As a photographer I suffer from a mild case of GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome. The good people at Fujifilm bring out so new product and I decide I need it - thankfully at this point my illness is restricted mainly to lens which don't tend to lose value the way that camera bodies do.

So Fujifilm bought out the 16-80mm zoom lens (this is a 24 to 120mm equivalent on full frame) recently which is smallish, lightwieght(ish) and is a great 'catch-all' lens, so I sold mny 18-135mm fuji lens (for the same price I bought it for 2 years ago) and traded up.

Each time you get a new lens you need to give it a test run to see what it performs like, so I headed out today for a quick zip around the city, it's very hazy in Melbourne at the moment due to the bushfires further afield in Victoria so the light is terrible, so there was a little bit of outside but I also visited the newly reopened State library of Victoria for some interiors.

So let's have a look at what see can do....

The length is useful for street photography, although i does make you a little hazy. this was a very quick snap from a bit of a distance - 108mm, F7.1 1/125mm ISO 250

This is the haziness I'm taking about with a longer lens I stayed at 120mm on this when I should have got closer, also I should have seperated the background more by stopping right down to F4 instead of the F8 I used - It might be too easy to catch-all with this lens that I need to concentrate a little more.

At the wide end of the focal lens is always going to be more useful - this at 16mm, 24mm full frame equivalent and you get most of the scene in the famous dome of the library, the people on the floor and half the dome 6 or so stories up.

And now time to lot a two of this len's party pieces, first macro, luckily there were unattended chess boards at the library, complete with some great lighting, I was about 35cm away from the piece, at 73mm (full frame) F6.4 and 1/60

An if you thought that last shot was clear for 1/60 shutter speed, you'll like this one, not a great shot as my wife was just annoyed with me pointing a camera at here, but I was testing the Image stabilisation, supposedly 6 stops, meaning you should be able to handhold the camera down to 1/4 of a second and still get sharp shots which I can report you can - get for low light situations.

It's early days but I have to say I'm pretty impressed with this lens, as with everything it'll take me bit to get used to it, but it an amazing piece of glass, as most fujifilm lens are.