It’s been a long time since I’ve used a Tokina lens. I actually owned multiple Tokina wide angle zooms back in my time as a photographer before I became a reviewer. Tokina has released relatively few lenses in the mirrorless era, and I hadn’t ever really built a relationship with the company, so I actually have not done any Tokina reviews. But late in 2024 they reached out to me about the possibility of reviewing their upcoming wide angle zoom for Fuji X-mount – the Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 – and I readily agreed to do so out of interest to see the state of their development. The E-mount version of this lens was their first wide angle zoom for mirrorless cameras, and they’ve made a few minor tweaks to the formula here to produce an even more useful zoom lens. There are some strong competitors in this segment, so does the ATX-M 11-18mm stand out in any way? Find out by watching the video review, reading the text review, or just enjoy the wintry photos in the gallery below!
Thanks to Tokina for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.I’m doing this review on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.You can visit the product page for the ATX-M 11-18mm here.
A few of the basics first. This is an APS-C lens designed for mirrorless cameras only, and this review is of the Fuji X-mount version of the lens. The APS-C crop factor of Fuji’s XF cameras is 1.5, giving the ATX 11-18mm a full frame equivalent zoom range of 16.5-27mm; not dissimilar to Tamron’s 17-28mm F2.8 full frame zoom, which I reviewed here. It’s not a big range, obviously, but it does cover a lot of the key wide angle framing options, going from this at 11mm:
…to this at 18mm:
The ATX-M 11-18mm has a constant maximum aperture of F2.8, making it useful in a variety of lighting conditions.
Some of the chief competitors among other third party brands include:
Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN (my review here). The Sigma has a slightly larger zoom range (1 extra millimeter on the wide end), but also has more vignette and distortion.
The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD (my review here). The Tamron also has a slightly longer zoom range, with an extra 2mm on the long end. It has the highest MSRP ($899 USD) of the three, though it looks like Tamron may have permanently dropped the price to $659.
I quite like both of those lenses, and while Tokina isn’t quite as well known as either of those brands, the ATX-M 11-18mm does provide a credible alternative to them, with very nice image quality and great Kenko optical glass colors.
And, while the initial MSRP for the lens is $699 USD, the E-mount version is currently retailing for considerably less and undercuts both the Tamron and Sigma in price. If that sounds potentially interesting, check out my reviews linked above…or just enjoy the photos here.
Keywords: Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8, Tokina, ATX-M, 11-18mm, F2.8, Tokina 11-18mm X, Wide Angle, Zoom, Pancake, Chip, Fuji, Fujifilm, X-mount, XF, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
It’s been a long time since I’ve used a Tokina lens. I actually owned multiple Tokina wide angle zooms back in my time as a photographer before I became a reviewer. Tokina has released relatively few lenses in the mirrorless era, and I hadn’t ever really built a relationship with the company, so I actually have not done any Tokina reviews. But late in 2024 they reached out to me about the possibility of reviewing their upcoming wide angle zoom for Fuji X-mount – the Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 – and I readily agreed to do so out of interest to see the state of their development. The E-mount version of this lens was their first wide angle zoom for mirrorless cameras, and they’ve made a few minor tweaks to the formula here to produce an even more useful zoom lens. There are some strong competitors in this segment, so does the ATX-M 11-18mm stand out in any way? Find out by watching the video review or reading on in the text review below!
Thanks to Tokina for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.I’m doing this review on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.You can visit the product page for the ATX-M 11-18mm here.
A few of the basics first. This is an APS-C lens designed for mirrorless cameras only, and this review is of the Fuji X-mount version of the lens. The APS-C crop factor of Fuji’s XF cameras is 1.5, giving the ATX 11-18mm a full frame equivalent zoom range of 16.5-27mm; not dissimilar to Tamron’s 17-28mm F2.8 full frame zoom, which I reviewed here. It’s not a big range, obviously, but it does cover a lot of the key wide angle framing options, going from this at 11mm:
…to this at 18mm:
The ATX-M 11-18mm has a constant maximum aperture of F2.8, making it useful in a variety of lighting conditions.
Some of the chief competitors among other third party brands include:
Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN (my review here). The Sigma has a slightly larger zoom range (1 extra millimeter on the wide end), but also has more vignette and distortion.
The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD (my review here). The Tamron also has a slightly longer zoom range, with an extra 2mm on the long end. It has the highest MSRP ($899 USD) of the three, though it looks like Tamron may have permanently dropped the price to $659.
I quite like both of those lenses, and while Tokina isn’t quite as well known as either of those brands, the ATX-M 11-18mm does provide a credible alternative to them, with very nice image quality and great Kenko optical glass colors.
And, while the initial MSRP for the lens is $599 USD, the E-mount version is currently retailing for considerably less and undercuts both the Tamron and Sigma in price. Sound interesting? Let’s take a closer look.
Tokina 11-18mm F2.8 Build and Handling
The Tokina lenses that I owned back in the day had a very dated look (by modern standards), but I’m actually very partial to the design language of the ATX-M 11-18mm, which looks both modern and premium.
The lens features a lightly flocked barrel made of metal and engineered plastic components. Both the zoom and focus rings have tight ribs and a flush rather than raised design. There are arguments to be made that a raised ring may have better ergonomics, but I would say that aesthetically this design looks very clean to me. The build quality feels a bit more upscale than the Tamron and more akin to the Sigma. One negative aspect of the tighter ribbing is that it isn’t unusual to find a bit of dust and lint caught in the ribs. I noticed that even in the product photos from reviews of the Sony E-mount version of the lens.
Not a big deal, but an observation nonetheless.
One unusual design choice is that the lens hood has a somewhat rough texture on the outside but is smooth inside, which is pretty much opposite of most designs.
You can see that the hood itself is quite large, and it definitely adds to the overall size of the lens. While it doesn’t have a lock on it, it does click into place very definitely and stays well locked into place.
A design element here that I do prefer is that while the Sigma and Tamron lenses have a section that extends forward slightly while zooming (that the lens hood is attached to), the Tokina has a very slight extension of the inner barrel which doesn’t affect the area of the lens barrel where the hood bayonets on.
That inner barrel extension is longest at 11mm and fully retracted at 18mm:
But what I like is that if you have the lens hood in place (as I typically do), then that little bit of extension happens within the confines of the lens hood, and the physical dimensions of the lens do not change. From the outside the lens’ length looks the same at all times, and because the lens hood isn’t moving in and out, it also means that the lens will maintain a more consistent balance (important if you were using it on a gimbal, for example).
The Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 falls in between the Sigma and Tamron lenses in size. It is 74.4mm (2.9″) in both diameter and length, making it very slightly wider than the other two lenses but 10mm longer than the Sigma and 12mm shorter than the Tamron. The weight is 320g (11.28oz), making it a fair bit heavier than the Sigma (+70g) but slightly lighter (-15g) than the Tamron.
There are obviously smaller and lighter choices like the Sigma, but this is still a very lightweight and portable lens that I found very easy to bring along. It is definitely lighter than the average for the class, though, to be fair, it also has the smallest zoom range.
The zoom ring has each focal length marked. Competing lenses go by twos or skip certain focal lengths. The Tokina has a smaller zoom range, obviously, so there is room for all 8 options to be marked. The zoom ring itself is excellent. It zooms very smoothly and almost feels like an internally zooming lens.
The weight/damping of the manual focus ring is a bit light, but, more importantly, there is very little focus throw. I found it hard to focus outside of a meter, as there is only a few degrees of rotation between one meter and infinity. Let’s just say that this works much better as an autofocus lens!
Up front we have a 67mm front filter thread, which appears to be the standard for these type lenses (all three have a 67mm front filter thread).
At the back of the lens we find one key upgrade over the E-mount version: there is now a weather sealing gasket! While Tokina doesn’t mention other internal seals, the addition of the gasket at the lens mount helps a lot. The Sigma is similar with just a mount gasket, but the Tamron and Fuji 10-24mm WR both have more thorough weather sealing with internal seals as well.
We also find a USB port for firmware updates located on the lens mount, which I always appreciate. For some reason they elected to go with the older micro-USB standard (USB-B) rather than the now ubiquitous USB-C port I’m finding on essentially all modern lenses so equipped.
Nonetheless, I’m very happy the port is there to help to keep the lens future proofed.
Tokina is a Japanese company whose products are built in Japan, which isn’t always the case these days.
The lens does not have optical stabilization built in, which is also true for the F2.8 competitors as well at the moment. It does have proper communication to the camera and Tokina claims full compatibility with such Fuji features as image stabilization (if your camera is so equipped), MF assist, and optical corrections including vignette, chromatic aberrations, and distortion.
The minimum focus distances varies depending on whether you are shooting on the wide end (19cm) or telephoto end (30cm). The higher magnification comes on the wide end, though you have to be very close to your subject to achieve it. Tokina cites a very low 0.08x on the telephoto end and a slightly better 0.11x on the wide end.
Here’s what that looks like out in the real world, and also gives you an idea of the kind of background blur you can achieve (not much!)
This is one area where the competing lenses are all superior.
The addition of the weather sealing gasket is a real boon here, and I really liked the handling of the Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 X. It was fun to use and presented no complications to me out in the field. I would have liked a better close focus performance, but that’s not really what I buy wide angle lenses for anyway.
Autofocus for Stills
The Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm is equipped with an STM focus motor. I’m always a little concerned when testing third party lenses (and sometimes first party lenses!) on Fuji, as their autofocus system is less sophisticated (at the present) than competing brands. Fortunately the ATX-M 11-18mm survives the porting to Fuji very nicely. The speed of the focus motor is quick and confident, with near immediate transitions from foreground to background subjects.
Wide angle lenses are not the best for eye tracking, as often the eye doesn’t occupy a large enough portion of the frame to track unless you are close to the subject, but when I was close enough, the green box locked onto the eye and tracked fine.
