Stories From Lahore

Fujifilm has been producing some spectacular cameras and lenses lately. This is a comparison between Fujinon XF35mm 1.4 R and the more recent Fujinon XF 23mm F2 WR.  I have been using the Fujinon XF35mm 1.4 R for over a year and it is perhaps the best lens in my collection. It holds a legendary position among the Fujinon lenses and can be considered a classic lens. It is capable of producing spectacular images even when shot wide open. There is an ethereal quality to this lens, which is hard to define in technical terms. The only issue with the lens is lens chatter and slow auto-focus.   I mostly use it for street photography and I've produced an award-winning photograph using this lens. Therefore, the Fujinon XF35mm 1.4 R will always have a special place in my heart and camera-bag. However, the problem with the 35mm focal lens is that on a crop-sensor camera like Fujifilm XE-2 it gives a full-frame equivalent focal length of around 52mm. The 50mm focal lengt...

Shrines Under Attack As I write this article, ISIS claims responsibility for the terrorist attack on Lal Shahbaz Qaladar’ Sufi shrine. The attack claimed 83 lives. This was not the first attack on a Sufi shrine. Last year, an attack on Shah Noorani shrine resulted in 54 casualties. Many Pakistanis see a foreign ‘invisible’ hand orchestrating such attacks. The reality is more insidious:  Sufi shrines all over Pakistan have been under attack –physically and ideologically—for well over three decades. The narrative against Sufi shrine culture reverberates from all nooks and corners of modern urban Pakistan. The case for puritanical Islam keeps getting deafening. Many well-educated people find it hard to justify terrorist attacks on shrines but they don’t mind verbal assaults on folk-Islam practices. In fact, I personally know several people who have waged a war against Sufism. Organizations like the Tableeghi Jamaat and Jamaat UD Dawa work incessantly to weed-out the remnan...