To further test the Pergear 12mm f2’s capabilities and collect more sample photos for the upcoming review, I took this little guy out for some night street HDR shooting with a tripod in Fukuoka, Japan.
This lens is very interesting and fun for the price. I found it doesn’t perform great with regards to flaring and shooting into the sun when compared to the Rokinon 12mm that costs more than twice as much ( so not amazing for landscape work ). Still, this Pergear lens has some nice sun-star effects, which could make it a bit more interesting for night cityscapes where lighting conditions aren’t as harsh.
For these shots, I went down to the Tenjin area of Fukuoka, Japan, with a tripod. I just shot JPG because I like the HDR effects that you can get from the Fujifilm X-T3. I’ve just found this to be a bit quicker than dealing with RAWs.
Typically if I was shooting for prints or something fancy, I would shoot RAW with exposure brackets +-2EV at ISO 100, but since I was just shooting randomly for fun, and kinda hanging out, RAW+JPG was fine.
Hopefully, Fujifilm adopts HEIC for their next-generation cameras ( like Canon ) so we can at least get 10-bit images with their baked-in looks.
I threw some of my presets on top of the JPG effect the camera created based on Classic Chrome with a warmer WB shift to color these. It worked out well.
I also added some Grain after pumping the Texture just a little in Lightroom. Since there was a little bit of noise from shooting at ISO 640, this kind of masks, the noise by making the images feel like they have a little bit of grit.
I also used the Transform tool to straighten things out for some of these shots. In others, I left them alone because I liked the warped perspective from using the ultra-wide lens.
When shooting JPG with Fujifilm cameras, I’ve found that you need to turn noise reduction way down because it tends to eat fine details.
Pergear 12mm f2 HDR Samples | Fukuoka Japan
See more micro four-thirds lenses, Fujifilm third-party Lenses, or Sony APS-C third-party Lenses by Pergear.
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