But eye tracking is less necessary when the subject is a bit further away, as pretty much everything will be in focus at that point with a wide angle lens.
I shot the photo below of snowmobilers zipping by, but it wasn’t difficult to nail focus because so much was in focus.
There is basically no focus sound even with my ear near the barrel, though there will be a light clicking if you let on and off the shutter as the aperture blades open and close.
One other important thing is that the lens focused well even when stopped down to landscape apertures, with no hunting or pulsing. That was true even when shooting into a strongly backlit scene.
In short, I was very pleasantly surprised by the autofocus performance for stills. Focus was quick, quiet, and confident, leaving me nothing really to complain about…so I won’t.
Video Autofocus
The video side of things was also quite good. This tends to be the weakest link in the Fuji autofocus chain, and I did see a few of the typical “Fuji quirks”, but they were rather muted. Focus pulls were generally very good, with no visible steps in the main pull, though I did see a final adjustment after the focus area was reached. It’s as if the Fuji focus algorithms tend to second guess themselves. It was relatively minor, however, and far less than what I’ve seen on many other lenses. I would say that this test was mostly similar to what I saw from the Sigma 10-18 and better than what I saw from the Tamron 11-20mm.
There is a bit of focus breathing, but nothing severe.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it went mostly well. The lens successfully transferred focus from my hand to my eye and back, though those focus pulls weren’t remarkably well damped, so they felt very slightly abrupt.
Real world focus transitions seemed fine, and one big deal to me is that I didn’t see any focus slipping and readjusting as I zoomed in and out. Some lenses (the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8, for example) are guilty of a lot of warping and focus adjustments while zooming, but that’s not the case here.
Focus was stable in static shots as well. I did notice a bit more shaking in my footage, but that could be because it has been incredibly cold this winter and I may just be shaking a bit more!
Image Quality Breakdown
The optical formula is 13 elements in 11 groups with 4 of those elements being special elements (2 SD elements and two different types of aspherical lenses). The MTF shows a very sharp center, extremely good mid-frame, and softer corners at F2.8 and 11mm, while 18mm shows a fairly steady slide from center to corners and a slightly less sharp performance all around.
I’m always a little concerned when testing zoom lenses on the X-H2, as the 40MP sensor on cameras like my Fujifilm X-H2 is the most demanding platform that I test on. It has the pixel density equivalence of more than 90MP on full frame, which of course doesn’t exist at the time of this review. It tends to really, really punish any optical weaknesses. I did see some of that at 18mm (particularly at wider apertures), but I’m happy to report that in general I found real world sharpness to be very good.
I felt like the real world “bite” of images was good, which is really important in a wide angle zoom where a lot will be in focus and you want the details to look crisp.
Wide angle lenses rarely have an issue with LoCA (longitudinal chromatic aberrations) as depth of field is fairly large, and that is the case here. I see mostly neutral results on either side of the plane of focus without any fringing.
Far more common in wide lenses is LaCA (lateral chromatic aberrations), and frankly I really dislike them because they tend to make corners look more mushy and less clean. That proves to be another area of strength, however, with little evidence of fringing around the black and white transitions.
I can turn off corrections and still find the edges of the frame unaffected by LaCA in real world shots.
The Sigma is really rough in the distortion and vignette department on the wide end, with very strong amounts of barrel distortion and enough vignette to require maxing out the sliders. Both the Tokina and Tamron fare better by not attempting to go as wide, and both of them show a much milder amount of distortion at 11mm.
I used a +9 to correct for the mild barrel distortion, and it corrected fairly cleanly even with a manual correction. Vignette was still pretty heavy, however, requiring a +85 to manually correct.
The telephoto end features much milder vignette and distortion, with a touch of pincushion distortion (-4 to correct) and much less vignette (+54 to correct).
As noted, these figures are close to what we saw on the Tamron, but the ATX-M 11-18mm definitely outperforms the Sigma in these areas.
So now the crucial look at resolution and contrast. The lens performed fairly well in the reviews I’ve seen on the lower resolution Sony APS-C sensor, but this high resolution Fuji sensor is a completely different challenge. This test has been done on a 40MP X-H2 sensor. I use a high end tripod and two second camera delay to ensure vibration doesn’t affect images. Here’s a look at the test chart that we will examine at high magnification:
If we take a look at 11mm crops (at 200%) at F2.8 from the center, mid-frame, and lower right corner, we find that as the MTF suggested the center is excellent, the mid-frame is good, and the corners are fairly good except for the last little bit.
Contrast is noticeably improved when stopped down to F4:
By F5.6 the corners are looking quite good.
In general I found that real world landscape images were nicely sharp in the center and mid-frame, but the corner sharpness was unimpressive to me.
In this case I actually found that stepping on down to F8 and even F11 in real world images were worthwhile in getting even sharpness, though I didn’t necessarily didn’t feel the same when just viewing my chart.
Landscapes at smaller apertures look pretty consistently great at F8 (F9 here).
Diffraction on a very high resolution body comes early and hits hard. By F11 you’ll start to see some softening, but that becomes painfully obvious at F16 and F22. Physics definitely affects smaller apertures on a high resolution body, as you can see here:
My recommendation is to avoid F16 and smaller apertures regardless of the lens you are using on a 40MP APS-C sensor.
I went back and compared my 11mm F5.6 results from the Tokina with the 10mm F5.6 results from the Sigma 10-18mm. I honestly could not really call a winner. They were very close all across the frame. That’s great for the Tokina, as I think the Sigma is a very strong lens.
Moving on to the middle of the zoom range brings a more consistent sharpness across the frame, starting in the middle:
There’s an even more noticeable difference in the corners.
Landscape images at 14mm look nice and crisp. No real complaints there.
Before moving on to 18mm, I do want to give some perspective for those using the lower resolution 26MP sensor. There are advantages to the higher resolution sensor, but one potential downside is that it makes lenses like this look at a little softer…at least at a pixel level. If I downscale one of these images to the 6244 x 4163 pixel resolution of the 26MP sensor, sharpness and contrast at 1:1 pixel level appears higher. This gives you an idea of performance on your camera.
Moving on to 18mm we will find some optical regression which is more pronounced wide open. The center looks softer than what we saw at the peak of 14mm:
The falloff in the corners is more pronounced.
The good news is that there is a much more dramatic improvement when stopping down. F4 and then F5.6 all look considerably sharper. Here, for example, we can see a significant improvement from F2.8 to F5.6 in the mid-frame.
F8 looks quite good across the frame, though corners are good, not great. I would recommend shooting at smaller apertures if you want consistent sharpness across the frame.
When shooting at F2.8 but composing in the center, the results look good.
My conclusion is that 18mm is the weakest part of the zoom range, but it’s not terrible. I went back and compared to my results from the Sigma 10-18mm and found that (at 18mm) the Tokina was sharper in the center but the Sigma was sharper everywhere else at F2.8. With both lenses stopped down to F5.6, the results are largely similar across the frame.
In short, sharpness is competitiveness with the other main players in this class, so no complaints there.
Bokeh is not really going to be a significant asset here. There are essentially three paths to creating strong defocus (four, if you include tilt!). Those are A) long focal length B) fast maximum aperture or C) close focus abilities. The closest the ATX-M 11-18mm comes is in the “fast maximum aperture” category, and frankly F2.8 on APS-C isn’t particularly fast…particularly when coupled with wide angle focal lengths. I’ve demonstrated peak bokeh earlier in the review, but here’s a more typical shot that shows that even with the background being distant it still isn’t strongly blurred out.
I didn’t see anything objectionable about the bokeh; I just didn’t see much of it!
I was generally satisfied with flare resistance…particularly on the wide end. When shooting at F2.8, the flare resistance at 11mm is solid, but 18mm shows more general ghosting and some loss of contrast.
When you stop the lens down at either position, the results are generally more favorable, with deep contrast, though 18mm still shows more ghosting artifacts.
Most often you’ll be shooting between those two extremes in terms of aperture, however, and in real world shots I generally found that I could compose with impunity and get good results.
I always like to test wide angle lenses for coma if possible and to see how they’ll handle something like astrophotography. I mostly saw good results here, with a little elongating of the star points near the edge of the frame (image 3 below), but no “wings” growing out of them.
Generally this was a solid optical performance, with no fatal flaws. I was obviously shooting in cold, winter conditions (not the most colorful season!), but I found that color saturation and color tone were still very nice. Images had a certain pristine quality that appealed to me.
I wouldn’t say that the Tokina ATX-M is necessarily optically better than either the Tamron or the Sigma, as there is definitely give and take between the three lenses. The Tokina does have lower amounts of distortion and vignette than the Sigma, so that’s one key advantage. In short, however, if you choose the Tokina you can be assured that you are choosing a lens that performs among the very best in the class. You can see more images in the gallery here.
Conclusion
Good wide angle zooms are invaluable lenses, allowing you to get a very wide perspective for shooting landscapes, interiors, and even the night sky. The Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 is a great addition to Fuji X-mount lineup, giving a third reasonably priced alternative to premium options like the Fujinon XF 8-16mm F2.8 ($1500!) or the XF 10-24mm F4 OIS ($1000). Fuji doesn’t have a native wide angle zoom with a constant F2.8 aperture under $1000, and so that opens up a huge lane for lenses like the ATX-M 11-18mm, which goes plenty wide for most people.
The Tokina was a great match for going out and capturing winter landscapes, with a weather sealing gasket and a tough build quality that never faltered in the -20 conditions.
I’ve liked images that I’ve gotten with the lens and look forward to shooting in future seasons that are a bit less bleak. It was easy to shoot with in the field, and I particularly appreciate that fact that all zoom extension takes place behind the hood, allowing the lens to practically behave more like an internally zooming lens. Some Fuji shooters may be put off by the lack of an aperture ring, but is that ring worth spending an additional $400-900? I suspect the answer is no, and since none of the other third party wide angle zooms have an aperture ring either, Tokina is probably on safe ground here. The biggest disadvantage for the ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 is that it has the smallest zoom range of the competing lenses, but it does compensate with nice build, excellent autofocus performance, and very good optical performance…even on the demanding Fuji 40MP sensor. All in all, the Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8 X is well worth considering if you’re looking for a wide angle zoom for your Fuji camera.
