Pergear released a 14mm F2.8 wide angle prime for full frame cameras a few years ago, and while it was nicely sharp, there were some areas that could be improved. But Pergear is back with a second attempt that has improved on a number of those shortcomings. The new Pergear 14mm F2.8 II features:
More compact size
Reduced flare (though this remains a vulnerability)
A reduced minimum focus distance (from 43cm to 21cm for the new version)
An improved design for the attachable filter holder
I didn’t test the first lens, but while there are a few areas where this ultra wide angle prime shows its budget origins (it costs $299 USD), but it also has some serious strengths, including incredibly sharpness even on my high resolution Sony a7RV (61MP).
It also has very low distortion for such a wide angle lens, making this a valid budget option for capturing interior spaces and retaining clean lines.
While colors are not also as accurate as more expensive lens with better optical glass, there was a certain charm to the color rendition in many images, leading to rich looking images.
If you’ve never shot with an ultra wide angle lens (the Pergear 14mm F2.8 II has an impressively wide 114° angle of view), you’ll discover that while the focal length does provide some composition challenges (you often need to get much closer to subjects than you might expect!), such a wide angle lens provides wonderfully dynamic images.
The Pergear 14mm F2.8 II is a manual everything lens, so won’t be for everyone, but a lens like this is easy to focus and shoot with…with a few caveats. Should you consider the 14II for an extreme wide angle alternative for your full frame mirroless camera (it comes in Sony E-mount [tested here], Canon RF, Nikon Z, and Leica L)? You can judge for yourself by either watching my video review below or reading the text review…or just enjoy the photos below.
Thanks to Pergear for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
Keywords: Pergear 14mm F2.8 II, Pergear 14mm, Pergear, 14mm, F2.8, II, Wide Angle, Full Frame, Pergear 14mm F2.8 II Review, Sony, Review, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7IV, Sony a7RV, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Travel, Mexico, Cancun, Photography, 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 January 2021 I released my review of this lens for Sony E-mount cameras. At the time, no Tamron lenses were available on Fuji X-mount, and I spoke in my conclusion about how a lens like the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-a VC RXD actually gave Sony an advantage – it’s the kind of lens I call a “system seller”. On paper it has pretty much everything: a great focal range (25.5-105mm full frame equivalent), a large maximum aperture through the zoom range (F2.8), optical stabilization (Vibration Compensation, or VC), and a fast focus system (RXD). But that advantage is no longer on Sony alone, as this was one of the first lenses to come to Fuji X-mount from Tamron once Fuji began opening up their platform to third party lenses. That’s an amazing focal range to have a constant aperture of F2.8 over, covering from this at 17mm:
…to this at 70mm:
It also is a great value. The current price at B&H Photo is $699 USD, which is a full $500 cheaper than the Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 LM WR (my review here) or $200 less than the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 PZD (my review coming soon). The Tamron doesn’t perfectly align with either of those lenses, but they are the closest competitors I can point to on the platform. Sigma has also made their 18-50mm F2.8 DC available on Fuji X-mount (my review here), but the main reasons to consider the Sigma would be price ($549 USD) and compact size as the Tamron 17-70mm VC has the advantage in focal range, weather sealing, and also includes an optical stabilizer. I’ve been interested in revisiting some of these third party lenses on X-mount for two primary reasons: 1) to see how autofocus performs on a new platform and 2) to see how the lens’ optics survive the very pixel dense 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor on some of their new cameras.
I found the 17-70mm VC a little big for the Sony a6400 body that I reviewed it on previously, but my Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) is more like a full frame camera is size and the lens is a perfect fit on the X-H2.
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. VC is Vibration Compensation, which is Tamron’s name for their proprietary OIS (image stabilization) system. It’s worth noting that neither of the Fuji alternatives (both of which cost more) come with built in stabilization. RXD refers to the focus motor, which is similar to the linear motors employed on many of Fuji’s better lenses. In short, this lens is pretty loaded with quality features under its skin even if there aren’t a lot of external features on the barrel.
So does the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC RXD impress me as much on Fuji as it did on Sony? You can watch my conclusions in my video review, or just read on to find out…
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me an loaner of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. I have used both my personal Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) and a loaner of the X-S20 (my review here) for this review.
