You can usually spend a lot of money on more and more lenses as you progress as a photographer. But sometimes you forget the good things you have, like the kit lens you bought when you first bought into a camera brand. In my case it was the Fujifilm X series and the lens was their Fujinon XF18-55mmF2.8-4 R LM OIS. It is a really good lens and probably should not have had the “kit” nomenclature.

I purchased the lens along with the Fujifilm X-T1 in June of 2014. So I’ve had it 6 years. Lately it was mostly gathering dust on the shelf as I was using mostly Fujifilm’s profession lenses. I have the Fujinon XF16-55mmF2.8 R LM WR as my go to lens for everyday shooting. Nice and sharp, constant F2.8, basically the equivalent of the standard 24mm-70mm full frame lens.

Recently, I ended up getting a preview entry to Universal Studios just before they opened to the general public. A test run with annual pass holders. Didn’t have any real problems during the day.

Biggest question was which lens to bring as the whole trip was more about making pictures than riding rides. If I’m going to the parks and its going to get dark then I will probably take my 35mm F1.4 lens just for the extra stop of light. Since this was going to be all daylight, i would have normally taken the XF16-55mmF2.8. The drawback of that lens is by itself it weighs in at 1.4 pounds. The XF18-55mmF2.8-4 on the other hand is just 0.7 pounds. Since the trip would all be in daylight and wide open apertures were not going to be needed (even if the difference at full extension was F4 instead of F2.8). I was not planning on taking more than one lens so I put the XF18-55mmF2.8-4 on my X-T2 and ventured out in to the pandemic’ed world.

With the lighter lens it was a little easier to carry and I have to say produced some nice sharp images.

Above is a crop of the image and if you click and enlarge you will see that there is nothing wrong with the sharpness of that lens.

So maybe it’s time to revisit you “kit” lenses and see what they can still do.

The image was process in Capture One 20 Pro.