Pros:
Nice physical design
The addition of a weather sealing gasket for X-mount
Very smooth zoom action
Zoom extension happens behind hood
USB port for firmware updates
Smooth, fast autofocus
Fairly good video AF performance
Low distortion
Low chromatic aberrations
Good wide open sharpness throughout much of the range
Keywords: Tokina ATX-M 11-18mm F2.8, Tokina, ATX-M, 11-18mm, F2.8, Tokina 11-18mm X, Wide Angle, Zoom, Pancake, Chip, Fuji, Fujifilm, X-mount, XF, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
My most popular video of 2024 was a showdown between the (then) primary standard zoom options available on the Fuji X-mount platform – the Fuji XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS, XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR, and the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN. My surprising conclusion was that the Sigma actually held up the best on the modern Fuji 40MP resolution standard, and that the two Fuji zooms were in need of an update. Fuji obviously agreed, as both lenses received an update in the latter part of 2024. I reviewed the XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR II and the XF 16-50mm F2.8-4.8 R LM WR in early 2025, and decided to follow those reviews up with another showdown using the fresh Fuji options along with last year’s Sigma winner. The results? Find out in the video review here…or you can see my review notes in the article below.
The Fuji lenses are loaners from Fujifilm Canada, while the Sigma is my personal lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *I’m doing this comparison on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.
16-55 II – Sharpest, best corners, best contrast, most consistently good
16-50 (TIE) Slightly better corners on wide end than Sigma
Sigma (TIE) – Aperture advantage vs 16-50, better corners at telephoto than 16-55 II
COLOR
Fuji lenses perhaps slightly better color, but hard to see side by side.
BOKEH
16-55 II – Bokeh richer, no bokeh fringing, most potential (55mm)
Sigma – Decent geometry but fringing
16-50 – Slow aperture means least defocus
Reasons to Choose Sigma
Cheapest MSRP
Constant F2.8
Fairly competitive AF and IQ (balanced)
Highest magnification (0.36x vs 0.21x)
Very compact
Reasons to Choose 16-50mm
Can be had as kit lens at cheaper price
Only internally zooming lens
Weather sealed
Most lightweight
Mostly good AF
Reasons to Choose 16-55mm II
Most professional grade build
Best zoom range
Best feature set
Lowest fringing
Best overall image quality (most special)
Best autofocus
Best standard APS-C zoom out there
Conclusion
A sense of order has been restored. The first party lenses from Fuji are now mostly better than the Sigma, though the Sigma will continue to be intriguing because it is small, cheap(ish), lightweight, and constant F2.8. If you can handle a little more size (and cost) the XF 16-55mm F2.8 II is the best standard APS-C zoom you can buy right now.
Keywords: Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR II, Fujinon XF 16-50mm F2.8-4.8 R LM WR, Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN, 18-50mm, DN, DC, Fuji, Fujinon, 16-55mm II, R LM WR, 16-50mm, F2.8, F2.8-4.8, OIS, LM, WR, R, X-Mount, X, Fuji, Fujifilm, X-H2, weather sealing, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Astrophotography, #letthelightin, #DA, #weather sealing, #VS, #headtohead, #headtoheadbattles
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
In 2024 I did a fresh review of the nearly ten year old Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR lens, and I concluded that it was due an update. It was clear that it hadn’t been engineered with future high resolution bodies in mind, and the current 40MP sensor in a camera like my X-H2 was fairly punishing to it. Fuji was clearly in the same headspace, and at the end of the 2024 they announced and released a Mark II version of the lens, and it is a great update. It’s both smaller and lighter and yet sharper at the same time, moves into some new territory in terms of at least one feature, and comes to market at the same MSRP as the original ($1199 USD). Is this a home run for Fuji? Find out in either the thorough video review, reading the text review, or just enjoying the photos in the gallery.
Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. I’m doing this review on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.You can visit the product page for the 16-55mm II here.
The very first thing that I noticed is how much smaller the new lens is. I’ve never owned the original lens, but I have used it for extended periods on multiple occasions, including on several trips, so I was very familiar with the size and weight of the previous lens. The new version is slimmer, shorter, and much lighter (37% according to Fuji), making for a lens that is more natural fit on a wider variety of Fuji’s cameras. I not only used it on my X-H2, but also on the new X-M5, which is one of the smallest of Fuji’s bodies. The lens felt a little big there, but that’s mostly because the camera has almost no grip. On most of the bodies, the new 16-55 II will be a comfortable fit due to the reduced size and weight. You can see just how much smaller the new lens looks when placed side by side with the original.
This is extremely important, as lenses like the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN coming to the platform had really highlighted just how unnecessarily large the older lens was. The new 16-55 II is still substantially larger than either the Sigma or the new Fuji 16-50mm F2.8-4.8, but that is perhaps to be expected considering that it has the largest zoom range, the constant F2.8 aperture, and is more feature rich than either of the other lenses.
But look how much the older lens towered over the competition:
But all of that would be in vain if this new lens wasn’t up to the task of handling Fuji’s high resolution 40MP sensors. Fortunately that isn’t a problem, and the new lens is capable of providing excellent sharpness and contrast on my X-H2.
My conclusion was that I was unsure the old lens was worth the price premium relative to the compact little Sigma (which I added to my own Fuji kit). Has that conclusion changed with the 16-55mm F2.8 II? It definitely has, and you can find out why by watching or reading the full reviews.
Keywords: Fuji 16-55mm II, Fujinon 16-55 II, Fuji, Fujinon, XF, AF, Autofocus, 16-55mm, F2.8, R, WR, LM Weathersealing, Fuji 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR II Review, f/2.8, Fuji X, Fujifilm, X-mount, APS-C, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Fujifilm X-T5, Fujifilm X-H2, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
In 2024 I did a fresh review of the nearly ten year old Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR lens, and I concluded that it was due an update. It was clear that it hadn’t been engineered with future high resolution bodies in mind, and the current 40MP sensor in a camera like my X-H2 was fairly punishing to it. Fuji was clearly in the same headspace, and at the end of the 2024 they announced and released a Mark II version of the lens, and it is a great update. It’s both smaller and lighter and yet sharper at the same time, moves into some new territory in terms of at least one feature, and comes to market at the same MSRP as the original ($1199 USD). Is this a home run for Fuji? Find out in either the thorough video review or by reading on in the text review!
Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. I’m doing this review on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.You can visit the product page for the 16-55mm II here.
The very first thing that I noticed is how much smaller the new lens is. I’ve never owned the original lens, but I have used it for extended periods on multiple occasions, including on several trips, so I was very familiar with the size and weight of the previous lens. The new version is slimmer, shorter, and much lighter (37% according to Fuji), making for a lens that is more natural fit on a wider variety of Fuji’s cameras. I not only used it on my X-H2, but also on the new X-M5, which is one of the smallest of Fuji’s bodies. The lens felt a little big there, but that’s mostly because the camera has almost no grip. On most of the bodies, the new 16-55 II will be a comfortable fit due to the reduced size and weight. You can see just how much smaller the new lens looks when placed side by side with the original.
This is extremely important, as lenses like the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DN coming to the platform had really highlighted just how unnecessarily large the older lens was. The new 16-55 II is still substantially larger than either the Sigma or the new Fuji 16-50mm F2.8-4.8, but that is perhaps to be expected considering that it has the largest zoom range, the constant F2.8 aperture, and is more feature rich than either of the other lenses.
But look how much the older lens towered over the competition:
But all of that would be in vain if this new lens wasn’t up to the task of handling Fuji’s high resolution 40MP sensors. Fortunately that isn’t a problem, and the new lens is capable of providing excellent sharpness and contrast on my X-H2.
My conclusion was that I was unsure the old lens was worth the price premium relative to the compact little Sigma (which I added to my own Fuji kit). Has that conclusion changed with the new lens? We’ll find out in today’s review…
Build and Handling
I’ll start this section by highlighting the fact that Fuji has FINALLY updated their lens feature formula a little bit here. Fuji’s main lens feature has always been the inclusion of an aperture ring, which is why most of their lenses have an “R” in the name, which stands for Ring. Despite their cameras becoming increasingly video focused (my X-H2 can shoot up to 8K video!), Fuji had never updated their lenses to the modern standard where the ability to declick the aperture is essentially for video work. A declicked aperture can be smoothly “racked” through the aperture options during video shots, allowing more or less to come into focus due to the aperture change. That has changed, and the 16-55 II becomes the first XF lens from Fuji to receive an option to declick the aperture.
The aperture otherwise works as before, with light clicks at one third stop apertures but markings only at full stops. When declicked, those clicks disappear and allow you to move smoothly through the aperture options. There is a locking mechanism that you need to depress if you want to move out of the manual range and into automatic (camera) control. Fuji has increased the amount of aperture blades from 9 to 11, allowing for more consistently circular specular highlights when the lens is stopped down.
Fuji’s standard is for AF | MF to be controlled from the camera, typically in the form of a camera-mounted lever, so there are no other buttons or switches on the lens. So far the idea of custom buttons seems to be reserved for telephoto lenses and not other lenses like this, which is a shame considering that those custom buttons can be a handy way to have additional control while shooting.
The front of the lens is occupied with first the zoom ring, and then the manual focus ring. The zoom ring isn’t as nicely damped as what I would expect for a premium lens, and I found it difficult to smoothly zoom during video capture.
The manual focus experience is only so-so as well, feeling like focus takes place in steps or chunks rather than a smooth linear movement.