Tamron 17-70mm VC Build, Handling, and Features
As noted, the Tamron 17-70mm VC is more like a full frame sized lens. You can’t make this large of a zoom range (4.11x zoom ratio) with this large of a constant maximum aperture (F2.8) without making a larger lens even when designing for the smaller APS-C sensor. The lens is 74.6mm (2.9″) in diameter (about average), but is fairly long at 119.3mm (4.7″). Like most of Tamron’s mirrorless lenses the 17-70mm VC has a 67mm front filter thread. That makes the Tamron longer than the XF 16-55mm F2.8 (106mm), though that lens is considerably wider (83.3mm) and weighs more at 655mm. The 17-70mm F2.8 is 525 grams (1.2 lb). Here’s a look at how the specs break down:
The lens extends an additional 27mm when zoomed to 70mm, so when zoomed out and and the hood attached, this is not a small lens:
So not small, but it’s worth noting that the weight is light enough that the lens balances fine on most Fuji bodies, though it will obviously be a better match for the larger X-T or X-H bodies.
That bright maximum aperture of F2.8 helps the versatility of this lens, as it makes it more useful in lower light conditions or as an event/wedding zoom. 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 shutter speed of an F2.8 lens on APS-C would be the same as the shutter speed under identical conditions of an F2.8 lens on a full frame camera.
As has been Tamron’s design philosophy thus far, the design language is clean, modern, and without distractions. That’s the nice way of putting it. The glass half empty approach is to note that there are no features on the outside of the lens. No AF/MF switch, no aperture ring – just the zoom and focus rings. Aperture rings were rare on Sony in the past, but the aperture ring has been a very common design element on Fuji. It is also rare, in my experience, for a lens equipped with an optical stabilizer to not have an ON/OFF switch for it mounted on the barrel.
All we have on the barrel is the two rings. The position of the two rings on the 17-70mm is reversed relative to the 11-20mm, which is unfortunate for those who will buy both lenses to use as a kit. The closer (and narrower) of the two is the manual focus ring. You will have to select manual focus from within the camera, though this is common on Fuji cameras and is fairly simple if you have a body that has the Focus Mode lever or button on the front. 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 Fuji function largely like native lenses.
The zoom ring is close to the front of the camera. It is fairly wide and has a rubberized, ribbed texture. It moves smoothly through the zoom range without any sticking points. The inner barrel will extend about 27cm at the 70mm position, and is fully retracted at the 17mm position. The inner barrel extends smoothly and without any wobble.
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 (in fact my test copy and X-H2 came off my tripod while shooting some tests. It fell a couple of feet to the carpeted floor, landing on the lens hood. No harm, no foul, though to be safe I’ll be having Tamron check out the lens to make sure that it remained properly centered). All of the product shots were taken post-fall, so you can see that the lens weathered that bump well.
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 (0.19m/7.5″) and telephoto (0.39m/15.5″). You can get to nearly 0.21x magnification on the wide end and right over 0.19x on the telephoto end. I find the figure on the wide end less useful, however, as you have to get to within only 6-7cm of your subject to achieve that magnification, meaning that there is a STRONG chance of shading your subject with the lens. Distortion and field curvature is also exaggerated that close, leaving only a small “sweet spot” where focus is achieved. Here’s a look at the MFD at 17mm, then 70mm, and then the result at 17mm:
You can see that the field curvature is exaggerated up close. The magnification is a little lower at 70mm, but it’s a little easier to get:
Unfortunately image quality isn’t quite as strong up close at 70mm, but I still found close up images looked quite nice:
We’ve got a nine bladed aperture that prioritizes keeping things circular. Here’s a look at the bokeh geometry from F2.8 – F5.6:
The geometry looks pretty good, with fairly consistently circular shapes across the frame. Despite the rounded aperture iris the lens manages to produce a nice sunstar effect at 17mm when stopped down:
The inclusion of IBIS (In-Body-Image-Stabilization) has become much more common in Fuji cameras in the past three years, but that doesn’t change the fact that there are still a lot of Fuji cameras without IBIS. That makes the inclusion of Tamron’s VC (Vibration Compensation) important for stills, yes, but even more so for getting stable handheld video footage. Because I tested the lens on two cameras with IBIS (X-H2 and X-S20), I can’t turn either of the stabilization systems off independently, so I can’t really tell what the VC is doing and what IBIS is doing. I was able to handhold 70mm at shutter speeds of 1/4th of a second and get stable results:
I also had a nicely stable platform for video. Walking with the camera still doesn’t have anything like the smoothness of a gimbal, but it was better than what I’ve seen in many other such situations. If you don’t have a camera with IBIS, however, the stabilization of the 17-70mm VC could be a game changer for you.
