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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my 40 megapixel 2024 review of
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the very, very common and much beloved kit lens, the XF 18-55mm. This is an R-LMOIS lens
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This is a lens, obviously, that has been around for a while at this point, I think somewhere
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around 11 or 12 years, and thus it has been sold with many, many different cameras along
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the way and continues to be sold up until this point, though signs point towards it
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being replaced in the near future, if the rumors are to be believed
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Now this lens has more company than what it used to. It started off as the first of its
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kind as kind of a standard zoom, and it was joined by first the Fuji 16-55mm, which runs
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about $1,200. Then much later we got newer lenses like the Tamron 17-70mm f2.8 VC lens
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that's an optical stabilizer, and then the Sigma 18-50mm f2.8. Now the Sigma runs $549
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the Tamron $799, about $800. Now the pure retail for this kit lens is considerably higher
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than a lot of the competing kit lenses because it is a little bit more premium, and so the
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full retail pop for it is about $700 US, though it comes for as little as about $400 in kit
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Probably very few people have paid the full $700 for it because at this point you're going
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to get it, you're probably going to get it either in a kit or you're going to get it on the used market where you can get it for considerably cheaper. So the question is
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is this lens, is it still holding up at this point with modern standards and in particular
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the ultra high resolution that's available on Fuji cameras now, and that's that 40 megapixel
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X-Tran sensor that's found in cameras like my X-H2 here. So we're going to dive in and
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see how it holds up to these modern standards. Starting with taking a look at the build here
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Now this is a lens that has always felt more premium in terms of its build than what most
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kit lenses, which tend to be plastic fantastics. That's not the case here. This is built basically
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just like any of Fuji's other premium type lenses with a very, very few minor exceptions
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that we'll get to in just a moment. Now, if you don't speak Fuji, let's break down what all of those letters mean in the name of the lens. The R refers to ring or aperture ring
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and so it does have an aperture ring, though unlike a lot of other lenses, this doesn't
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actually have set clicks in terms of the designations of where the stops are. And so
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this is a variable aperture zoom, and so it's much harder to do that. And so what you've
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got here instead is a ring that will rotate endlessly. It is clicked along the way. There
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is no de-click option. The LM refers to the linear motor, which is the focus system here
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More on that in just a moment. The OIS refers to optical image stabilization. And so this
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makes it of the two kind of standard zooms, the 16 to 55 millimeter, and then this lens
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this is the one of the two that has an optical stabilizer. Now for a long time, that was
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a very big deal, a little bit less of a big deal at this point as Fuji has increasingly
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rolled out in body image stabilization in their cameras. And so I found in recent comparisons
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and using non-stabilized versus stabilized a lens like this side by side by side, frankly
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I didn't really notice the difference of the optical stabilizer, but your mileage
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may vary obviously depending on what camera you're using for it. Now, as far as some of
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the physical features here of these four different standard zooms that are available at the moment
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on Fuji X-mount, this is the shortest of all of them. It is six millimeters shorter than
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the Sigma, but it's a whopping 36 millimeters shorter than the 16 to 55 millimeter and even
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more so of the Tamron 17 to 70 millimeter, which is the longest of the bunch. The dimensions
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here are 65 millimeters in diameter by 70.4 millimeters in length. That's 2.56 inches
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by 2.77 inches. Upfront, we have a pretty common 58 millimeter front filter thread
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The weight here is 310 grams or about 11 ounces. So compared to some of these kit lenses that
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I've used in the past, the plastic Fantastics, that's a little bit heavier than most of them
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but it's only heavy in a very, very relative sense because overall the weight is still
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nice and light. And I think on most camera bodies, it's going to balance just fine. Obviously
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on a bigger body like my X-H2, it's no problem at all. Now, unfortunately it is the only
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one of these four zoom lenses that has a variable aperture. It goes from F2.8 to F4. And unfortunately
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as is pretty common with kit lenses, that aperture closes down fast. And so we actually
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only have a F2.8 for a couple of millimeters. By 20 millimeters, it closes to F3.2. By 30
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millimeters, it closes to F3.6. By 42 millimeters, we close to F4 where it remains up until 55
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millimeters. And so unfortunately you're going to have a fairly significant light gathering
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disadvantage relative to the other options on the platform. Something to consider if
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you want to shoot in low light. Now, Fuji has always offset that a little bit by this
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having an optical image stabilizer in it. And the image stabilizer, of course, it's
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not as fantastic as what modern lenses are because the technology obviously has improved