The 16-55 II is a WR lens, meaning that it has weather resistance. That weather sealing takes the form of a gasket at the lens mount along with internal seals plus a fluorine coating on the front element to resist oil and moisture). This is very handy as you can continue to use the lens with confidence even when the weather turns a bit sour (providing you are shooting on a weather sealed camera).
It’s worth looking at a comparison of specs across some competitors, including the older lens (which remains on the market at the moment at a slightly discounted price).
The new lens has shrunk in basically all dimensions. It is 78.3mm in diameter (3.1″), whereas the older lens was 83.3mm (3.28″). It is only 95mm in length (3.7″) relative to the 106mm (4.17″) of the older lens. But it is the weight which is the most surprising, dropping from 655g (23oz) to just 410g (14.5oz). The difference between the 16-55 II and the Sigma 18-55mm is just 135g, while the difference with the older lens was a whopping 370g! This allows even the front filter size to shrink from 77mm to 72mm.
The inner barrel will extend an additional 27mm when zoomed to 55mm.
Fuji’s design language hasn’t really changed much over the years, so the look of this lens isn’t radically different, though the shape is a little more sculpted. It’s a nice looking lens, however, with just a little more gloss that speaks of it being a newer design.
A petal shaped lens hood is included. It’s plastic and ribbed on the inside to prevent stray light from bouncing around in there. It doesn’t have a lock, but it does bayonet firmly into place with a definite click.
It is always worth noting the zoom range here, which is incredibly useful. It goes wide (16mm), which is the equivalent of 24mm on full frame.
It zooms into 55mm, which is the equivalent of 84mm on full frame.
That gets you all the way into prime territory for portraits, which certainly adds to the value of the lens. There’s a lot of framing options even in a casual setting.
Another key area of improvement by Fuji is the amount of magnification. What’s interesting is that both lenses tout the same minimum focus distance of 30cm, but the new lens has a much higher 0.21x magnification relative to the 0.16x of the older lens. That can probably be attributed to some focus breathing by the older lens, whereas the new lens performs better up close.
I saw good results at close focus distance, like a close up of this tiny crystal piano’s keyboard.
It’s hard to complain about a lens that has managed to shed so much weight and still be effective.
Stills Autofocus
I’ll preface this section by saying that A) the 16-55 II is perhaps the best focusing XF lens that I’ve used to date and B) that the autofocus on Fuji cameras remains frustratingly behind what I find on other platforms. The most recent 5.x firmware updates for my X-H2 have made some improvements to stills autofocus, and I see less of a gap with the 16-55 II attached. Video autofocus remains a bit frustrating, however. With a first party lens like this, it becomes impossible to parse out what behavior is camera-specific and which is lens specific. I’ll elaborate on individual performance in the section below, but I do want to add the caveat that (for Fuji) this is a really fantastic autofocusing lens.
The 16-55 II is equipped with LM, or a linear motor. This is the superior motor that Fuji uses, and it shows in quieter and faster performance than lenses equipped with a micro motor. This is a more reactive motor, making the 16-55 II an excellent choice if you need to keep up with moving children or other active subjects.
I found the 16-55 II to be a nice lens to use for capturing family moments over the holiday. The flexible zoom range made it easy to quickly grab shots, and the quick autofocus delivered accurately focused results.
Zooming deep into the image shows that focus is just where I want it.
Besides my own personal X-H2, I did use the 16-55 II extensively during my review of the Fujifilm X-M5, and it also focused well there even if the lens is perhaps a little big for that tiny body.
I can hear a very light whirring if I put my ear next to the lens barrel during autofocus, but it is otherwise pretty silent.
Video AF
I find video AF pretty frustrating on Fuji There tend to be more obvious steps in video pulls, the touchscreen is often unresponsive in trying to force autofocus changes, and tracking isn’t as sophisticated. I did note both some good and bad here. Video focus pulls were somewhat better than average, as the linear motor manages to avoid the obvious steps that I typically see with lenses equipped with either micromotors or STM motors. What isn’t avoided, however, is the microadjustments that inevitably take place when focus gets to the subject. There will be small adjustments where focus goes in and out, and it can be distracting.
On a positive note, focus breathing is fairly low, making focus changes feel more cinematic and less abrupt.
In the past I have avoided filming my static “talking head” portions of my YouTube video with any Fuji gear because of having focus jump around. I saw enough positive here to venture a fresh test, and was happy to find that focus stayed stable during the roughly one minute long test that I filmed.
I also tested a reactiveness sequence where I walked towards the camera and moved in and out of frame to see how the camera/lens reacted. This did not go well on X-M5, with the camera losing tracking early on and leaving me completely out of focus as I approached the camera. The X-H2 did better with the 16-55 II, tracking me fairly consistently (if not perfectly) as I moved consistently towards the camera. There’s a bit of a lag before focus is picked up if I step out of frame and then back in, but it did pick me back up. For Fuji, this is a pretty good performance.
Likewise, with my hand test (where I alternately block and then unblock the camera’s view of my face with my hand) went relatively well. Transitions from my hand to my face went fairly well, though sometimes with a bit of lag where it was as if the camera was deciding whether or not to transition focus. But when the reaction happened, there’s enough speed there to execute fairly quickly.
Bottom line is that while Fuji has work to do on the autofocus front (upgraded hardware rather than just software, I think), the Fujinon XF 16-55mm is making more of the existing hardware than any lens I can remember testing outside of the killer XF 200mm F2.
Image Quality Breakdown
I could immediately tell that, unlike the older 16-55mm lens, the new 16-55 II is designed with the ultra high resolution 40MP X-Trans sensor (similar pixel density to over 90MP on a full frame sensor) in mind. It does not get embarrassed by the high resolution sensor.
Not only does this image look great when viewed full (good color, good general contrast), but it also looks great in the details even though I’ve had to recover some of the shadowed information on Nala’s face due to the extreme backlighting.
The optical formula is 16 elements in 11 groups, with a majority of those being exotic elements, including 4 aspherical, 3 ED elements, and 1 super ED element. two of those being aspherical elements and one being an extra low dispersion element. If you look at the MTF charts, you’ll see a lens that would have been flawless on the lower resolution cameras of the past but manages to still be strong on very high resolution cameras today.
The MTF chart for the 16mm end shows very impressive center and mid-frame results, but a pretty step drop (particularly on the meridional access) near the corners. The telephoto end is equally impressive in the center and midframe and has a more linear drop to the corners.
The bottom line is that this is easily now the strongest standard zoom performer, topping my previous winner (the Sigma 18-50mm) with noticeably more contrast and significantly less fringing.
There is of course more to lens performance than pure sharpness and contrast, but it’s reassuring that the most expensive standard zoom on the platform is back to being the strongest performing lens.
So let’s jump into some of the details.
First of all, how about vignette and distortion? The lens has been downsized significantly – did that come at a price? This is one of the primary areas where I would expect that to show up.
We’ll start on the wide (16mm) end:
There’s a lot of barrel distortion here, but no more than before. I had to use a +22 to correct the barrel distortion, but, unlike the competing lenses, there isn’t any mustache pattern and the correction is very linear. What has increased (by a significant amount) is the amount of vignette. I needed a +48 to correct vignette on the first generation lens, but that amount has nearly doubled to a +91 to correct it here. It would appear that vignette is the thing that engineers had to compromise on to get the smaller size.
On the telephoto (55mm) the distortion has inverted to a pincushion distortion. It is significant, requiring a -13 to correct. Vignette is only slightly less, requiring a still very heavy +84 to correct for it. Fuji’s corrections are good, so in most situations the corrected image will look fine, but just know that when shooting in low light conditions (higher ISOs), there will be additional noise in the corners because of so much correction.
Longitudinal chromatic aberrations are extremely well controlled on either my test chart or in real world images.
There’s a huge advantage here for the Fuji lens over the Sigma 18-50mm, as that lens suffers quite badly from fringing.
Lateral chromatic aberrations show up near the edge of the frame in transitions from dark to light areas. You can see from the edge of my test chart Fuji has also nailed this metric, and there is next to no fringing in the transitions from black to white.
The vignette and resolution performance isn’t great, but the control of chromatic aberrations is.
So how about resolution? The 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor tends to make all but the very sharpest of lenses look a little soft when viewed at high magnification levels, and it just so happens that my review standard is to examine results at a 200% magnification. That is a lot to ask of any lens, and the previous generation lens just didn’t really hold up under this level of scrutiny. Can the second generation lens pass the test? Here’s a look at the test chart that crops throughout the review come from:
And here is a look at the F2.8 crops at 16mm from the center, then mid-frame, and then extreme lower right corner:
That’s a nice strong performance, with consistently good results at all points. I also saw very good centering, with consistently good performance in all four corners.
This is about the only point where the XF 16-50mm can compare (at least in the center), as it has the same focal length and aperture, and can deliver similar levels of sharpness.
If we jump up into the upper left corner, however, we can see the superior performance of the 16-55 II.
Likewise the Sigma holds up pretty well in the center, but the corner performance is night and day.
Stopping down to F4 shows an uptick in detail and contrast. The midframe results, in particular, highlight that improvement.
I don’t see much of a change from F4-F8, with results being uniformly pretty excellent. Landscape images look great.
Because minimum aperture is F22, diffraction on a high resolution body like this is going to be more obvious. The results through F11 aren’t bad, but at F16 and F22, the softness from diffraction gets very obvious.
Moving on to 23mm (the next marked spot on the zoom ring) shows even stronger sharpness and contrast all across the frame…right into the corners.
Real world images in this range look fantastic.
Moving on to 35mm I found some give and take at F2.8. Some spots in the frame favored the 23mm test, and other spots favored the 35mm capture.
Real world images at 35mm look very good.
Finally the all important telephoto end. Comparing 55mm to 35mm shows a slight improvement at 55mm in the center.
Corners show a bit more of a drop-off (as the MTF suggested), and the 35mm result is definitely stronger looking.
I shot roughly equally at 16mm and 55mm, and I was happy with the results at both ends of the zoom range. Real world 55mm shots showed good contrast and detail.