The Tamron 17-70mm RXD lacks an aperture ring, and the exterior finish doesn’t come across as premium as Fuji’s own nicer lenses, but there are a lot of positives here as well. Stabilization, weather sealing, close focus performance – these are all very important in real world situations.
Autofocus and Video Performance
The Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 has Tamron’s excellent Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive (RXD).
In design, it looks like the linear motors designed by Fuji or Sony. I’ve been interested to see how the RXD works on Fuji (I’ve previously tested on Sony). Like the 11-20mm F2.8 that I tested first, I found that the RXD motor is pretty much flawless for stills, with fast, quiet focus on either the X-H2 or X-S20 bodies that I used for the review.
This is a far cry from some of the older Fuji lenses I’ve used, with noisy focus motors that were slow and rough. Quality of focus is more akin to the newest Linear Motor equipped lenses. I never really heard the focus motor, and focus accuracy was excellent even in less than ideal light (this is a 1/35th of a second shot, ISO 1600, F2.8):
Eye AF detection for people shots were generally excellent. I attended the wedding of a friend (not in a official capacity), but supplemented their photos with my own. I used the X-H2 and 17-70mm F2.8 for the “people photos”, and I got well focused results across the many images I took:
This certainly would work as a great lens to have mounted on at least one body for shooting weddings, giving you the ability to cover from wide to telephoto with an F2.8 aperture and accurate autofocus.
I also got accurately focused results of Nala as she stalked through the tall grasses.
I also used the “Insect Detection” mode and tracked some bee action at my hive.
I also had zero problems with smaller apertures and shooting landscapes. I got a lot of beautiful landscape shots with the lens and didn’t have any issue with pulsing or hunting at smaller apertures.
Here’s another:
I have no complaints for stills. Focus was fast, quiet, and accurate.
Video focus pulls were less stellar, however, which follows a trend that I’ve seen with Tamron lenses on Fuji thus far. There is some visible stepping in the actual pulls; the initial focus move, a split second pause, and then the final adjustment. I didn’t see any of this on the Sony version of the lens, so it is probably more of a Fuji problem in general, as I do tend to see more stepping on Fuji than other platforms.
There is a moderate amount of focus breathing. The results from my “hand test” were a little better, as the focus changes are smaller, but I still saw a bit of stepping. More subtle focus transitions during video capture were relatively smooth, but did show some steps. I’m hoping this is something that can improved either through firmware updates to the camera or lens in the future.
So, for stills I can give an unreserved “thumbs up”, but would encourage a little caution if your video style includes big autofocus pulls.
Tamron 17-70mm VC Image Quality
The 17-70mm F2.8 VC sports an optical formula of 16 elements in 12 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 standard zoom…particularly one with an extra-large zoom range. 17mm shows a very consistent performance across the frame, with 70mm presenting as sharper in the center but a little weaker in the corner. The transition to the 40MP sensor of Fujifilm X-H2 is a brutal one, however, as that is more pixels packed onto a sensor this size than ever before. All of the flaws will be apparent here.
Here’s a look at the vignette and distortion at 17mm:
When I reviewed the Tamron 11-20mm, I was surprised to see considerably more vignetting on the Fuji version than I had on the Sony version. I thought it was some kind of testing fluke at the time, but I’m seeing the same here, so this is an obvious trend. The optical design is the same as the Sony version, so I must surmise that the additional vignette has to do with Fuji. X-mount is several millimeters smaller in diameter than the Sony E-mount, so it is possible that there is some additional vignetting for the simple reason that the original design is for a larger mount and the transition to a smaller mount is introducing more vignette.
Or I’m completely wrong.