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over that period of time. But of course, having a stabilizer of some kind is a whole lot better
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than having no stabilizer of any kind. So even if you're, you know, there are lenses
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that are better than this in terms of the stabilization, it does get the job done. It's
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a little bit harder for me to test at this point. I did test it some on the X-T3 back
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when I did my original review of this lens. On the X-H2, you can't turn off one system
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independent of the other. So I can't turn off the in-body stabilization and keep the
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you know, in-lens stabilization on. So between the two of them, it does a great job. I can't
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really break down where one begins and the other ends, unfortunately. Now, unlike any
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of the other three options, this is the only lens to have no weather sealing of any kind
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not even a gasket at the lens mount. I would say it also has the poorest manual focus ring
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implementation of any of these. It's a pretty thin ring here at the front and there's only
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the tiniest little separation between the zoom ring and the manual focus ring. What
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you're going to find, particularly if you're using gloves, is it's not hard to grab one
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rather than the other. And so as far as the implementation, there are some very obvious
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stepping as you do manual focus. And so it's like you move focus in little chunks rather
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than a nice smooth gliding, kind of a true manual focus emulation. And so I didn't love
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manual focus on this lens at this point. It also unfortunately has the lowest magnification
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of any of these lenses. It will produce a maximum magnification of 0.15 times at 30
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centimeters, which is easily bested by some of the others, most notably the Sigma 18 to
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50 millimeter, which has a much higher magnification level on it. But beyond that, the build remains
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nice. I mean, Fuji has not really changed their design kind of ethos all that much over
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the last decade. And so this lens doesn't necessarily feel dated in terms of the design
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and the copy that I'm using, a loaner from Fuji Canada, thanks Fuji. It's probably been
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used a lot of times and it's holding up really well. It doesn't look much different than
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a retail copy. So kudos to this lens. I do think it is a well-made lens
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Now when it comes to autofocus, this lens on paper would seem to be great. It's got
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Fuji's linear motors. And so, I mean, that obviously is their more premium focus system
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but as I found comparing it to both the 16 to 55 millimeter and then also to either the
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Tamron 17 to 70 millimeter and then the Sigma 18 to 50 millimeter, this lens shows its age
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probably the most when it comes to the focus system. It is linear motor technology, yes
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but it's not fresh linear motor technology and it's gotten a lot better over the years
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So I found in a recent three-way comparison between the Sigma, the 16 to 55 and this lens
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for stills, I ranked this number three out of the group. I found that as you can see
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here that it had the least focus confidence, kind of some double clutching and pulsing
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there before it finally settles on focus and thus the speed is a little bit closer. I also
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found that it slowed down more relative to the others in dimmer light situations because
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remember, it has a slower maximum aperture at almost all focal lengths outside of 18
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to 20 millimeters. And so anything beyond that, it's going to have less light gathering
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potential and slow down a little bit more. And also I noted when doing my eye test that
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you'll notice there's a lot of jumping back and forth between the eyes. What that tells
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me is there's just less confidence. It's not locking onto something and just staying glued
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there unless you tell it to move to the other eye, which you do have the option of doing
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the fact that it's jumping back and forth, as you can see here, shows you that there
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is less confidence there than what is optimal at this stage. Remember, of course, this focus
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system was designed long before the idea of AI tracking eye detect was even conceived
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of. And so it stands to reason that newer lenses that are designed with that technology
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in mind do a little bit better in that regard. Now, when it comes to the video side of things
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it's a bit of a mixed bag. On the positive side, you can see here that focus pulls are
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really quite good. You can see that there's no real slowdown. It's a good rapid transition
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from one focus point to another. Now, when I switched to doing my hand test, I found
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that the overall pulls are not bad, but it wasn't always as responsive as say the 16
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to 55 millimeter in that I would move my hand away and there would be a kind of a pause
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before it reacted. So not quite as responsive as what I would like. The thing that is unfortunate
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here is that when you're trying to do static shots, you will see some pulsing, particularly
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if you have all points active, which is the way that I kind of prefer to shoot most of
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the time. I also noted when zooming in and out that you can see some visible warping
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along the side of the frame. That's something that's pretty common, unfortunately, on Fuji
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The 16 to 55 millimeter does better than what this lens does. The Sigma and the Tamron