I feel pretty comfortable in saying that this is the most consistently excellent APS-C standard zoom that I’ve tested. Sharpness is good all through that zoom range with no real weak point.
Fuji also always delivers good color in their glass, so I like the overall look of images, too. Colors are rich.
I feel like photos have more of a prime-like rendering.
The bokeh quality is fairly good for a standard zoom, though will be somewhat situational. Shots with a favorable ratio between the distance to the subject and the distance to the background look pretty good.
Geometry is pretty good. Specular highlights are rounder than some competing lenses.
If we dive a little deeper into those specular highlights, though, we can see a little more inner outlining than what I would prefer.
That means that some situations will look a little busier when that ratio isn’t as favorable.
Overall, however, I would say the bokeh is pretty decent considering A) how sharp the lens is and B) the fact that it is a zoom.
Flare resistance is also quite good. The lens is able to hold up to the bright sun through the window here, for example:
Shooting right into the sun for a landscape style shot is also no problem.
Stopping down will show a tiny bit more ghosting artifacts, but nothing concerning at all.
In general, image quality is pretty great. Fuji has delivered in producing a standard zoom that is an optical match for their high resolution cameras. You can check out the image gallery if you’d like to see more.
Conclusion
I have to confess that I was initially concerned after Fuji released their first cameras with the 40MP sensors. It seemed like most of the lenses that I put on the camera looked pretty soft…including a few new releases. But lenses like the 23mm F1.4 WR, 33mm F1.4 WR, 56mm F1.2 WR, and now this 16-55mm F2.8 II have started to set my mind at ease. These are all lenses that are clearly designed with this higher resolution sensor in mind, and they are able to shine even on this most demanding of platforms.
The 16-55 II feels like the premium lens in the class now, as it should. I still like the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8, but there’s no question that the 16-55 II outclasses it optically. It’s more consistently sharp, has better autofocus, more features, and just produces richer images.
Despite the weight loss regimen, the Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR II is still the bigger and heavier than competing lenses, and its unquestionably more expensive. But it’s also unequivocally the best, and if you are going to use one of Fuji’s high resolution sensors, it is probably worth investing in. I’m certainly considering one.
Keywords: Fuji 16-55mm II, Fujinon 16-55 II, Fuji, Fujinon, XF, AF, Autofocus, 16-55mm, F2.8, R, WR, LM Weathersealing, Fuji 16-55mm F2.8 R LM WR II Review, f/2.8, Fuji X, Fujifilm, X-mount, APS-C, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Fujifilm X-T5, Fujifilm X-H2, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
2024 has been the year where Canon has finally, grudgingly, let a third party lens makers creep in to their RF mount, though with one huge caveat. There are still (absolutely!) no full frame lenses from third parties allowed, but Canon is opening up the RF/RF-S mount to APS-C lenses. Earlier this year I reviewed a few of the first Sigma lenses to come in an RF mount, and the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD becomes the first Tamron lens to arrive on the platform. This is great, as it provides another high quality wide angle option for Canon shooters to consider. But is there enough here to bypass the equally interesting Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN lens that is also now available on RF? Find out in either the video review below or the text review linked here…or just enjoy the photos in the gallery below.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode on my 45MP Canon EOS R5, which I reviewed here.
Tamron loves its initials in their lens names, so let’s sort out that alphabet soup. Di III is their designation for a mirrorless lens design, and, in this case, the addition of -A at the (Di III-A) refers to their development for APS-C mirrorless. RXD refers to the focus motor, and means Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive.
As with the Sigma lenses I’ve reviewed before, Canon is explicitly keeping you out of the full frame protocols. I don’t own a Canon APS-C camera, so I’m doing this review on the APS-C mode of my full frame Canon EOS R5. Typically I can evaluate full frame coverage on Sony or Nikon, but here all options but the 1.6x APS-C crop are greyed out. Canon is making SURE you don’t enter that sacred full frame space under any circumstance!
Canon is unique amongst other brands in that their APS-C crop is tighter than other brands. It is 1.6x rather than 1.5x, meaning that the effective focal length of the lens changes a bit in this application. Whereas it will be 16-30mm frame equivalent on 1.5x, it will be 17.6-32mm on Canon. That’s unfortunate with a wide angle lens, as typically your priority will be to have as wide of framing as possible.
The 11-20RF covers a very useful range nonetheless, giving you a variety of framing options at 11, 14, 16, 18, and 20mm (the marked positions on the zoom ring):
The 11-20RF is priced at $659 USD, which is identical to where the Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN is priced (my review here) and considerably more expensive than the roughly $300 budget Canon RF-S 10-18mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM lens. It it worth the price premium over the Canon, and should it be considered instead of the Sigma? Check out my reviews if you have questions.
Keywords: Tamron, 11-20mm, Tamron 11-20mm Review, Tamron 11-20 RF, RXD, Tamron, 11-20, F2.8, f/2.8, Canon, Canon EOS R5, EOS, R, R5, Review, Canon EOS R6 MK II, Canon EOS R6 II, EOS R6 II Review, RF, mirrorless, Canon EOS R7 Review, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 45MP, 24MP, Canon, #letthelightin, #DA, #EOSR5, #Canon, #withmytamron
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
2024 has been the year where Canon has finally, grudgingly, let a third party lens makers creep in to their RF mount, though with one huge caveat. There are still (absolutely!) no full frame lenses from third parties allowed, but Canon is opening up the RF/RF-S mount to APS-C lenses. Earlier this year I reviewed a few of the first Sigma lenses to come in an RF mount, and the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD becomes the first Tamron lens to arrive on the platform. This is great, as it provides another high quality wide angle option for Canon shooters to consider. But is there enough here to bypass the equally interesting Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN lens that is also now available on RF? Find out in either my video review or in the text review below.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me a loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the APS-C mode on my 45MP Canon EOS R5, which I reviewed here.
Tamron loves its initials in their lens names, so let’s sort out that alphabet soup. Di III is their designation for a mirrorless lens design, and, in this case, the addition of -A at the (Di III-A) refers to their development for APS-C mirrorless. RXD refers to the focus motor, and means Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive.
As with the Sigma lenses I’ve reviewed before, Canon is explicitly keeping you out of the full frame protocols. I don’t own a Canon APS-C camera, so I’m doing this review on the APS-C mode of my full frame Canon EOS R5. Typically I can evaluate full frame coverage on Sony or Nikon, but here all options but the 1.6x APS-C crop are greyed out. Canon is making SURE you don’t enter that sacred full frame space under any circumstance!
Canon is unique amongst other brands in that their APS-C crop is tighter than other brands. It is 1.6x rather than 1.5x, meaning that the effective focal length of the lens changes a bit in this application. Whereas it will be 16-30mm frame equivalent on 1.5x, it will be 17.6-32mm on Canon. That’s unfortunate with a wide angle lens, as typically your priority will be to have as wide of framing as possible.
The 11-20RF covers a very useful range nonetheless, giving you a variety of framing options at 11, 14, 16, 18, and 20mm (the marked positions on the zoom ring):
The 11-20RF is priced at $659 USD, which is identical to where the Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DN is priced (my review here) and considerably more expensive than the roughly $300 budget Canon RF-S 10-18mm F4.5-6.3 IS STM lens. It it worth the price premium over the Canon, and should it be considered instead of the Sigma? While this is the third platform that I’ve reviewed this lens on (Sony E and Fuji X previously), so there will be some recycled material in this review. But I will try to specifically address those questions in the RF version of the review.
Build and Handling
The Tamron 11-20mm RXD certainly hits a sweet spot for size and weight for a wide angle zoom. It feels reasonably compact on my frame Canon EOS R5, but I’ve also reviewed it on smaller bodies on Sony, and it worked fine there.. It is 2.9″ (D) x 3.4″ (L), or 73 x 86.2 mm according to the specifications, as even though the Canon RF mount is wider in diameter than the Sony E or Fuji X mounts, this isn’t the widest part of the lens. Like most of Tamron’s mirrorless lenses it has a 67mm front filter thread which allows filters to be shared across almost all of Tamron’s other options for the platform (excluding the much larger 150-500mm, obviously!) The weight is 11.8 oz (335 g), making it the heaviest of the three wide angle zoom options on Canon RF-S. The Sigma is 270g, while the “slow” Canon lens is just 150g.
I call the Canon “slow” because it starts at a rather dim F4.5 at 10mm and quickly arrives at a maximum aperture of an even slower F6.3 later in the zoom range. That’s a huge disadvantage relative to the Tamron and Sigma lenses, that have a constant F2.8 aperture throughout the zoom range. F2.8 lets in twice as much light as F4, which means that at best the Canon will be 1 1/3 stops dimmer and at worst 2 1/3 stops. That means that the Tamron or Sigma lenses will be much, much more useful in low light situations. Canon tries to compensate by including IS (Image Stabilization) in their lens, but that won’t always help as it doesn’t stop movement of subjects, meaning that you would still have to jack up the ISO to freeze action. I would much rather have a faster lens like the Tamron.
While the depth of field is more equivalent to a full frame F4 lens, the F2.8 aperture will always have the light gathering capability of an F2.8 lens (regardless of whether attached to APS-C or Full Frame), meaning that the 11-20mm RXD has the advantage of being able to have more in focus at larger apertures but all the light gathering potential of an F2.8 lens – which can be a big help in low light conditions.
This is a new lens on Canon, but it has been out on Sony since 2021. That means that this lens comes from an older stage of Tamron’s development cycle and design language, but Tamron had made a key update to the RF version in that it has an AF | MF on upper left side of the lens. I appreciate having the AF | MF switch, and that alone makes this perhaps the best version of this lens.
Right now this only allow for firmware updates (no customization as with some lenses), but I like having future options.
