Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 WR Definitive Review | Ultra Wide, Ultra Small

Name: Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 WR Definitive Review | Ultra Wide, Ultra Small | Open Video
Uploaded: 2023-07-24T17:44:36+00:00
Duration: 20 min 45 s

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my definitive video review of Fuji's newest lens
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Fuji's newest lens allows you to go wider than ever without having to resort to the large and expensive 8 to 16 millimeter F2.8 zoom
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The new 8mm F3.5WR has a massive 120 degree angle of view, but only weighs 215 grams
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But does it have the performance to match the promise of this little lens
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This is a very compact lens. As you can see as it's mounted here on the new Fujifilm XS20
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It is 68 millimeters in diameter or 2.67 inches, and it has a 62 millimeter front filter thread
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So obviously you can use traditional filters without any kind of issue, which is certainly a bonus there
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The length is even smaller. It's only 52.8 millimeters or right over two inches
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And as noted, it weighs in at only 215 grams, that's 7.6 ounces
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Making this an incredibly compact, you know, palm-sized lens that you can carry all day long
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without really noting the weight at all. So obviously it's going to be a delightful lens for those that do a lot of, you know
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trekking, backpacking, that do a lot of their, you know, nature or landscape photography
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while needing to travel light. This is certainly going to suit that bill
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Now, if you don't speak Fuji, a couple of things in the name there. It is the 8mm F3.5, and so that speaks about maximum aperture of F3.5
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It has R in the name, which means that it has Fuji's typical approach to aperture
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having an aperture ring that is clicked, and there is a little red button at the side
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that allows you to switch into an automatic mode if you want to control it from a thing camera
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or to have the camera itself control aperture. And so pretty traditional approach there
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WR and the name refers to weather resistance. And while I haven't been able to find kind of a lens breakdown diagram showing where the seal points are
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there is a pretty typical performance that I've seen from Fuji lenses, so there's a gasket at the mount
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and there's going to be a couple of other seal points along either side of the various rings that are here as well
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The focus ring itself obviously is going to be fairly compact, but it moves along smoothly and with enough weight to where it actually feels
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It has a reasonable feel to it. It's not going to make you think you're using as ice lens
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but it all moves along and it feels fine. The build quality here is Fuji's typical
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It's made out of nice materials. The lens hood itself, there is some variation in the quality of Fuji's lens hood
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This one actually feels pretty decent to me. And it is shallow, as it tends to be the case, with wide angle lenses
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but it isn't as shallow as what I've seen before, and neither is it incredibly massive
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and so it goes on there with a nice definite click. does a little bit of a job in both protecting the front elements, but also in helping to shade
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the glass elements there at the front. So as noted, the build quality here is nice, but here we are
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in 2023, and this has been the formula that Fuji is used as far as its feature set for quite
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a long time, and I'm wondering if it's not time to add a few more features, a declick option
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something akin to Sony's Focus Hold button, which Canada is also starting to employ something
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similar, it would be nice to see just a little bit more upscale features starting to be
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introduced into these lenses, particularly since Fuji lenses do tend to operate at a little bit more
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of a premium price point. One thing that's not mind-blowing here is the minimum focus distance
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It is 18 centimeters, and it gives you a quite low 0.07 times magnification. So don't think that
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you're going to be doing any kind of macro work with this particular lens. Now, the letters that
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are missing in the name here are LM, which refers to linear motors, which is Fuji's more premium high-powered focus system. It's obviously not needed
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And if you look through the list of their wide-angle primes, basically those without big elements
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in other words, those without an F-1.4 aperture, they universally don't have linear motors. It's
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just not needed here In fact in most situations there is very little auto that is taking place Now obviously if you getting right down close to the minimum focus distance focus does have to adjust But what I found that in many situations for either stills or video there not a lot of focus needed because so much is already in focus And basically if you
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focusing about a meter, three or four feet out in front of this lens, pretty much everything from the
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foreground to the background is already going to be pretty much in focus. And so as a byproduct of this
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when I went to do my video focus pools, it's like nothing. Nothing was even happening
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And so I had to put my hand right up in front of the lens to make sure that it was actually
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autofocusing because it did so little. When I went to hit a different focus area, there was so little change on screen
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The big upside of that, obviously, is that there is almost no focus breathing, but in part
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that's because so much is in focus that very little changes. It does make it a very useful lens, however, for things like vlogging or working off of a