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if anything, are worse in that regard, by the way. So overall, autofocus is a bit of
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a mixed bag for, you know, everyday shots, kind of real world shots. It did pretty good
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as long as the lighting was decent. Again, I did notice it slow down some in lower light
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situations, and I did notice sometimes a little less confidence on locking onto an eye than
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what I would like. Now, finally, let's talk about the image quality. And what I'll do
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is I'll give you a bit of an overview. And then if you want an optical deep dive on a
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40 megapixel sensor, stay tuned for that right after my conclusion in a few minutes
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The major disadvantage here relative to the other competitors we've already covered, and
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that is that there is a variable aperture. And so as you're going throughout the zoom
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range, you're going to get, you know, increasingly less light gathering potential. And unfortunately
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it's not like stopping a lens down. A lot of times if a lens has a maximum aperture
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say of f 2.8, you stop it down to f4. By f4, you're typically starting to see some visible
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improvements to image quality. That's not the case with the variable aperture zoom because
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you know, f4 on the telephoto end is still wide open. And so it doesn't have any advantage
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of stopping the aperture down. So in a few other metrics, when it comes to vignette and
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distortion, I found that there was some give and take between this and the 16 to 55 millimeter
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This has a little bit less distortion. There is a little bit of a very mild mustache pattern
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left behind, but it was only a plus 19 to correct on the wide end. And that's not amazingly
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good, but it's not bad and it's better than some of the other options. This needed a plus
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19. I found with 16 to 55, I needed a plus 22. With the Sigma, I needed an even greater
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plus 24. So it does well in that metric. Now it does have a little bit more vignette than
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what does the 16 to 55 millimeter, though less than the Sigma. I needed to correct for
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a little over two stops of vignette in the corner, wide open at f 2.8. I also found that
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when it comes to controlling chromatic aberrations, that this lens isn't quite as good as the
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16 to 55 millimeter, which is basically the tops of the four lenses, but it is better
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than what say the Sigma was in my comparative test. And you can see here that there is some
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fringing mostly after the plane of focus in this close comparison, but far less than the
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Sigma, for example, as you can see here. Now, when it comes to resolution, it is there that
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I feel like this lens really shows its age the most. I found in doing a lot of side-by-side
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tests that the 18 to 55 millimeter, it showed the least amount of contrast. Images just
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look less contrasted, have less pop to them compared to either of the other lenses that
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I did in this test. And so what I found is that you just, as you see, for example, side-by-side
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here in this shot, you can see that there's just kind of like the shadows are almost raised
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a bit because contrast just isn't as good. And what I found is that as I went throughout
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the zoom range on the telephoto end, it gets increasingly softer as you kind of go throughout
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that zoom range with some of the best performance at 18 millimeters, some of the worst performance
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at 50 millimeters and beyond. We'll look at that a little bit closer here in just a moment
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When it comes to color, that's something that I feel like Fuji's optical glass has always
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been very good. And of course, Fuji sensors have a nice color as well. I felt like this
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is still probably the one of the most significant strengths that if you're not pixel peeping
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this is still producing really nice looking images, particularly for, you know, travel
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type photos, you know, more landscape or street type shots. I felt like they looked nice and
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clean and I had this on a golf course. I got some really great looking shots where the
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colors captured are really, really nice from it. That's definitely a strength there
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When it comes to the bokeh quality, I found that this, the bokeh here is actually a little
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bit smoother than what is the 16 to 55 millimeter. I liked the Sigma a little bit better, but
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this was, had less busyness, less kind of onion or concentric circles going on in it
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But of course the problem is, is that you're going to produce less bokeh with this lens
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than any of the other lenses. For one thing, if you're trying to get in close, remember
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it has the lowest maximum magnification. And of course on the telephoto end, it has the
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smallest maximum aperture. So as a by-product, this is not necessarily always an easy lens
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to produce a lot of bokeh with. So it's not going to give you that pro look to that people
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are often looking for where the subject really stands out from the background. It's going
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to be very rare to be able to create that situation. Remember this is a variable aperture
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kit style lens. And so don't expect too much from it in the bokeh department
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So in conclusion, at this stage, I would say the primary reason to consider this lens
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is if you're getting it in kit and getting a reasonable price on it, or you find a good
