Bali, Part III - Wide angle perspective

Using the 16 mm wide angle lens

At home I'd been hesitating and had nearly gone mad trying to select “the right gear” (i.e. camera & lenses) for this trip. On the one hand I like the comfort of a simple and light zoom lens, but I also wanted to bring along a prime (fix focus lense). Or two. One that made it to the backpack was the tiny 16 mm wide-angle lens (I'm talking APS-C, so it'd be the full frame equivalent of a 24 mm lens).

I mounted it for the flight, not knowing if I'd have a chance to take any shots from the window of the airplane, or at the airport. Since then, with a few exceptions, I've been using it nearly all the time.

I'm amazed with the ability of this little devil to handle street to landscape scenes. Because of its size it does not draw attention and it doesn't scare people so much. For landscape, ideal. For architecture, quite good, actually, I just need to be careful with the distortion at the edges. For portrait - not really, but great to show people in their natural place and surrounding.

It really manages to “pack in” a lot - horizontally or vertically - sometimes too much, I'm afraid. But this gets me thinking about the composition and the extra elements in the frame, which is a great exercise I would most probably not do with the zoom lens. Having to deal with lots in the frame keeps me busy and curious at the same time. I can't promise I'll be using it exclusively for the rest of the trip, but so far it's been a pleasure and I intend to keep on learning with it.

In case you're curious about the other “finalists”, they're the 23mm and the humble 18-55mm kit lens (which I like so much that I ended up buying it three times already, but that's a chapter of its own, and perhaps a topic for another post).

BTW, the lens I’m talking about is the Fujifilm XF16mm f/2.8.

Wishing you all good light! Cheers, Barnabas