The position of the two rings on the 11-20mm is reversed relative to the 17-70mm, which is unfortunate for those who will buy both lenses to use as a kit (I’m assuming the 17-70mm will soon be available on RF too). The closer (and wider) of the two is the zoom ring. The zoom ring has a rubberized, ribbed texture, is easy to find by touch, and moves smoothly through the zoom range without any sticking points. The inner barrel will extend about 2cm at the 11mm position:
The lens will be at its fully retracted position at 20mm.
While many would prefer an internally zooming lens, thus far all of these Tamron zooms have been externally zooming, though they must be doing a fairly good job of sealing the lenses, and I’ve heard little anecdotal reports from buyers about getting dust inside of them. The inner barrel extends smoothly and without any wobble.
The second ring (nearer the front of the lens) is the manual focus ring. This (like all mirrorless lenses) is focus-by-wire, meaning that focus input on the focus ring is routed through the focus motor to move the elements. Manual focus feel is fairly light and without a lot of tactile feedback. Typical manual focus aids are all available, as Tamron lenses on Canon RF function largely like native lenses.
Tamron has included a shallow, petal-shaped lens hood with deep ribs inside that disrupt stray light bouncing around. It’s plastic and lightweight, but the quality of the plastics is apparent by feel. It doesn’t feel as cheap as some hoods that I see. It feels like it could take a few bumps without cracking. Due to the wide-angle nature of the lens, the lens hood is fairly wide, so it doesn’t reverse completely flush along the sides of the lens for storage.
The lens’ housing is a nice grade of engineered plastics with a satin finish. There’s a platinum-colored accept ring right near the lens mount. Nothing fancy on the outside, but the lens “look” is clean and it looks nice mounted on the camera.
As noted, however, the good stuff is inside. There’s a rubber gasket at the lens mount that is the outer evidence of the weather sealing inside, and this is diagram from Tamron shows that there are a total of seven seal points in the lens. This is capped off by a nice fluorine coating on the front element, which not only helps protect it from scratches but also makes it water and fingerprint resistant and thus easier to clean.
Tamron’s recent trends regarding MFD (minimum focus distance) hold true here, as the lens sports two different MFDs for wide (0.15m/5.9″) and telephoto (0.24m/9.4″). Both are pretty close, frankly, with the 11mm position requiring you to be nearly on top of your subject (the length from the sensor to the end of the lens WITHOUT the hood is 12cm, leaving you only 3cm of working room to your subject. If you leave the hood on, that length grows to 14.5cmm, leaving you a few mm of working room. It will be almost impossible to avoid shading your subject with the lens attached, so remove the hood to give you a bit more working room. Even so, I found it almost impossible to properly light my test chart even moving my lights right in, as this is what MFD looks like:
Should you be able to get that close, you get as high as a 0.25x (1:4) magnification figure, which looks like this.
Being able to pull off shots that close in the real world are rarely going to happen, so I consider that 0.25x figure to mostly be marketing. You can still get a reasonable magnification by backing up a bit, though. My preference is just to use the 20mm position or somewhere in between. The telephoto end gives you a better working distance and better results in terms of sharpness, but unfortunately the magnification figure drops to a much more pedestrian 0.13x, though even that figure is better than the Fuji 8-16mm (0.10x) and only slightly lower than the Fuji 10-24mm (0.16x). The magnification at 20mm looks like this:
You’ll note that the 20mm position gives a much flatter focus plane. The telephoto magnification figure is a bit lower, but achieving the result will be much simpler in the field and probably much more satisfying in the process. I find a nice compromise is to shoot somewhere around 16mm, as you can get closer than 20mm, achieve a higher magnification level, but without being right on top of the subject like at 11mm.
As is common with wide angle lenses, Tamron has reduced the number of blades from nine to 7 rounded blades. A lens like this is less about bokeh and more about being able to produce nice sunstars, and the seven bladed aperture produces a cleaner looking sunstar.
Tamron touts the flare resistance of this lens, but it isn’t perfect, as you can see. We’ll dive into that more in the image quality section.
The Tamron 11-20mm RXD is a simple lens in terms of design and features, but at the same time I’ve had no long term issues with Tamron lenses just like this one. They’ve held up fine and get the job done, though I do miss some of missing features.
Stills Autofocus
As noted, the 11-20RF is equipped with Tamron’s Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive (RXD), and this will be the first time that I’ve used a native Tamron lens on Canon RF. I wasn’t surprised to find that autofocus worked great, however, delivering fast and accurate results.
Canon’s focus systems are pretty great, and the Tamron works just like a better native lens, with quick, silent focus that is nearly instantaneous in making focus changes.
Eye Detect works fine (as it does almost universally now), though with a wide angle lens like this you have to be pretty close for the eye to occupy a large enough part of the frame to show active tracking. If you are close enough, however, the “stickiness” of the box on the eye is fairly good and will follow the subject around.
Bottom line is that the Tamron 11-20RF works a treat on Canon. All good.
Video Autofocus
That goodness extends to video AF as well. Focus pulls were fantastic, with smooth confidence and no visible steps. Focus breathing is low, making this a very nice lens for pulling focus with.
My “hand test” where I alternately block the view of my face with my hand and then remove went fine overall, though it’s a little hard to block the camera’s view when the angle of view is so wide!
More subtle focus transitions during video capture were generally smooth, and while occasionally focus will stick on a subject when you want it to move, I felt in general that focus worked well. This would be a nice vlogging lens, too. Here’s a still from one of my video clips:
This pairing gives me a lot of hope for Tamron lenses on Canon RF. Focus seems extremely natural and smooth.
Image Quality Breakdown
I’ve reviewed the optics of this lens twice previously, and nothing has changed. This is an optical formula of 12 elements in 10 groups, with 5 of those being exotic elements (molded glass aspherical, hybrid aspherical, and Low Dispersion). Here’s a look at the optical design and MTFs:
If you understand MTF diagrams, you will note that these are very good looking MTFs for a wide angle zoom lens. Tamron does its MTFs wide open, and the surprising thing about the 11mm result is that there is actually a bit of dip in resolution near the mid-frame position with the corner resolving better than the mid-frame area (though contrast is must lower in the corner relative to the mid-frame). The 20mm result shows a more typical slide towards the edge of the frame.
I didn’t find it hard to get results that were sharp across the frame.
Results at 20mm, F2.8 also looked very crisp and detailed.
My vignette and distortion tests showed largely expected results. Here’s a look at 11mm:
Distortion is a constant on all three platforms, with a mildly complex barrel distortion that corrects fairly well with a +9. The standard correction profile will do a slightly better job. Vignette falls in between my results on Sony and Fuji at a +71. Fuji was the worst at a +78, with Sony far better at +46. In my experience lenses tend to perform best in this metric on the platform they were first designed for (Sony, in this case). In both of these metrics, the Tamron easily outperforms the Sigma 10-18mm on RF, as I had to dial in a +23 to correct the barrel distortion and had to max out the vignette slider.
Here’s what things look like at 20mm:
There is a mild amount of pincushion distortion that required a -5 to correct and a bit less vignette, requiring a +54 to correct.
I saw good results with longitudinal chromatic aberrations (LoCA), with very crisp results, good results, and strong contrast even at F2.8:
There is a mild amount of lateral style fringing near the edges of the frame that you can only see at high levels of magnification.
Colors were rich and images looked nice, in my opinion.
Here’s another sample on Canon:
I’ve already tested this lens on the most challenging platform for APS-C, which is Fuji’s 40MP sensor. Canon’s current highest APS-C resolution is the 32.5MP sensor found in several models. Unfortunately I don’t have access to one of those models, so I’m testing on the APS-C mode of my Canon EOS R5. That’s a very undemanding 17MP, so I’ll focus new information in this section on the vignette performance, which will be unique to Canon. Canon results will fall in between my Sony tests (24MP) and more extreme Fuji tests (40MP). If you have a lower resolution camera (24MP), then look at the results in the Sony test here. If you have the higher resolution sensor, you might want to check out the Fuji findings here, though with the understanding that you’ll see better apparent sharpness results on Canon because the pixel density is lower and because it is much easier to sharpen Canon files.
I noted that I would dive into flare resistance a bit more. I felt like flare resistance at larger apertures was actually pretty good. This shot at 20mm, F2.8, doesn’t show any negative impact from shooting right into the bright directional sun.
This F2.8 wide shot shows a bit of ghosting in the trees to the right of sun in the frame, but nothing too bad.
Stopping the lens down introduces a few more prismatic spots, though nothing too destructive.
The performance actually feels better than what I found on Sony. Perhaps coatings have improved a bit. I feel like contrast holds up really well with the sun in the frame.
Coma performance is quite, with night sky images looking clean other than a bit of “star-stretching” in the corners.
I really liked the Sigma 10-18mm on platforms like Sony and Fuji, but I was frankly a little underwhelmed by the lens on Canon, for some reason. I like the Tamron better here, and a lot of that came down to how the colors of the optical glass meshed with Canon’s color science. The Tamron seems like a better fit.
The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD is a welcome addition to the Canon RF platform, as it gives another legitimate wide angle zoom option. It’s an important lens, in that while it isn’t new (on other platforms), it is the first Tamron lens to come to Canon’s RF platform. Here’s the hope that this is the first of many, including (eventually) some full frame options.
Like the Sigma 10-18mm F2.8, the Tamron isn’t cheap, costing twice as much as Canon’s own slower and plasticky RF-S 10-18mm. But it is also the superior optical instrument in build, function, and aperture speed.
Not everyone will want to spend over $600 for this lens, but those that do will find a lens that they will invariably enjoy, providing fast autofocus, good handling, and a very good (and consistent) optical performance. I’d say that it would currently be my choice, and that’s about as good a recommendation as I can give.
Pros:
Finally a Tamron on Canon RF!