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price on it used and you really need an optical image stabilizer. If neither one of those
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things are apply to you, I would say that you're better served at this stage doing one
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of two things. And that is either buying the Sigma 18 to 50 millimeter, which has a very
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similar form factor and is lighter still, and has better image quality, better autofocus
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basically better performance all throughout. And so, and it's also cheaper if you're just
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comparing MSRP. The other option is to wait. It is rumored that Fuji will soon be releasing
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a 16 to 50 millimeter F 2.8 to F 4.8 WR lens. So I believe it's going to be optimally superior
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I think the autofocus is going to be better and it's going to have weather sealing. And so obviously we don't know a lot of details about it. It's, it's rumored at this point
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but I would say that it's pretty clear that Fuji does have a replacement. This lens is
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old at this point. And so if you want to buy something right now, I would probably go for
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the 18 to 50 millimeter. This lens has served a lot of people well, and a lot of people
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have fondness for it. But I think the truth of the matter is, is it's a lens that seemed
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really high performing when the resolution level was 16 megapixels. It still seemed pretty
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good when it was 24 megapixels, less good when I first reviewed it at 26 megapixels
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on the first X-Trans sensor. And I was like, what's all the hype about? It wasn't as good
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as what I expected. And here on 40 megapixels, it's just, it's too much for an older lens
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It was never designed to resolve a sensor with that high of resolution. And so that's
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why I think a newer option or weighting is probably better for you. I hope this helps
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you out. You know, if you're looking at buying a lens, maybe on the used market or just coming
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into Fuji, hopefully this helps you to make a more informed buying decision. And if you
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look in the description down below, I do have linkage to a text review. There's buying
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links there. And if you want even more information, stay with me right now, and we'll dive into
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an optical deep, deep dive together
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So first of all, taking a quick look at vignette and distortion here on the wide end at 18
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millimeters, you can see that there's some obvious barrel distortion and some vignette
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though not a crazy amount of vignette. After some manual correction, you can see there's
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a little bit of that mustache pattern that is left though. It's not too bad. And of course
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the correction profile does a better job with it. Now, when it comes to longitudinal chromatic
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aberrations, we can see in this shot that if we jump in at a high resolution level
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you can see that there is just a little bit of fringing, a little bit of kind of bleeding
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with some fringing around the edge. Not too bad before the plane of focus, but there is
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some kind of greenish, green, blue fringing after that. As we look towards the bokeh highlights
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here, just a mild amount of fringing there, but nothing too bad. Likewise, in this shot
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as we take a look at some of the bright, shiny areas here, again, fringing is not looking
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too bad. And as you look at these lights, looking around the edge of them, not too bad
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And as we transition towards out of focus, again, very, very mild amounts of fringing
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but nothing too serious. So both of those metrics, this lens actually does fairly well
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And the big challenge for this lens is it was never designed with such a high resolution
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sensor in mind. And so if we do my modern test, 40 megapixels and at 200% magnification
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you can see here, looking at the center of the frame, while there is a decent amount of
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resolution that's there, you can see the contrast is quite low. There's lots of areas where there's
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kind of a little bit of a smear look to the textures. Mid-frame is much the same. Again
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a decent amount of resolution, but contrast is not great. And as we scroll throughout the image
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we can just see that at no place do the textures really pop. Corners, again, not bad. Again
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the sharpness profile across the frame is not bad, but the contrast just doesn't hold up on
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this high resolution sensor. And if we go over to the other side, you can see again
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just the contrast is not fantastic. Centering here doesn't look too bad all across the frame
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Now, if we compare this to a modern lens and the Sigma 18 to 50 millimeter, you can see just what
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that difference looks like. How much more contrast there is for the Sigma, just a lot more pop to all
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of those textures, a lot more detail. Let's look at the text here, just a lot more information
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and that's true here in the mid-frame. And if we pop down to the corners, it's the one place where
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I would say that the Fuji still holds up. It probably beats the corners for the Sigma by just
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a little bit. Stopping down to F4 does make an improvement. As you can see, increasing the
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contrast here in the center of the frame, less of an improvement in areas like the mid-frame and
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down into the corners. If anything, there's assumed to be a mild regression in the corner
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a bit more improvement from F4 to F5.6. And if we look down here in the corners