What I do know is that I saw about two stops of vignette at 17mm on the Sony version, and I see closer to 4 stops here (I had to max out the correction slider and you can still see a little darkness in the extreme corners). I had a similar jump on the Tamron 11-20mm. There is also some barrel distortion that isn’t quite linear in correcting (a slight wave pattern). The amount of distortion isn’t huge, however, and I used a +6 to correct it. Tamron seems to enjoy full in-camera correction support on Fuji, so use the standard profile in camera for JPEGs and Video for a cleaner still result. As always, RAW images will require using the correction profile, which does in fact do a cleaner job in correcting the distortion than my manual correction.
As is typical for a lens like this, the distortion pattern flips to a pincushion style distortion on the telephoto, though this distortion is even more linear and easier still to correct for. Vignette was also lower.
I used a -9 to correct the distortion and a +70 to correct the vignette. There’s nothing that is a dealbreaker here due to good corrections.
The 17-70mm VC does suffer from some longitudinal chromatic aberrations that show up as fringing before and after the plane of focus. This will rob the lens of some contrast. Fringing is more obvious on very high resolution bodies because the fringing occupies more pixels thus becomes more obvious when viewed at 100%. If you aren’t zooming into the image it won’t be more obvious, however.
You can see it in the out of focus region, though its not obvious or ruining the image.
I could see trace amounts of lateral chromatic aberrations on my chart (fringing in dark to light transitions near the edge of the frame) if I magnified to 200%, they were too insignificant to see in real world use, and a one click correction either in camera in (for RAWs) in software will clean those up nicely:
Let’s move on to resolution and contrast. I do my examinations at 200% magnification, as this clearly shows lens strengths and flaws for you to see. This is an extreme torture test, exaggerating strengths and weaknesses. The good news is that real world results always look a little better (mostly because you don’t view them at 200%!)
A note on sharpening: Adobe Lightroom (my home base for cataloging, testing, and displaying images) doesn’t always play well with Fuji X-Trans sensors. They are fairly notorious for looking “wormy” when applying sharpness, and thus require a deft touch to produce good results. Using Adobe’s “Enhance” option helps, though at the cost of tripling the stored file size (files are typically north of 150MB). I have worked hard to develop a sharpness preset for my X-H2 images that sharpens using a different technique than I typically use for my other cameras. By utilizing both techniques I can produce a demonstrably better result, though at the cost of additional work and storage size. I don’t do this for all images, but I will for the main test subjects below.
First, here’s my test chart:
We will start with F2.8 crops (near 200%) at 17mm from the center, mid-frame, and extreme lower right corner. Stopping down to F5.6 further improves contrast a bit as aberrations clear up.
We can see a fairly consistent performance across the frame (as suggested by the MTF), with good sharpness in the center of the frame, mid-frame, and only a mild drop in the corners. Contrast isn’t off the charts, and that is in part because of the challenge of performing on a much higher resolution sensor than the last time I tested the lens. That’s the challenge of such a high resolution sensor on APS-C, though it’s not quite so dire in the real world. I compare results at 200% here. Out in the real world at a more typical 100% magnification things look better…even when shooting a landscape at F2.8:
Stopping down to F4 produces little difference in the center or mid-frame, but I did see some improvement in the outer third of the image frame. Stopping on down to F5.6 increases contrast a bit more, and image quality is quite strong across the frame even on this high resolution beast:
Real world results at F5.6 are very nice with nice contrast and detail across the frame.
At 24mm I found resolution and contrast just a little bit higher all across the frame. Contrast in particular is noticeably better.
Contrast and detail edge up very slightly at 35mm, and real world results look nice:
I really love this image of an unscripted moment with the bride and groom.
There is a tiny regression at 50mm with contrast dropping a bit, though the difference would be hard to spot without having the images side by side. Contrast improves again by F4 and F5.6. Here’s an F2.8 shot:
That trend continues at 70mm, where the results are noticeably softer on the copy I tested. That leaves more room for improved image quality when stopping the lens down, and there’s a much bigger difference between F2.8 and F5.6 than at other focal lengths.
That slightly reduced contrast look can have a flattering effect for portraits, however.
Stopped down to smaller apertures and the lens produces detailed images at 70mm:
In my Sony review I was very impressed by the sharpness of the lens and less impressed by the bokeh, but on this high resolution body my opinion is slightly different. I’m less blown away by the sharpness but find the bokeh quality better than I remembered. This image shows a very soft profile on the bokeh.
