Mueller Architecture – Austin, Texas
Mueller is a mix-used development just east of Interstate 35 in Central Austin. Once the location for Austin’s municipal airport, it has grown steadily for over twenty years. The commercial sector features restaurants, offices, and apartments surrounded by dense build-out of compact single-family homes — the local downtown area sports desirable, photo-worthy modern architecture, especially at night.
As I indicated yesterday, I was testing my newly acquired Fuji 16-80mm f4 lens at night, my single-lens solution to an upcoming European trip. How good was the image quality? How much could I push the in-lens image stabilization? I wanted to find out its limitation and practice with the lens before my big trip.
All four photos in this post are at a 24mm equivalent and with a 1/4 second shutter speed. My tests indicated an extremely capable stabilization system that counteracted the slow f4 aperture — at least for scenes with limited movement.
This bar was the darkest scene. Even with a very slow shutter, I needed ISO 2000. However, I felt confident that this all-purpose travel lens would work adequately at night.
I shot this last photo with a negative two stops to preserve the subtle light detail. At ISO 200, post-processing allowed for a clean brightening of shadows, creating a high-quality image. There were limitations, and an f2.8 aperture would allow for better low-light imagery. However, 16-80mm, because of the maximum f4, is compact and very travel friendly. Fujifilm struck the right balance with this lens.
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4 thoughts on “Mueller Architecture at Night”
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Hi there. Trying to solve the same problem for mysef, but I am going to use an X-E4 so the image stabilization from the lens is important.
Was the tamron 17-70 an alternative with its f/2,8 or size and versatility won in the end?
Hi Alf, honestly, I didn’t look at the Tamron 17-70mm.
Analyzing it now, I prefer the Fuji because it’s a bit wider and while only an f4, the lens is smaller. I want to optimize for traveling light.
I think it depends on your primary purpose. If you want a general purpose lens but not for travel and might want to make portraits, the Tamron with f2.8 sounds like a versatile lens.
Thank you – I’d love to have the wider aperture as I do environmental portraits sometimes (more the “people doing their thing” than the posed ones, maybe the f/4 can work for those). I’ll have to compare sizes and weights.
Hi Alf, the Sigma at 17mm has a 25.5mm full frame equivalent which is pretty wide for portraits. I think it can also work for your environmental portraits and the f2.8 aperture will allow for more background blurring.