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I’ve used just a small portion of the lenses available for the Fuji X-system, but I wanted to share a few thoughts for those interested on the lenses I have tried.

XF 23mm f/1.4 R

This is the widest lens I have, and also one of the biggest. The pros of the lens for me are:

• Fantastically sharp.
• The manual focus ring, with distance gauge, is fantastic.
• The focus seems fastest of all my lenses.

The biggest con is that the lens is truly big. When on my X-E2 the camera does not sit flat, as the lens diameter lifts the front of the camera up. The weight isn’t that big of an issue, but it is just physically large.

The large size does mean that you get a beefy set of adjustment rings, but it is by no means a compact lens.

Overall though, my favorite lens and the classic 35mm focal length on the X-system.

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XF 27mm f/2.8

This is the slowest lens I own, but it is also tiny in comparison to all the lenses, as it is a ‘pancake’ lens design. This is like a slower aperture, faster focusing, Fujifilm equivalent of the Panasonic 20mm f/1.7 that everyone loves on the micro four-thirds system.

The only reason I own this lens is because it makes my entire camera setup easy to carry around. It’s interesting to note that Photozone.de loves the optics of the lens — I just am not enamored with the lack of aperture ring and the focal length is a bit odd (just like the Panasonic lens).

The size, and relatively low cost, is why you own this lens.

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XF 35mm f/1.4 R

This is probably the most popular lens (outside of the kit lenses) on the Fujifilm system. It provides the classic 50mm focal length on the X-system. It is fast. It is tack sharp. It is small.

This is truly the ideal lens for the X-E2 and it feels made for the camera. Truly fantastic. I have nothing but great things to say about this lens, but the lens hood, I hate the lens hood. It’s this odd metal hood that many love, but makes the traditional lens cap unusable when on, instead requiring use of a hood cap — I find that very annoying.

If you want to get started with primes, this should be at, or near, the top of the list.

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18-55mm f/2.8-4 R LM OIS

I rented this lens and was extremely impressed — as many told me I would be. I typically don’t like zoom lenses (more on that in a bit), but this is a truly good lens no matter how you look at it.

It is sharp, has optical image stabilization, and a decent aperture range for a zoom lens. Having said all that, I am glad I rented the lens and did not buy it. The cons are just to great for me on the lens:

• The zoom ring was too fidgety for me.
• The lens was too heavy (though I didn’t think too big).
• I like that there is an aperture ring, but it is more like a programmable dial as it is not marked out for the apertures. (That’s understandable given that the max aperture is variable, but it doesn’t quite feel right in the Fujifilm ethos — just as the 27mm feels odd too.)

I would happily own this lens, but only if I bought it as part of the kit — otherwise I wouldn’t bother because I think the stand alone price is a bit high for the lens. Having said that, it’s the best zoom on the X-system.

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Primes versus Zooms

I won’t dive too much into this debate, because it’s a big one, but I will note a few of my personal feelings on this — since this is something I struggled to understand initially too.

I fell in love with primes when I got the Canon 50mm 1.4 — from then on I was sold on primes. I just like prime lenses better now.

Primes can be faster, and have less distortion (operative word there being can). I used to be big into zoom lenses, but I find them more challenging to work with now then I do prime lenses. (Though more convenient.)

Instead of standing in one spot and playing with the focal length, I find myself actively exploring to find new angles and shots. I pay less attention to the camera, and more attention to the view — to me that is worth going with primes alone.

Of the above lens choices, the real decision is if you want the 35mm focal length (the 23mm Fuji) or the 50mm focal length (the 35mm Fuji, confusing, I know). The answer to which is highly personal, but I think I’m now a convert from the 50mm focal length, to the 35mm length. Luckily I have both, but man it’s a tough call.

I don’t recall what I took in my bag the first time to the hospital when we had Sloane, but I did try to pay a little more attention the second time around. There’s tons of advice for what mothers should pack, but what about the dad? The first thing you need to know is that labor, for the father, is boring — very boring.

With that in mind, here’s what I actually used this time around, what I needed, and what I packed but didn’t touch. I am not posting this to tell you what to pack, just to offer: “oh yeah” type stuff.

What I Used

• Camera: I packed the Fuji X-E2, and used the crap out of it.
• 35 f/1.4 R Lens
• 23 f/1.4 R Lens
• Joby Gorillapod (I knew the hospital offered a great view of downtown, so I brought that for some long exposures.)
• Pepsi: Yeah, you’ll want to pack some caffeine so you don’t have to go hunting for it.
• iPad
• iPhone
• Chargers for the iOS devices.
• Snacks: Granola bars, candy, anything that kept my hands clean and provided me with something to eat (i.e. no Doritos).
• Tissues: Most hospitals will have them, but still, I have nasal issues.
• Toothbrush & Toothpaste
• Gum/Mints

What I Needed, But Didn’t Have

• Pen: I forgot one, and man is there a lot of things to fill out and sign.
• More water: I only packed a liter, that wasn’t enough. It’s readily available, but the point is to bring it so that you can focus on the one in labor.
• More tissues.
• Slippers: my feet got really swollen and tired, but who wants to walk on hospital floors in their socks? Not me. Slippers would have been great. Really great.
• CP Filter: for the long exposure. I meant to pack it, but forgot it.