I shot this high ISO image on the lower resolution X-S20 at 24mm, and while the background isn’t strongly blurred out, the transition to defocus looks fairly good.
Here’s one more that looks fairly nice.
The one negative that remains true is that if there are bright specular highlights in the image (like Christmas lights), you will see some concentric circles in the “bokeh balls”. That’s obviously not a desirable trait.
Flare resistance is quite good. Tamron utilized their premium BBAR lens coatings here, which tend to be extremely effective in resisting flare artifacts. In this sequence of photos you can see flare resistance at 17mm (at F11), then at 70mm F11 (the worst result I could find), followed by a real world shot with the sun right at the edge of the frame.
Even doing video pans across the sun produced very little negative effects.
While I didn’t have a chance to test coma on Fuji due to forest fires negatively impacting our air this summer, I did test it on Sony. “Coma performance is quite good, with night sky images looking clean other than a bit of “star-stretching” in the corners.”
For the money you certainly aren’t going to beat this image quality in a standard zoom on Fuji. It’s a full $500 cheaper than the closest competitor – the Fuji XF 16-55mm F2.8. I think the Fuji delivers slightly richer colors, but outside of that, the Tamron is very competitive, and I would definitely take it over a lens like the XF 16-80mm F4 in terms of sharpness. At the least, the Tamron brings intriguing new option to the Fuji X platform with a bigger zoom range than some and a larger aperture than others. There’s a lot of good optically, and little major issues. You can check out more photos by visiting the image gallery page here.
Conclusion
The Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD is a welcome addition to the Fuji X-mount standard zoom options. In most other cases you have to choose between maximum aperture (16-80mm F4 or 18-120mm F4) or lack of stabilization (16-55mm F2.8), but with the Tamron you get both the larger maximum aperture along with the optical stabilization. It has a very compelling zoom range that covers a lot of subjects, and the close focus abilities and good magnification are also useful.
This is the kind of lens that you can pretty much glue onto your camera and use it for everyday photography, travel, and more. It can handle most subjects, and that constant maximum aperture of F2.8 is obviously going to be useful when going into lower light situations.
The price point in the US is $699 USD, currently, and it is a lot of lens for the money. The Tamron 17-70mm VC should definitely be on your list if you’re looking for a fast standard zoom and can’t afford the premium 16-55mm F2.8. Fuji opening up its platform to lenses like this is a huge plus for consumers like us…and expect Fuji’s next standard zoom to be all the better for the competition!
Pros:
Great zoom range
Maintains F2.8 aperture
Good build with weather sealing
Fast, quiet, and accurate autofocus
Good image stabilization (VC)
Consistently good optics
Good flare resistance
Excellent price
Cons:
Concentric rings in bokeh highlights (onion bokeh)
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.
Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD X-Mount Gallery
Dustin Abbott
July 11th, 2023
In January 2021 I released my review of this lens for Sony E-mount cameras. At the time, no Tamron lenses were available on Fuji X-mount, and I spoke in my conclusion about how a lens like the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-a VC RXD actually gave Sony an advantage – it’s the kind of lens I call a “system seller”. On paper it has pretty much everything: a great focal range (25.5-105mm full frame equivalent), a large maximum aperture through the zoom range (F2.8), optical stabilization (Vibration Compensation, or VC), and a fast focus system (RXD). But that advantage is no longer on Sony alone, as this was one of the first lenses to come to Fuji X-mount from Tamron once Fuji began opening up their platform to third party lenses. That’s an amazing focal range to have a constant aperture of F2.8 over, covering from this at 17mm:
…to this at 70mm:
It also is a great value. The current price at B&H Photo is $699 USD, which is a full $500 cheaper than the Fujinon XF 16-55mm F2.8 LM WR (my review here) or $200 less than the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 PZD (my review coming soon). The Tamron doesn’t perfectly align with either of those lenses, but they are the closest competitors I can point to on the platform. Sigma has also made their 18-50mm F2.8 DC available on Fuji X-mount (my review here), but the main reasons to consider the Sigma would be price ($549 USD) and compact size as the Tamron 17-70mm VC has the advantage in focal range, weather sealing, and also includes an optical stabilizer. I’ve been interested in revisiting some of these third party lenses on X-mount for two primary reasons: 1) to see how autofocus performs on a new platform and 2) to see how the lens’ optics survive the very pixel dense 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor on some of their new cameras.