Great wide angle zoom range
Maintains F2.8 aperture
Relatively compact and lightweight
Good build with weather sealing
Fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus
Shares a 67mm filter thread with other Tamron lenses on Sony
Exceptional optical performance
Good coma control
Strong aberration control
Cons:
No aperture ring
Corners lag behind the center a fair bit
Relatively expensive compared to the Canon RF-S 10-18mm
Keywords: Tamron, 11-20mm, Tamron 11-20mm Review, Tamron 11-20 RF, RXD, Tamron, 11-20, F2.8, f/2.8, Canon, Canon EOS R5, EOS, R, R5, Review, Canon EOS R6 MK II, Canon EOS R6 II, EOS R6 II Review, RF, mirrorless, Canon EOS R7 Review, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 45MP, 24MP, Canon, #letthelightin, #DA, #EOSR5, #Canon, #withmytamron
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The Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN is the second of two Sigma zooms that we’ve seen rereleased on Canon’s RF mount, and they are very welcome. Earlier this year as I was doing my review of the Canon EOS R50 compact APS-C mirrorless camera I couldn’t help lament the state of the lens options for Canon’s RF-S mount. At the time of the review (two years since the release of the EOS R7, the first of Canon’s RF mount APS-C cameras), this was the sum total of the available lenses.
Yuck. I couldn’t imagine a less exciting lineup of lenses. The fastest maximum aperture in the bunch was F3.5, and that lens is F4 and smaller before you make it to 30mm. Canon clearly knew they had a problem, for between the time that I filmed my review and the time I released it, they announced that certain Sigma (and later Tamron) lenses would become available for RF-S (the APS-C version of Canon RF). Now, to be clear, this is only for APS-C lenses, but for now it seems like Canon is going to let third parties solve their APS-C lens problem. This is great news for consumers, however, because it means that Sigma’s lineup of DC DN lenses will be coming to Canon RF. The first release was the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8, a lens that I actually own and gave a positive RF mount review here. A few months later they have followed up with the second zoom release, this time the wide angle Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN. Is this also a lens worth considering for your Canon R-mount APS-C camera? You can find out my thoughts in the video review below…or read on.
Thanks to Gentec (Sigma’s Canadian Distributor), for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own.*The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 45MP Canon EOS R5, which I reviewed here.
This becomes the first “fast” wide angle zoom for Canon RF-S (APS-C), giving a constant aperture of F2.8 over its zoom range. Now, to be fair, that’s not a big zoom range, but then again, Canon’s own RF-S 10-18mm not only has that same small zoom range but also has a variable aperture of F4.5-6.3! That means that the Sigma is over two stops faster at 18mm (F6.3 is 2 1/3rds stop slower than F2.8). And, while that zoom range is not large, it is enough to give you a variety of options for framing a scene, from this at 10mm:
…to this at 18mm:
This review of the 10-18mm RF is not a whole new review, but rather an update on how the 18-50mm RF translates to Canon RF. I’ve already tested the image quality at both a 26MP (Sony) and 40MP (Fuji) in 2023, so that covers the full gambit (and more) of what’s available on RF bodies. There are no optical surprises here, but I’m always curious to see how the lens changes in terms of its dimensions, but, most importantly, how well it autofocuses on a platform that it wasn’t originally designed for.
The 18-50mm RF is one of six lenses released by Sigma for Canon RF, and those six lenses represent all of the APS-C mirrorless lenses they’ve released over the past three years. You can see my review of the original releases on Sony here.
Sigma’s DC DN lenses have all fallen under the umbrella of their Contemporary lineup, and while Sigma has proven willing to experiment with new features and design elements within the ART and Sport lineups, the Contemporary lenses have all stuck to a fairly rigid design formula. That continues to be the case here, so this little zoom mostly looks and handles pretty similarly to other lenses in the lineup.
There’s nothing new here on the RF mount, but the lens is more of a standout on Canon due to having essentially zero quality competition. The 10-18mm RF is a genuine treat as an addition here. Why? Here’s a few reasons:
Has at least a weather sealing gasket
Better build quality than RF-S lenses
Includes a lens hood
Constant F2.8 aperture
Good up close performance
Great autofocus on RF
In essence, the poor competition makes this lens a star, though frankly I still found it one of the more compelling options on these other platforms as well.
The crop factor on Canon is different than Sony or Fuji, so the zoom range works a little different. Fuji/Sony have a crop factor of 1.5x, which means that the lens goes from a full frame equivalent of 15-27mm. Canon’s APS-C crop is 1.6x, and so that changes the effective focal range to 16-29mm. You’ll miss the extra bit of width at 10mm but get a little more reach. In this case, I think that most of us would prefer the extra millimeter of wide angle coverage, but that’s just not going to happen.
Marked positions in the zoom range are 10, 12, 14, 16, and 18mm, and here’s what the same scene looks like at each of these marked positions.
There’s really only one significant change to the 18-50mm on Canon, and that is that the lens mount portion of the lens has to be flared out to accommodate the much larger diameter of the RF mount.
Unlike the 18-50mm, however, this isn’t the widest part of the lens, so the exterior measurements don’t change despite this change. It is 72.2mm in diameter and 62mm in length (2.8 x 2.4″). That’s actually 2mm shorter than the Sony version, and this obvious reflects a slightly different flange difference between the two mounts. That extra bit of girth near the lens mount also adds a tiny bit of weight, with the RF version weighing 260g (9.17 oz). Other than these minor physical changes to the RF version, the build is otherwise identical to either the E-mount of X-mount versions.
This weighs about 110g more than the Canon, though the Canon is a very plasticky lens that also has a very slow aperture. The build quality between these two lenses can’t really be compared.
The 10-18mm RF is a mixture of metals and “thermal composites” (high grade engineered plastics) in construction, and the construction feels quality in the hand. It is built around a metal mount, unlike the Canon lens, which has a plastic mount.
The overall build quality just feels much higher than any of the Canon RF-S lenses that I’ve tested so far. This feels like a quality lens.
Up front we have the ability to use traditional filters in a very standard 67mm size.
There is a weather sealing gasket at the lens mount (thicker here on the RF mount than on previous versions), but, like other Contemporary lenses, there are no internal seal points.
The only thing on the barrel is the focus and zoom rings. The closest to the lens mount is is the focus ring, which is fairly narrow (10mm), ribbed, and moves smoothly. Like other lenses designed for mirrorless cameras, this is a focus-by-wire system in which input from the focus ring is routed through the focus motor. It is actually the focus motor that moves the elements, making manual focus more of an emulation than a direct movement of the elements. Some lenses pull this off better than others, and the Sigma 10-18mm DN is one of them. There is good weight/damping on the focus ring, and no visible steps during focus changes. I didn’t notice any focus lag either; the action on the ring and the movement of focus seemed directly linked. I will note that the lens will automatically alert the body to magnify the image when you are manually focusing, which is a big help in visually confirming focus. The focus weight is a little lighter than what I like, but not bad.
There is about 10mm between the focus ring and the beginning of the flared section that leads to the zoom ring. I appreciate some space there, as that was one of my complaints about the Sony 10-20mm; there was almost no room between the two rings on that lens, and it was easy to inadvertently move the wrong ring. There’s a very definite difference between two rings and position on the Sigma, though there is a different problem. At the fully retracted position (there is a slight external zoom action), the lens hood fits so tightly against the zoom ring that there isn’t a lot of space for your thumb to fit on the narrow ring. If you happen to have longer fingernails, you might actually find zooming a bit of a challenge.
The zoom action itself is very smooth. This is a “reverse zoom” in terms of the retraction; the inner barrel is fully retracted at 18mm and extends the furthest at 10mm, though the barrel extension is only about 10mm.
Sigma is experimenting with a new lens hood design for this lens. Rather than bayoneting into place, it is actually just a push on design. You still need to line up the markings on the hood and the barrel, but then you just push the lens hood into place rather than rotate it. A spring/lever mechanism holds the hood locked into place. You can release it by just doing a slight rotation to the left.
The primary “pro” of this design is it allows them to the make the lens hood a little thinner as there doesn’t need to be room in the hood design for the bayonet action. Sigma touts the fact that while the filter size of the 10-18mm is 12mm larger than the 18-50mm (67 vs 55mm), the diameter of the lens hood is only 3.8mm larger.
If you want to reverse the hood for storage, you now line up an arrow on the lens hood with the previous mark on the lens barrel and push it forward. Removing it simply requires a similar slight rotation to the left. As per usual, Sigma’s lens hoods are just a little bit nicer than the competition, including some soft-touch materials, texture variations, and lens information imprinted on them.
The 10-80mm DN has two different minimum focusing distances for the wide and telephoto ends of the zoom range. At 10mm you can focus as closely as 11.6cm (4.6″) and can get as high as a 0.25x magnification…though you have to be pretty much right on top of your subject to get it.
At 18mm that disance extends to 19.1cm (4.6″) and the magnification drops to just 0.14x…though shots at 18mm are a whole lot easier to get!
Get close enough and you can produce some creative shots like this.
The aperture iris is electromagnetic and controlled from within the camera (no aperture ring). It has seven rounded aperture blades that do a fairly good job of retaining a circular shape even with the lens stopped down, though frankly you won’t have a lot of opportunity to shoot shallow depth of field shots with a wide angle lens like this.
Stopping down will produce a decent (but not exceptional) 14 bladed sunstar effect.
There is no optical stabilization on the lens, unfortunately, which is the one advantage I can point to for the Canon RF-S 10-18mm. I happened to test on a camera that had in body image stabilization, so I didn’t miss it, but many of Canon’s smaller APS-C cameras don’t have IBIS.
On other platforms the Sigma is a rather plain lens in terms of features and build. Because of so little competition on Canon, however, it feels next level in terms of build and handling. It’s a nicely made little lens that follows a familiar, well-executed Sigma formula.
Autofocus and Video
Sigma continues to utilize a stepping focus motor (STM) in these smaller lenses as the elements are smaller and lighter than lenses and don’t require the higher torque that some of their large aperture full frame or sports oriented lenses. Autofocus is something that Canon does very, very well, and it is clear to me that Sigma has received access to the focus protocols and algorithms, as the 10-18mm RF definitely handles like a first party lens.