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for the simple reason that because so much stays in focus and the lens does very good in not
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hunting or pulsing, it means that you're not really thinking about autofocus. And the truth of
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matter is that I didn't hardly think about autofocus for stills either. The one situation where
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you know, I think autofocus got tested as all is when I went to take pictures of Nala and, of course
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she immediately started moving towards the camera. And I saw that the focus remained good even
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when she got very close to the camera. So while I don't really have any kind of complaints about the
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autofocus system, it did a great job. I also recognize that it doesn't have a very big job to do
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simply due to the more extreme focal length and larger depth of field that comes with that
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So let's talk about image quality. If we look at the MTF chart here, it shows a great center
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a good mid-frame, and weaker corners. So when I went back to compare to the very expensive
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8 to 16 millimeter F2.8, I found that the corners are actually marginally better on this little
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prime than what they were on the big zoom. On paper, we have got a pretty good performance here
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Let's see if it holds up to the more demanding 40 megapixel sensor of my XH2
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So I want to start by just making a couple of comments on the focal length here
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This focal length of 8 millimeters, essentially a 12 millimeter full frame equivalent, is incredibly
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wide, over 20, 120 degree angle of view. And so it really does take a different bit of a thought process for composing with the lens that is this wide
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For example, if I turn the camera and pointed down toward my shoes, you can see it as a long way down to my shoes
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Likewise, if you put anything in the foreground, it is going to exaggerate that and distort it, though it's not distortion in the classical sense, but distorted because of the extreme angle of view
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And so you can use that creatively, obviously, but if you use it wrong, it is going to create serious issues
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If you're thinking about using it for portraits, make sure that the subject doesn't mind being distorted
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a little bit of a cartoonish version of themselves. For this shot, these leaves that are up above me
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were actually up above me when I took this shot. They weren't even hardly in my eyes angle of view
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but because this lens is so wide, it did include this as a part of the composition
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which made for an interesting shot when I looked at it through the viewfinder, but I didn't even know that these would be in the shot
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until I actually looked into the viewfinder. Now, on the distortion front
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there is some very obvious barrel distortion, though I will say, I've seen much worse and on less extreme angles of view
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And so this is not the best. I've seen lenses like the Lawa 12mm F2.8 for full frame that has very little actual barrel distortion
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But this lens does, being so compact, it does have some barrel distortion
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But as we're going to see, it is correctable. Now here is my manual correction on the right
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And you can see that it's not perfect. All the lines aren't flawless there
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But for the most part, things are corrected, though, is there is a mild wave pattern
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mustache pattern that is there. To give you look at those numbers that I used, I used a plus 25
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to correct for the barrel distortion, and then a plus 76 to correct for the vignette. So that's a little
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over roughly three stops of vignette correction. So, you know, extreme, but not like too extreme
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certainly not maxing out the slider as I've had to do with, you know, for example, that Lawa
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that I just mentioned, I had to max out the sliders to deal with the vignette. So it was actually
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much stronger, despite this being a very compact lens. Now, you do have the option. You do have the
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option to correct with the profile. And so as you can see, it does a little bit better job of correcting
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the lines here relative to what I was able to do with a manual correction. My biggest gripe
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with the profile correction is, as you can see, compared to my manual correction, it has taken
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off a lot of image. And so I will recommend that if you're in a situation where you're wanting to get
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as much on frame as possible, you might be better off doing a manual correction for the simple reason
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that you're going to get a much wider angle of view with this manual correction than what you're
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what you do with the built-in profile. Now typically longitudinal chromatic aberrations
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on a lens like this are not all that big of a deal. And that remains true here as well
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mostly because so much is in view that there really isn't much of a narrow plane of focus
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that causes that issue. And as you can see here I don see any evidence of fringing before or after the plane of focus but then again there also not a lot that out of focus here Now far more typical will be the lateral chromatic aberrations that show up along the edges
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of the frame, even at smaller apertures. And in this case, this lens has done a good job
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There is no aberration correction that's been clicked here in Lightroom. This is a raw image
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So no corrections, but you can see that there is really next to no fringing up here near the
