I've been mentally drafting something profound and exhaustive to write about my activity and situation in the world of music, but am still wrestling with how to avoid seeming sanctimonious and too personally divulgent. I may end up not writing it, but for now, I want to spray the reader with my praise for the 7artisans 12mm f/2.8 ultra-wide-angle lens, which I have for the Fujifilm X system cameras. This yields the full-frame equivalent angle of view of a 15mm lens on the APS-C sensor, and I find its images nicely contrasty and sharp. Moreover, however, this lens is as rectilinear as one would expect of a lens costing several times as much. I know, there are similar models with this focal length by other Chinese manufacturers (some of whom may be one and the same, re-branded), but I'm sold on this one. I had gone through two of them when I was using Panasonic cameras (24mm equivalent on M4/3 sensor), and this is my second or third copy for Fuji X mount. At one time, the Fuji XF 10-24mm lens passed through my hands, but I've kept returning to the 7artisans 12mm. Yeah, it has soft corners, but so does the Fuji 10-24. Any optical formula with this width of view is going to. Also inevitable is some vignetting (darkening at the corners), but this lens has a minimal amount of that. (The Fuji 10-24's conspicuous natural vignetting is cleaned-up by in-camera software that performs corrections on Fuji's XF lenses.) This is the lens to carry around and suck it all in, and worry about perspective-shifting later on.
Some images shot with this lens, f/8 at 400 ISO:
