Adding a Fuji 150-600mm lens to the collection

Wildlife photography has always drawn me in, but I’ve never had a super telephoto lens to really be able to capture the images I’ve wanted too.  The Fuji 70-300mm telephoto is a great compact piece of kit, but I’ve longed for more reach.  So after saving up, the Fuji 150-600mm f/5.6-8 R LM OIS WR lens was ordered.

 

The lens arrived and it is quite large, but surprisingly lightweight.  All zooming is internal, which is great for balance and weather resistance.  The focus is quick and quiet, the image stabilization is good enough to get handheld shots at 1/125 at a full 600mm zoom and everything feels premium about it.

I was worried about the f/8 aperture at the long end, but in use, it isn’t that much of a problem.  Sure it’s no f/4 prime, but it’s also much smaller, lighter and less expensive.  This lens combined with the new AF algorithms and subject detection on the X-T5 work very well.  You still have to be aware of how you set up the camera, the lighting and some quirks with the system, but this is leaps ahead of my older Fuji bodies.

This lens is such a welcome addition to my kit.  Even though it’s a large lens, I want to carry it everywhere.  It will not fit in any of my usual shoulder bags or even my one small camera backpack, so I also bought a Mindshift Backlight 18l bag to haul it around in.  That fits it wonderfully.

It was the time of the month for a full moon and with this lens, I wanted to try to catch a ‘moonrise’ over a local mountain ridge.  I’ve tried numerous times before, but the skies never cooperated.  Thankfully, on this night, they did.

So far, the Fuji 150-600mm is performing great and is giving me options to shoot that I never had before.