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edge of the frame, even in these harsh transitions from dark to light. Now for our resolution test, we're going to put this lens through the kind of the spin cycle of torture here by using the 40 megapixel sensor on the XH2 and showing you the results at 200% magnification
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This is basically as rough as any lens right now is going to get because this is the most pixel dense sensor that I'm testing on at the moment
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And so as you can see in the center of the frame, absolutely no problem. We have a very crisp end result and looks quite good
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looking here in the mid-frame result also looks quite good there, and so the lens is holding up well
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If we pop down into the corner, the end result is weaker, though it's not like a mush, like you see sometimes on very wide-angle lenses
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It does have resolution to the corners. It's just not at the level that we have
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And you can see there's a difference even from this corner of the bill to that corner. The resolution just doesn't reach quite that far
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So in a real-world example, we can see zooming in here that towards the center of the frame
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things look very crisp as we were, you know, suggested by our wide open results
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Likewise, if we take a look at these two results of at F3.5 and F5.6 of a, you know, real world
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three-dimensional subject, which I just love the textures on these boards are just really
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really beautiful. But if we can compare like these knots right here to the F5.6 results
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we really don't see a whole lot of difference. I would argue there's a little bit more contrast that is there. But if we pop over towards the edge of the frame, we can see
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see that the contrast pattern is reaching over a little bit further on the F5.6 result, but we can also
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see that neither of them are pin sharp in the corners, and if we look over at this other side, we
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see basically the same result. And that gives us a preview of what we're going to see as we
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stop this lens down. So between F3.5 and F4 in the center of the frame, really not much different
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to see there. In the midframe, we can see once again there is a very marginal improvement, but
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nothing significant. In the corners, the corners look a little bit brighter, but we can see
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that off here towards the edge, there really isn't a lot of additional sharpness there
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And if we pop over to the other side, the same is true here. Just a little bit better contrast at F4
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From F4 to F5.6, again, in the center of the frame, you're not getting really anything
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additional there. We've seen about as much as we're going to get a little bit better result here in the midframe
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where the results are just a little bit crisper. And down into the corner of the frame, a very marginal improvement, but again, not one
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that affects the extreme corners. much. Taking a look at this other side on the mid-frame, we can see that everything is looking
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quite good, but neither is there a significant difference between F-4 and F5.6. Now, because of the pixel
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density that I've mentioned already, already by F-8, diffraction is going to start to rob away any
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potential benefit that we would have of stopping the lens on down. So we can see in the center of the
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frame that if anything, there's a little bit more contrast that's evident on the F-5.6 version. At the
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mid-frame. The same is true as well. We're actually taking just a tiny step back in terms of contrast
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looking over here. The same is true and up into this corner here. We can see the corners would be the
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most likely to benefit because the negative effects of diffraction are going to be countermanded by
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increasing the overall resolution of the lens. But we can see that really we never get to a place
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where the corners get really sharp like we see in the center of the frame. And if we allow that
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effective diffraction to carry on. This is F5.6 and then the minimum aperture of F-22. You can see that
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diffraction has just robbed away all of the contrast from the image. It is very, very kind of soft and
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hazy looking by comparison, and that's true anywhere that you look in the frame. And so on a high-resolution
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body like this, you really need to hit that sweet spot by F5.6, F6.3, and at most F8, anything
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beyond that, you're going to start to lose. The losses from diffraction are going to
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going to outweigh any gains from stopping the lens down. Now, if I take a look at an image from the lower 26 megapixel resolution of the XS20
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we can see that in the center of the frame at F5.6, everything looks great
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draw distance looks quite good. If we pop down here into the corners, you can see that in those extreme corners
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yes, we are still losing some resolution. You look at here, and then you look at here
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You can just see that the corners are never going to get incredibly sharp
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even on a lower resolution body. At the same time, I do want to recognize that it is very, very tough to get extreme sharpness
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all the way to the corners of such a wide angle of view
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And it's not to say even on the XH2 like we've got here, that those corners are completely unusable
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Yes they softer but you still have detail there And as we look throughout the rest of the image it is looking really really quite nice here And so this is a lens that really is going to give you about as good resolution as you going to get on this wide of angle of view on Fuji X mount
