shoot with a tripod on their river and riverbanks.

I can't, I just can't. I had zoom lenses for my OM-10 back n the day and none of them behaved like extending p***ses. Maybe in the country or by the sea with no-one watching, but in Covent Garden? You try and let me know how it works out for you.

So there went my plan to get a zoom lens for the X-E4. No-one makes discreet internal zooms for X-Mount. Yet. I would imagine it would cost a whole lot of money even by the standards of Fuji lenses. If I'm going to zoom, and a lot of the better shots I took in the past were zoomed to nearly the max on my Panasonic DMZ-TZ40, I'm going to need a smaller lens. For instance the Panasonic Lumix TZ99, with a 4/3's 20.2 MP sensor and a max 30x optical zoom. That's around £520 on Amazon, and MPB only has one at near-full price, which means a) nobody buys this, or b) having bought it, nobody wants to sell it. One is very bad and one is very good.

Another plan is to get the longest X-Mount prime I can find / afford, which turns out to be the Fujifilm XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR, which costs £949 new from Fuji and around £480 - £500 on MPB. Fuji prices, right? A while back Roman Fox (and a whole bunch other people, damn the algorithm) did a video on how much he liked this lens, so there's that. The plan would be to use it as the daily driver for the rest of the year, as I use the 27mm (40mm equivalent) pancake now. Learn to see and take 90mm (135mm equivalent) shots.

Or I could do both, but my concern is that if I did get the TZ99, I might never use the X-E4 again, which would be silly. So I did my first order with MPB for the XF 90mm, which arrived presto by DPD. Here's the first couple of decent shots with it...

No cropping, just framing. I had not realised that all those great candid people shots from other people I like were all taken with a telephoto lens.

I could still get the TZ99 later and both bits of kit would have cost no more than a new XF 90mm, so I wouldn't really be spending more. (Which is called "Hobbyist economics".)

Somewhere in Soho

I leave this one with no comment. It doesn't need one. Eterna, Fuji X-E4 with 27mm pancake lens. 

Primrose Hill

Okay, it's catch-up time. 

I took my first photos for a good few months a couple of weeks ago, and as always when it's been a while since I took photos, I made a right hash of it the first time out. The check-exposure-aperture-shutter-speed-dials reflex had been forgotten (though I was relieved to hear that even one as prolific as Roman Fox has shot dozens of photos without checking he hadn't nudged the exposure. I had put in some adjustments over the winter that looked okay indoors, but outdoors produced colours that were way over-saturated. Like this...



Fortunately I have never claimed to be a pro. Anyway we can "fix in post", right? This one is the result of un-saturating the colours so that it looks like a slightly faded film photo from the 1970's.

It's also a fine example of the people-sitting-at-the-top-of-a-hill-looking-into-the-distance picture, and proves that my compositional chops were not entirely lost.

(PS: Yeah, I know, it's a big wide world out there and there's a lot happening. However, I am not going to spend any energy trying to make sense of it, because it makes no sense. I told you back in 2020 that British society had already collapsed, not that it was about to. Should you be in any doubt that the UK is now a joke, I give you the state of our Navy; a population claiming for imaginary disabilities in the millions; our borders, which are porous to anyone without a passport but with a dinghy; our politicians, who only took the job on the basis that all the real work would be done by "experts", judges and civil servants, and our civil servants, who only took their jobs on the basis that the real decisions would be made in Brussells. David Davis is much better at this stuff than I could ever be. Read him.)

Millennium Bridge

I'm not sure why I like this. Maybe because the perspective feels wonky? What with Blackfriars Bridge seeming underneath the Millennium Bridge. And all those people standing on something that looks unsupported?

London Bridge Concourse

So this week's sunny day was Monday, and on my way to lunch, I went to London Bridge and then down and across Tower Bridge. Nice walk, even if the wind was chilly halfway across Tower Bridge. Anyway... London Bridge has a new clock for people to meet under, there's an obligatory Passenger Asleep On A Bench, and the People On The Escalator shot may be one of my favourites from this year already. The last two are the kind of architectural angle-y shots I like. Despite its heavy use over quite a few years, the concourse is still clean and shiny. Somebody cares, or maybe somebody else wrote it into the contract.

Autumn

 

South Bank Sunny Monday Autumn Morning

 

The title speaks for the photos. One day I will take black-and-white photos in the rain under a dark grey sky and then I will be a real photographer.

The One With People Coming Out Of A Shadow Under A Bridge

Another street photography favourite, although the pros might have taken it more squarely. I like the way all the lines don't quite line up. And the red bit.