The STM motor provides fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus. Eye detection works fine, and I was able to grab some action photos without difficulty.
AF had no problem with a group photo of some friends and I on the golf course, though, to be fair, it isn’t difficult to have a LOT in focus with a wide angle lens like this.
Autofocus speed was excellent, near instantaneous both indoors and outdoors, and utterly reliable and accurate. My focus tests showed extremely rapid transitions from close to distant subjects. Focus breathing is extremely low, so this helps the transitions feel very smooth and rapid.
This is also a huge factor in video recording, as focus pulls are not only quick and confident, but the extremely low focus breathing helps them to feel very seamless and cinematic. No steps, no pulses, but just clean, smooth transitions that are nicely cinematic.
My “hand test” (where I block the view of my face with my hand and then move the hand to allow focus to pop back to the eye) also went well. Focus transitioned confidently from my hand to my test and vice versa.
The lens is not parfocal, however, and I did notice that there were moments of defocus before the lens refocused while zooming and do video recording. I also noticed a bit of warping as I began to move the from the wide end towards the telephoto end.
But overall this is a really solid autofocus system that delivers a fantastic performance on Canon.
Sigma 10-18mm RF Optical Performance
The Sigma 10-18mm RF sports a relatively complex optical formula for such a small lens. There are 13 elements in 10 groups, and that includes number of exotic elements like 4 aspherical elements (including a large GM aspherical concave lens as the front element), 3 FLD elements, and one SLD element. The MTF chart and comparison shows a significant improvement over the older Sigma 10-20mm F3.5 that the was equivalent lens for DSLRs. The MTF chart shows a very strong center and midframe at both ends of the zoom range with minimal falloff in the corners at 10mm. There’s a stronger falloff at 18mm in the corners.
In this section I will be reusing some of my results from the 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor. It is higher resolution than anything Canon currently makes (current resolution points are between 24 – 33MP. Fuji’s images are also harder to sharpen than Canon, so you will have no problem getting beautiful results on Canon bodies. You can expect sharpness results to look better on Canon. I don’t currently own a Canon RF APS-C camera, so I’m doing this test on my the APS-C mode of my EOS R5, which is only 17MP. That’s fine for showing real world images as I’ve done in this review, but not really for evaluating the limits of the performance.
It has no problem producing beautiful images.
For those that are interested, Canon is not going to allow you to even experiment with this lens for full frame. Only the 1.6x crop option is available; all other options are greyed out.
I will redo the vignette and distortion tests, however, as the vignette amount does change from one mount to another. Here’s a look at the before and after of manual corrections of both at 10mm:
I didn’t expect to see any real difference in distortion (it’s the same optical formula), but I’ve noticed a trend with lenses first developed for Sony that then move other mounts that the vignette tends to be heavier.
At 10mm there is a significant amount of barrel distortion. I settled on a +23 to correct it, though there is definitely some “mustache” shape to the distortion pattern where correcting the barrel distortion across the majority of the frame tends to create some pincushion distortion in the corners. The standard profile does a cleaner job of correcting the distortion. On Sony I needed a +53 to correct the vignette, but on Fuji and on Canon I had to max out the slider (+100). That’s close to two stops higher.
So how about the “telephoto” end of the zoom range?
The distortion flips to pincushion style at 18mm but it was very linear and easy to cleanly correct for (I used a -4 on Canon). Vignette was a little lighter but still required a +74 to correct (+36 more than on Sony). Sigma gets profile support on Canon in camera for everything but distortion for some reason. There is already a correction profile available for Lightroom/ACR that will also clean things up nicely for RAW files. So, not a flawless performance, but nothing critical here, either.
How about chromatic aberrations?
I saw very little longitudinal chromatic aberrations before and after the plane of focus. You can see very little fringing in all of the shiny metal and crystal bits on this decorative reindeer.
Lateral Chromatic Aberrations usually show up along the edges of the frame as fringing on either side of high contrast areas, but that doesn’t seem to be an issue here. Winter is the most obvious time to see issues with LaCA due to all the bare branches, but I don’t see any issues here even with corrections turned off.
That’s good news, as you are far more likely to see lateral CA on a wide angle zoom in real world images than you are to see longitudinal CA.
So how about resolution and contrast? All chart tests done with a the X-H2 (40MP) using a tripod and a two second delay. Here’s a look at my test chart:
And here are the crops (at roughly 200% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and extreme corner shot at 10mm and at F2.8:
In the center of the frame we can see that the Sigma 10-18X has no problem. It still looks fantastic. Mid-frame is a little murkier, though the corner look relatively good. Stop down to F4 and the mid-frame and the corners take a nice leap forwards:
There’s a bit more on tap at F5.6, so that means that real world landscape images at 10mm will look very nice all across the frame.
Diffraction comes early on pixel dense cameras like the X-H2, so I actually found F8 to have very slightly less contrast compared with F5.6. After F8 things go downhill fast as diffraction robs away contrast and acuity. By F22 (minimum aperture) the image looks very soft.
I would recommend sticking with F5.8-F8 for landscape work on a high resolution camera to get your best results.
I slightly preferred the overall image quality at 12mm. The center is about the same as 10mm, but the results in the midframe and corners are clearly better.
Real world 12mm images look great, though the absolute edges aren’t pin sharp on 40MP.
14mm is very similar to 12mm in contrast, though I didn’t feel like it resolved some of the fine lines quite as well. Take a look at the number 2 and the area around it on the right as compared to the left (12mm).
There’s a clear improvement at F4, however, and landscape apertures look pretty great in real world images.
16mm is mostly similar to 14mm with perhaps a little better detail and contrast…particularly along the edges of the frame.
I did note a mild regression at 18mm in my Sony E-mount review, but I’m seeing it less here on Fuji. As I compare 16mm and 18mm across the frame I see some give and take. Some areas favor 16mm, others favor 18mm. The performance is mostly similar between the two focal lengths, making the overall sharpness and contrast very consistent across this zoom range.
I chose this crop because it illustrates the challenge well – there is very little to distinguish between the two focal lengths…even side by side and magnified to 200%!
As before, you can see some improved contrast a bit more detail by stopping the lens down. I found a more significant different at F5.6 than at F4. By F5.6 the improved contrast is very noticeable.
The two ends of the zoom range are the most important, as you’ll often be in situations where you want to go as wide as possible, while the 18mm end will give both the maximum reach but also will be the go to for up close work…like in the shot of these mushrooms.
You can see from the crop that while the amount of detail at F2.8 on a high resolution sensor isn’t pin-sharp, it is sharp enough to work in most situations.
You are also most likely to get visible bokeh at 18mm. This image allows us to look at both the sharpness of the subject and the bokeh beyond.
At a pixel level I can see that contrast doesn’t “wow” me, but at every other viewing magnification the image looks great. There’s no “bleeding” around the edges of the leaves due to low contrast, and the quality of the bokeh is pretty nice. Wide angle lenses are almost never going to give you amazing bokeh (that’s just not their strength), but I would be happy in getting images like the one above.
Here’s another bokeh shot of a field of frost covered sweet fern. You can see a bit of busyness in the transition zone as things move out of focus (some outlining), but beyond that the bokeh gets fairly soft and creamy.
Flare resistance was fairly good in most situations, with good contrast and only minor issues with ghosting. That performance was pretty similar to what I saw on Sony. Here’s a fresh shot that shows good flare resistance.
I did see some “flashing” with the sun right out of the frame when shooting video, though I did find it fairly artistic and not distracting. Again, that’s a subjective evaluation, and I would recommend watching the video review to draw more conclusions for yourself. Here’s a few screenshots to show the effect.
Overall my feelings were very positive about the flare resistance.
Canon has nice color science, and that means that it isn’t difficult to get images with beautiful color when using the 10-18mm RF on a Canon body.
Here’s another shot that shows nice, rich levels of color saturation.
The Sigma 10-18X is able to navigate the bump to 40MP on Fuji better than most zoom lenses I have tested on the sensor, and that means that Canon RF shooters at lower resolution levels (and easier sensors to sharpen) should be pretty satisfied with the amount of detail you can achieve with this lens.
That Fuji sensor is a monster for making lenses look softer at a pixel level, but that’s not on Sigma. Compared to other lenses, it actually holds up well. Here’s the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD (another lens that looked very good on Sony but softer on Fuji), and you can see that the Sigma definitely better.
All things considered, I feel like there is a lot of optical performance here for such a small package. You can see many more beautiful images by visiting the image gallery here.
Conclusion
I’ve been recommending the Sigma 10-18mm F2.8 DC DN to a lot of people looking for a good APS-C wide angle zoom on multiple platforms, so I’m not surprised that it performs well on Canon RF mount. Autofocus was fantastic, image quality looks great, and the lens remains very impressive despite its small size. It’s a great match for smaller APS-C bodies in size, and the performance is strong enough to delight owners.
There really isn’t much in terms of competition, so it’s an easy lens to recommend on RF. It is actually the premium option, and while it is isn’t cheap at $659 USD, neither is it ridiculously expensive.
It’s great to see Canon’s RF mount starting to open to these third party offerings, and very quickly we will see the amount of lenses available for RF-S (APS-C) tripled due to Canon’s move to open the protocols. This gives Canon shooters a seriously good little option, and the Sigma 10-18mm 2.8 DN is what I would be buying if I were in the market right now.
Pros:
Fantastic job porting to Canon
Extremely compact and lightweight
Nicely made with a weather sealing gasket
Useful focal range with constant F2.8 aperture
Great autofocus performance
Good video AF performance
Almost non-existent focus breathing
Good sharpness across zoom range
Nice colors
Good flare resistance
Nicer build and handling than RF lenses
Cons:
No optical stabilizer
Fairly strong and complex barrel distortion at 10mm
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