As a fortieth birthday present to myself I upgraded my trusty Fujinon XF55-200mmF3.5-4.8 lens to the New Lens: Fujinon XF 50-140mm F2.8 – Fuji’s equivalent of a 70-200mm f2.8 lens, aka the standard sports photography lens. It is a bump up from a good consumer grade lens to pro grade lens, albeit with less reach. The new lens had been on my radar for a while, but it was only when testing the Fuji X-H2S camera body that I decided I should prioritise a lens upgrade. I had planned to call in at my local camera shop, LCE in Leamnington Spa, and buy the lens on my birthday, but got a good Black Friday deal from LCE online, the week before, so got it a bit early.
With everything else going on, I did not get much of a chance to test the lens, only a few walks in the local woods, but managed to get to the second round of the Racers Guild Winter Series at Cannock Chase to put the lens through its paces.
Mountain biking in December in the UK is cold, wet and muddy, an added complication is that it also gets dark mid afternoon, which is not great for photography. Driving up to Cannock Chase it the weather was not too cold, but it was the heaviest rain I have driven through in my MR2 Roadster for a long time. It was still raining heavily when I parked up, so I waited until it had stopped, before getting out of the car, donning my waterproofs and heading to the track. As I was late getting to the track the best angles had already been claimed by other photographers, so I was somewhat restricted in where I could shoot from. I also did not want to walk too far down the track, as I knew I would have to make a quick exist due to other commitments later in the afternoon.
As the riders came down for their first timed runs, I lined up a shot to catch them splashing through a puddle, which worked a bit too well, both the camera and I got splashed with muddy water – what a way to christen a new lens. Fortunately it is weather sealed. As the afternoon drew on the light got darker – I was definitely glad of the extra light from the wider aperture of new lens, I would have really struggled to shoot this race with my old XF55-200mmF3.5-4.8
The other area where I noticed an improvement was the autofocus. I do not know if it was the extra light getting to the sensor, or the faster focus motors, or maybe both, but the autofocus felt like it was on a par with the X-H2s and XF55-200mmF3.5-4.8 combination I used at the first round of the winter series. Athough this was only one race, so I need to shoot some more to get a better feel for it.
The last rider down the hill got the biggest cheers – Santa Claus going the extra mile to test the 2023 crop of kids bikes!