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And so it holds up quite well even on this high resolution sensor
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So as noted, our maximum magnification is not super high. Up close results look fairly good here
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The detail is quite nice. Contrast is good in the center of the frame
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But as you're going to see, because of having to get this close and then having such a wide angle of view, you're going to have a fairly narrow sweet spot to compose in
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So taking that out into the real world, you can see that, yes, magnification is not super high
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However, the overall performance is quite good. The detail here looks really quite nice on this blossom
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Now, what isn't so impressive is any kind of bouquet. We can see that there's nothing special about the defocused area
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This isn't a lens designed for that. And so if you're buying it for that purpose, you're wasting your money
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Now, flare resistance at wide apertures is quite good. You can see that there's very little here
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There's a little bit of a ghosting artifact right there in this image on the left side
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We can see as we stop down to F11 that we get the sunburst increase, which sunburst is unique
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It's not mind-blowingly good, I wouldn't say, but it is unique. and there is a little bit more ghosting artifacts
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And so you can see if we look down here, there's some additional blobs of light in color that weren't there
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but it's not a terrible performance for sure. Another example here, stop down to close to F11
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You can see obviously bright sun in the frame. So we can see that there's this, you know
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a little bit of light that's coming down this way and then that little bit of pattern there
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It's certainly not the worst that I've seen, and I don't think it's going to be destructive to images
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Neither is it a flawless performance either. So finally, I want to conclude by taking a look at color
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This is an area where Fuji does really well at, and Fuji Glass tends to be very good
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So all of these forest greens, you know, there's a variety of different hues that are here
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but I find that they're all rendered quite well. They're not garish or gauche
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but they're very nicely captured. Here we can see throughout the blues range
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that they have a nice, rich color to them, and that complements the greens that are there
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and this image where we've got a lot of greens and yellows and then some blues in the sky and some mosquitoes
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there was a lot of those out there that day, we can see that the colors are just really nicely handled and look really rich
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If I compare the Fuji 8mm to the Tamron 11 to 20 millimeter that I just happen to have out at the same time on this hike
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you can see that the, I would say that the colors here are just a little bit richer from the Fuji lens
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No, there's not a radical difference here. and I think that Tamron does quite a good job with color
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But I would argue that the Fuji colors are just a, have just a very slightly deeper level of saturation
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particularly in the greens, that stand out to my eye, is just being a little bit richer overall
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than what we see from the Tamron. So in conclusion, this is, I think
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a really well-executed little package because it takes such an extreme angle of view
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and puts it into such a small package. That's not something that we often see done
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And certainly this is, at least one place where I see an advantage for the smaller APSC sensor
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and that it would be impossible to have a lens this size, with this wide of an angle of view
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and this kind of performance on full frame. And so it's certainly an advantage for APSC that I don't often see exercised
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Those that are shooting on Fuji X, they should be really delighted that this is the lens
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that Fuji has chosen to add at this particular time. On the flip side, the challenge, I think, for potential buyers is going to be the simple fact
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that this lens is not inexpensive. It retails for $800 U.S. dollars here in Canada, almost 1,100
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Canadian dollars. And there is, in my experience, a little bit of a perception
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battle that takes place when you're talking about a very small lens and a fairly
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big price tag. Even though it is a premium lens on many levels, it's easier for
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people to feel like they're getting what they're paying for if it is a larger lens
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which just isn't the case here. And I think that it's going to come
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to those that really love ultra wide angle. And if you love ultra wide angle
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I suspect that you're going to love this lens. It produces some really great looking images
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It's so easy to bring along. And so it means that most importantly
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you're gonna have the focal length along very often where if it was a larger, bulkier lens, you might not
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And I think in my mind that is a winning combination. And hopefully the Fuji Market also agrees
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I'm Dustin Abbott. And if you look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review
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and also to an image gallery if you want to look at more photos there. There are some buying links there if you'd like to purchase
20:24
Also, link is to follow myself or Craig on social media to become a patron to get channel merchandise
20:30
Please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

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