Fujifilm Canada was kind enough to recently lend me both variations of their 56mm lenses, the XF 56mm f/1.2R and the XF 56mm f/1.2R APD. What the term "APD" stands for, is that variant's internal apodization filter, essentially an inbuilt radial ND filter that is darkest at the outer edge and feathers to clear part way in towards the centre. The effect this has, is to smooth out the transitional edges of the out-of-focus areas of an image and has its strongest effect wide open at f/1.2. I will go into more detail in a future blog entry that will also have some animations, comparing both 56mm lenses at various f-stops.
For now, if you click on the above image, you'll get a gallery of images of my colleague Nicole, all shot handheld at night with my X-E2 and the 56mm APD wide open at f/1.2. Hopefully this will give you a feel for how the lens will perform in some situations and whether or not the "look" is worth the price premium over the regular 56mm. If I was a regular portrait shooter, I would definitely have to strongly consider this lens since I feel it does perform very nicely in that capacity. Some more technical details of how the images were shot are in the gallery's introduction as well.
Finally, this gallery is the first of 2015 and will represent a slightly new look. All previous galleries linked from my blog basically appeared as though on my regular www.sublimephoto.com website, however the sad truth is that I have not updated the gallery link pages on my website since 2009! I am way behind and since I have been posting all my galleries in recent years as links from my blog, I thought it appropriate to have the galleries appear more integral to the blog, with the same banner, links back to the originating blog posting (the -back to post- link you'll see at the top centre of each gallery) and so on. Also there will be a link to allow you to see all galleries posted for the year the gallery you are currently in was posted, for example the "2015 Image Galleries". At some point I do plan on updating my website, but in reality it might all end up being integrated with either this blog, or perhaps even a newly designed one. For now, hopefully this is a slight improvement...
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