Greenland Dock

 

The station for Greenland Dock is Surrey Quays, but they don't signpost it at the station in case, you know, the wrong kind of people go there. It was one of the first Docklands developments, as the low-rise and human scale (as the architects say) of the buildings shows. It was the first of the London docks to be built (as opposed to riverside wharves) (more details here) and it's pretty darn large. The Royals are larger, but some of the Isle of Dogs docks are smaller. On a sunny day, it's a pleasant place to walk around, with houseboats...

and little feature places as well.

When you get to the Thames, turn right and start walking along the Thames Path towards London Bridge. It's a nice stroll.

Charlton House

 Most of it is open to the public, but sadly there's no historic furniture, art or decoration there. It's a ten-minute walk up the hill from Charlton station, and worth an amble around the park, a cup of coffee and slice of Victoria cake in the cafe. 

Negative Space, London Bridge Station

All the Kool Photographers talk about using "negative space", but I always thought it meant they exposed those part of the picture incorrectly. But this one seems to work.

 

Bleak Mid-Winter Suburbia

It's not enough to get out for a daily walk. The walk needs to be pleasant, or at least neutral, to look at. Hedges on country lanes, with an occasional glimpse across a valley, or perhaps a path across a flat moor, or maybe even along a canal. Not round the outside of an industrial estate. But we make do and carry on.

 

One Wall of the Walled Garden, Golders Hill Park

 

Golders Hill Park is a couple of stops up the hill from the station. It's well worth the visit.

Highgate Road with Lens Flare

When the light is bright and the air is clear, almost anything is photogenic. 

Well, maybe not the entrance to Archway station. Some things can't be made to look pretty.

I took this in the approved style, by holding the camera at arm's length with one hand, framing in the viewer. Came out nice.

Hampstead Heath North Side

Until the other day I had never walked on the part of Hampstead Heath that is across Spaniards Lane from the main part of the Heath. Neither are really '"heaths", more like "untended forests" with paths that can turn I've-just-got-a-load-of-mud-on-my-shoes within a couple of steps. The sky was brilliant blue, the sun was brilliant yellow, and it was b****y cold.

I have joined the band of proper grown-up camera-owners, by trading in the 35mm lens I originally bought for the hard-to-obtain 27mm pancake lens that makes the X-E4 almost a pocket camera. It's 40mm-equivalent, which gives just a slightly wider field of view than the 35mm (53mm equivalent) but does not go all fish-eye.

Cuba Street, Isle of Dogs

Cuba Street is a narrow road that runs from the old West India Pier into the Isle of Dogs. This is that view.

It did not look like that when I was using the RiverBus to get there more than thirty years ago. It was all pretty derelict. The cream building on the corner was there then, but it was an old-school pub and I think scruffier. Go to the river end of Cuba Street, and look up what is known in the trade as the Limehouse Reach, and that view has not changed for almost forty years. Which is probably why I find it so restful(!). 

Autumn in Regent's Park

No further comment needed.

Canary Wharf - Security

I think the area within the North and South Colonnades, which has the the Underground station in the middle, is patrolled by security officers and may well be owned by the Canary Wharf people, and therefore private land. I was approached by a friendly security officer, who explained that their concern was people taking photographs of entrances to buildings, security camera locations and the like. We parted with a handshake and I carried on.

He meant an entrance like this...

Outside that are I didn't see any security at all. I suspect the use of a tripod within that area requires permission from the Estate management.

Canary Wharf Towers

I went to Canary Wharf the other week. The first developer in there was a Canadian firm called Olympia and York. In Canada, it's so darn cold and the snow is so darn deep that the shopping centres of many larger towns are actually built underground. Not all of them, but certainly Toronto, where O&Y came from. The O&Y buildings have their shops below ground, and may other developers have followed this lead of doing nothing at street level. 

Another way of saying this is that there is no "street" at street level in Canary Wharf. "Street" should mean shops, cafes, restaurants, cars, taxis, buses, signs, lights, fly-posted adverts, and so on. At ground level. Flats, offices and light industrial ateliers from the first floor up. There are a few coffee and food trucks and some buses, but that's about it. 

The City of London is an industrial estate, but it has a variety of architectural styles and various eateries and drinkeries at street level - while Cheapside and Princes Street / Moorgate have actual recognisable retail outlets. But Canary Wharf is just a collection of high towers with some "architectural" gimmicks that only ever looked decorative in the architect's sketches. Metal-and-glass is metal-and-glass no matter how you angle it - it does not have the texture of stone or brick.

The Looming Walkie-Talkie, Fenchurch Street

 

It looks like some weird Photoshopping, but it is what the camera sees. It looks just like that.