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we can see that the corner is a little bit improved though. Frankly, it looked better at
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F2.8. I would say there is a mild bit more improvement at F8 before diffraction starts
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to kick in. You can see just a little bit more contrast. By F11, you can see the image really
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starting to soften once again due to diffraction. And by the time you get to F22, which is minimum
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aperture here, the image is really, really soft. So if you compare 18 millimeters to 23 millimeters
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here on the right, we can see that by 23 millimeters, we've got a little bit more
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contrast in detail there. Maximum aperture has closed F3.2, but there is a little bit of
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improvement in the image quality. I would say the mid-frame here has a little bit better contrast
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as well. Likewise, down in the corners here, because this was good at F2.8 and a little bit
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worse at others, you can see it probably still has the tiniest bit of an edge at F2.8 relative
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to the 23 millimeter there at F3.2. Stopping down to F4 does give us a bit of a contrast boost in
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the center of the frame. In the mid-frame, there's also a little bit of a contrast boost. And down
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into the corners, again, we see an interesting thing. There's a bit more contrast, but like as
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we saw wide open, the detail in the corners actually regresses a little bit. Peak performance
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once again comes at F8. And you can see that the contrast and the detail is the best at F8
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Mid-frame is looking nice and crisp here. And down into the corners, you can see the corners
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are much improved. This is a pretty good performance here on this high resolution
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sensor. And so I would say that if you want best quality, shooting about F8 and somewhere in the
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middle of this range from 20 to 30 millimeters is going to give you your best results. Now
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we can see moving on to 35 millimeters that there's a bit of a regression in the center of
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the frame. Not so much in contrast, but more in just the basic resolution. And you can see these
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kind of the text here looks a little bit mushy. Even at F4, stopping down a bit, that's true. We
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can see that the mid-frame doesn't look quite as good. Corners are pretty decent, not too bad
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but we can see that overall, there's just not as much resolution in general. Once again, stopping
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down gives you some improvement and most at F8, though even at F8, it's not as sharp as what we
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saw at 23 millimeters. And mid-frame is looking pretty good at F8, not quite as good as at 23
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millimeters, but again, corners looking pretty good. F8 is definitely the sweet spot for this
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lens. And so if you're shooting at a high resolution, stopping down to F8 is going to
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give you the best results. Now, if we move on to the telephoto end of things here, maximum aperture
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is now F4, even stopped down to F5.6. So you can see the center results are really quite soft
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and the mid-frame is soft, and the corners now are also soft. We've been able to improve things
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by stopping down to F8 previously, but you can see now, even at F8, there's just not a lot of
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detail there. The lens is fairly disappointing on the telephoto end on a high resolution body
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Let's go to a real world result to kind of illustrate this. So we have got the Sigma
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on the right, the Fuji on the left, just 100% magnification here. We've looked in the center
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of the frame, kind of where peak performance should be. You can see how much better contrast
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the Sigma has relative to the Fuji. As we pan off towards the side of the frame, you can see that
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even off towards the edge here, the contrast and the detail is much better on the Sigma, whereas
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the Fuji just gets kind of soft and a little bit of mush there. Looking over on this side of the
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image, you can see that the contrast remains superior for the Sigma lens. We'll finish off
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by taking a look at a few real world images. Here's a shot here that shows that when you can
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get close to your subject, the bokeh is actually pretty decent. You can see in this that the
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geometry is not too bad, and moving towards the background, things are fairly soft. Colors remain
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nice and rich, definitely a strength here, and flare resistance is not perfect, but it's not bad
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either. This image stood out as looking really nice, kind of taking advantage of kind of peak
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performance from this lens at a wider focal length, and you can see that here at 18 millimeters that
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off throughout most of the image, the detail looks pretty good. The colors are really, really nice
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That's definitely a strength, and detail I think is acceptably good here with a little bit of
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softening towards the edge, but overall it looks fairly good with the lens stopped down. We can see
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if we look closer to the telephoto end, this is at about 43 millimeters that even stopped down a
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fair bit, that the image overall looks good, but you can see that as we get anywhere off right off
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the center, that there is a fair bit of softening towards the edge of the frame. Details are not
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really highly resolved, a little bit mushy through here. So again, this is a lens that
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you know a high resolution sensor like this is just a little too much to ask of it
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So thanks for sticking around to the very end. Thanks as always for watching. Have a great day
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and let the light in