A Fountain’s Jet

I took this shot with a Viltrox AF 56/1,4 XF at full aperture. The focus reacted swiftly, and the colours’ rendition is pretty accurate. There is minimal colour fringing. However, it is more likely caused by air bubbles rather than by the lens itself. Like its bigger sibling, the AF 85/1,8 XF, this lens is excellent.

Photographing water at f/1.4 is, in many ways, an exercise in precision gambling. The Viltrox AF 56mm f/1.4 XF, mounted on the Fuji X-T3, gave me a razor-thin depth of field to work with. At this aperture, there’s no room for hesitation – you either nail the plane of focus or lose the subject to a wash of blur.

I crouched low, letting the lens frame the fountain’s jet almost as if it were a portrait. The central burst is where all the critical sharpness lives: droplets suspended in mid-air, edges crisp enough to feel tangible. The two background jets dissolve into soft, buttery bokeh, a visual echo that hints at depth without pulling the eye away from the main subject.

Shooting wide open in bright daylight is always a dance with exposure. I kept the shutter speed high to freeze the water’s intricate shapes and avoided blowing out the highlights – no small feat when sunlight hits clear water head-on. The X-T3’s dynamic range helped me hold detail in both the luminous spray and the shadowed pavement, allowing the golden-brown texture beneath the water to act as a warm counterpoint to the stark whites of the jets.

Technically, the lens did what I hoped for: rendering the in-focus areas with a pleasing sharpness, while its character at f/1.4 created a smooth, unintrusive background melt. The separation between subject and background is dramatic, almost giving the water a sculptural presence. It’s a study in fleeting form, caught with the precision only possible when glass, light, and timing align for just long enough.