What I Packed, But Didn’t Use

• Change of clothes. Had we been there longer I would have used them.
• Battery-based chargers for my devices. Just didn’t need them.
• 18-55 f/2.8-4 lens: too slow.
• 27mm f/2.8: too slow
• Full toiletries bag.
• Cash: for some reason I remember needing it the last time, but I really didn’t need it at all this time.

The first time I packed a backpack. This time I went with a small duffle bag: it was a bit too small. I’d advise packing something with extra room for the trip home (mine was stuffed to the brim from the get go).

Snow forecasts in Washington state are pretty horrible. I actually am not sure they have ever accurately predicted snowfalls. Anyways, my favorite weather blogger, Cliff Mass posted a couple of articles on why forecasting is really hard sometimes. A bit weather-nerdy, but insightful.

On the missed Washington snow forecasts:

Weak disturbances that develop on fronts, or frontal waves, are relatively small scale, are often shallow, and are very difficult to forecast correctly even over land. But in this case, it is even harder because they are forming and evolving over the ocean where our ability to detect and describe small-scale structures are not as good. And the snow events this week have all been associated with such frontal waves and to forecast the snow correctly requires getting their position, size, and motion exactly correct…something current weather prediction technology is still not adequate to deal with.

And on weather forecasting overall:

There are at least three reasons:

1. The description of the atmosphere, the starting point of the simulation called the initialization, is flawed.
2. The physics of the model, how basic processes like radiation, clouds and precipitation are described, are flawed.
3. The forecasting problem is not possible considering the inherent uncertainties of atmospheric flows and the tendency for errors to grow in time.

Good reads.

While I was on leave Editorially announced that they were shutting down. As Pat mentioned, this is a service that was used heavily on this site, and was quickly becoming universal among the editor-freelancer workflows. It was and is the best of the lot of services like it.

I was granted early access to the service, and loved the idea immediately, but I noted to the team at the time that it really should be a platform, not an app. In a longer post about the service I said:

But most of all I want it to act more like a service — for example, the way Github does. Wouldn’t it be great if writing apps could integrate Editorially support like they do with Dropbox? You pull down the latest version and it is checked out until you are done editing — then it is pushed back up for others to edit and review changes. You could write in your favorite app, but have the full power of collaboration. In my mind that is where these tools need to be heading and I’d post with exclamation points upon this vision being realized.

I think the web based nature is what killed Editorially, because I don’t know many writers who actually liked writing in Editorially. Almost everyone I knew wrote in their favorite app and copy and pasted in to Editorially — or just didn’t use Editorially because of that extra step.

Editorially should have been a platform.

We should have been able to open up Writer Pro, Byword, Ulysses, TextMate, whatever, and pulled down our documents, seen the changes, and edited the writing and sent it back to Editorially. The web view should have been there, but that should have been about as well used as Dropbox’s website is. In my opinion the focus of Editorially was too heavy on the app side, and not enough on the platform side.

Users should have been finding out about the service because all the good writing apps were suddenly including support for it. It’s a real shame the service is shutting down, but here, at The Brooks Review, we have already received recommendations for six other like services and I still hold out hope I will get the platform like service I desire.

The three Ps:

1. Being pooped on.
2. Being peed on.
3. Being puked on.

Perfectly normal for parents, and after the first few times it stops bugging you.

I stirred up some controversy on App.net today, but among this was an incredibly salient point. Before I get to that, a little context.

The conversation ((Or whatever you want to call it, I don’t care.)) was about Google and the topic of this conversation was “Evil”. You can now see why I was involved.

Anna Tarkov chimed in to say:

@duerig @benbrooks @jbouie I just want to chime in to say I agree. I think the way we use words is incredibly important. Language has meaning and we should be cautious. If Google is evil, if Microsoft is evil, etc, then “evil” ceases to mean anything.

I knew this. I knew this. And yet I forgot it. We all seem to have forgotten it. Perhaps because Google famously says “Don’t be evil” is their motto we feel free to use evil when we disagree with that Google does. Even that motto doesn’t mean we should lower the debate, and devalue the meaning of ’evil’, by applying it to a technology company that has yet to, and may never actually do, something truly worth calling evil.

Evil should be reserved for truly evil things, just as using the word “rape” should always be reserved for actual instances of rape. I’m glad to be reminded of this.