Fujinon XF 35mm f1.4 Lens

 Three days ago I bit the bullet and purchased my first Fujinon XF series lens.
Up until then I had only used adapted vintage Pentax lenses. After much review and forum reading I decided on the 35mm f1.4, it having an equivalent field of view as a 52mm lens in 35mm film format and "fast" at f1.4, I considered it the best choice for general walk around and low light.
It has an aperture ring with 1/3 f stop positions so you can fine tune your aperture. The pictures are stunning.

• Close Focus:  28cm
• Iris:                   7 blades
• Contruction:    8 elements in 6 groups (includes 1 aspherical element)
• Weight:            187gm

I did a very quick "Coma" test last night in the back yard. It was clear, but of course "light polluted" I can say at f 2.0 there is almost no coma, just a little bit which is fantastic, I would never get that result on a fast Vintage lens. I'm very excited about our next trip to some dark skies.
more to follow.

It turns out the skies around Blairgowrie on the Mornington Peninsular are pretty good for Astrophotography. The following picture is a stack of 15 images aligned and stacked using "Hugin" and "Enfuse" and post-processed using "Gimp" all under "Linux" "Ubuntu". Software Details Here.

Southern Cross Region, Milky Way

Blairgowrie Victoria Australia 13/3/2015
38° 21' 38.0988'' S  144° 46' 30.4968'' E

Fujifilm XT-1 Fujinon 35mm f1.4 @ f2.0 14 X 5 second exposures ASA 6400

Fixed tripod. Rotated 90 degrees right.

Whilst this lens may not have been designed for close up work, you can seen from the following pictures that it does a pretty good job of it.
With a bit of cropping you could be excused for thinking it was a macro lens.

A Butterfly in the Back Garden

Fujinon XF 35mm f1.4 @ F2.8 200asa

Praying Mantis. XF 35 f1.4 @ f2

Fujinon XF 35mm 1.4 @ f2 400asa 

Back Yard Rose and Aphid. Fujinon XF 35mm @f2

Fujinon 35m F1.4 @ F5.6

Local Park

Fuji XT-1 Vintage Lens Adapters

There are a plethora of different lens adapters available for Fuji X series cameras.
The following picture shows some of mine, you'll also notice the "Quick Release" tripod adapter, sometimes called an "L" bracket.

All of the these fittings except the L bracket were purchased for under $A20.00 from Chinese suppliers selling on "Ebay" 
The quality of the "CNC" machining is very high, in fact close to perfect, as is the finish.
The only issue is the bayonet part that suits the vintage lens, this does seem to vary in quality, so pay a little extra for this type. I have one labeled "Kiwi Fotos" for my Pentax K lenses it's very well made throughout. The one in this picture is not as good, but works fine.

The "M42" thread adapter is spot on for most M42 lenses. Big note though some lenses and the Takumar 50mm f1.4 would be one of them, bottom out on the adapter before reaching infinity. I solved this by "turning" away some of the flange that follows the threads, easy for me as I have a lathe.
With this adapter you can loosen three Hex screws and rotate the threaded section so the lens lines up properly, which is nice.

The L mount bracket fits perfectly no complaints at all.

Cameras, Adapters & Infinity Focus

I'm not sure where to start.

My experience only covers Takumar M42 and Pentax K and M series lenses, there we go, I've started.
Whenever an adapter is being used there is a good chance that infinity focus will either be short or long, sometimes spot on.
You can open the proverbial "can of worms" when you start adjusting a lenses infinity stop position. If you intend to use the lens on more than one camera, it needs to work on all of them.

I've spend hours upon hours adjusting M42 lenses to suit my old Pentax k100d. I prefered the mechanical attributes of the "flange" type adapter rather than the genuine design.
The Flange type moves the lens forward by the flange thickness, meaning you wont reach infinity.

The following pictures show how the adjustment is done.
This procedure does not apply to at least the Takumar 200mm f4 Tele. it is the easiest to adjust with three screws around the outside of the focus barrel.

You first need to find something, eg a bottle top that will touch the "name ring" but clear the threads when wrapped with a rubber glove. An M42 rear cap works well.

Then hold the lens in one hand twist the name ring with the other counter clockwise. If its been off before it will turn easily, if not it won't. 
You may need to push and twist quite hard.

This is what should happen, once it's loose you can just spin it off with your gloved finger, this is when you find out if the filter threads are damaged.

There are three screws that hold the filter ring on, one of them is shown on the left pic, not the ones in the cutout.
These are often cross head screws in the later Pentax lenses, you need to equip yourself with various small screwdrivers and sometimes grind ones to fit. undo these three and the lens nose lifts away.
To make life difficult these screws often have some locking vanish on them, if so, try a tiny bit of Nail polish remover, or acetone. Sometimes a tap on the end of the screw driver will crack the varnish, these can be tricky. If you have no affinity with tools best not to try this.

Now you can see three more screws. The right hand picture shows one of them screwed into the brass helli-coil at the bottom.
Loosen all three the focus ring will now be loose. Now with a screw driver push the screw and the helli-coil in the direction of infinity, anti clockwise from the front I think, just a few mm then "nip" up one of the screws just a little bit and test, see if you can focus past infinity.
Open your aperture, adjust for perfect focus on something far away, loosen the screw you nipped up rotate the focus ring to point to the infinity mark, nip up all three screws, and you should be good to go.

Another factor is depth of field, with the lens stopped down it may reach infinity, but for me I want to be at focus at the "fast" end of things.

When doing Astrophotography work with my old Pentax camera I could not focus in real time, I had to trust the infinity stop, hence all my mucking around.


With my XT-1 Mirror-Less camera the adapter I use deliberately allows focus past infinity. I've come to realise that being able to "rock" in and out of focus is probably better than aiming for perfect focus when hitting the infinity stop.

It also has a tilting rear display. I don't normally use this display as I like viewfinders. For Astrophotography though, it's fantastic for real time positioning and focusing with the camera pointed skyward.