I found the 17-70mm VC a little big for the Sony a6400 body that I reviewed it on previously, but my Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) is more like a full frame camera is size and the lens is a perfect fit on the X-H2.
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. VC is Vibration Compensation, which is Tamron’s name for their proprietary OIS (image stabilization) system. It’s worth noting that neither of the Fuji alternatives (both of which cost more) come with built in stabilization. RXD refers to the focus motor, which is similar to the linear motors employed on many of Fuji’s better lenses. In short, this lens is pretty loaded with quality features under its skin even if there aren’t a lot of external features on the barrel.
So does the Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 VC RXD impress me as much on Fuji as it did on Sony? You can watch my conclusions in my video review below, read my text review here, or just enjoy the photos.
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me an loaner of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. I have used both my personal Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) and a loaner of the X-S20 (my review here) for this review.
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 2022 Fuji began to really open up their platform to third party development, and that has opened a floodgate of both new and “ported” lenses from Tamron, Sigma, Samyang, Viltrox, and more. It was that move along with the excellent camera design of the Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) that triggered my first Fujifilm camera purchase (I had always borrowed Fuji cameras for previous reviews). I had previously reviewed the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD on Sony E-mount in 2021 but I’ve been interested in revisiting the lenses on X-mount for two primary reasons: 1) to see how autofocus performs on a new platform and 2) to see how the lens’ optics survive the very pixel dense 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor on some of their new cameras. This really pushes the envelope of lens performance, as that high resolution exposes any optical shortcomings in a big way! I won’t be doing an entirely new review, so there will be some redundant parts in this article, but I am going through and updating the content in key areas that are specific to the performance on Fuji X-mount. The Fuji platform is different from the Sony E-mount “lens” that I viewed the Tamron 11-20mm RXD from before, as there are more premium options on Fuji and a higher standard for what features are expected there. Can the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD compete in the Fuji X-mount arena?
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, which is similar to the linear motors employed on many of Fuji’s better lenses.
There are few legitimate alternatives to this lens on the Fuji platform, as while there are a number of quality wide angle primes, there are only a couple of wide angle zooms. The first is the premium XF 8-16mm F2.8 (my review here). That lens is large (15mm wider and 35mm longer), heavy (2 1/2 times as heavy as the Tamron), and expensive ($670 more). The focal range does have some overlap, obviously, and the maximum aperture is the same, but there are few similarities outside of that. A more direct competitor is the Fujinon XF 10-24mm F4 OIS, though unfortunately I have not reviewed that lens. The XF 10-24mm is more similar in focal range, size, and price ($999 vs $829 for the Tamron), though it has a maximum aperture of F4 rather than F2.8. That lens does have OIS (optical stabilizer) and an aperture ring along with a larger zoom range, while the Tamron offers the larger maximum aperture, lower price, superior focus system, and (on paper) a superior optical performance, particularly on the telephoto end. Here’s a look at how the raw specs of these three lenses compare:
So is the Tamron 11-20mm RXD a worthy addition to the Fuji platform? You can watch my conclusions in my video review, or just read on to find out…
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me an loaner of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. I have used both my personal Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) and a loaner of the X-S20 for this review.
Tamron 11-20mm RXD Build, Handling, and Features
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 larger X-H2, but also fits just fine on the much smaller X-S20 without feeling front heavy. It is 2.9″ (D) x 3.4″ (L), or 73 x 86.2 mm. 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 only 11.8 oz (335 g), making it the lightest of the wide angle zoom options despite having the large maximum aperture.
There’s no question this is an extremely useful focal range, giving you framing options from very wide (16.5mm full frame equivalent):
to somewhat tighter framing (30mm full frame equivalent):
This will enable you versatility in composing your wide angle scene and covers most of the classic wide angle options. 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.
As has been Tamron’s design philosophy thus far, the design language is clean, modern, and without distractions. That’s the nice way of putting it. The glass half empty approach is to note that there are no features on the outside of the lens. No AF/MF switch, no aperture ring – just the zoom and focus rings. That wasn’t unusual on Sony in the past, but the aperture ring has been a very common design element on Fuji.
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. 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, and is fully retracted at the 20mm position.
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. You will have to select manual focus from within the camera, though this is common on Fuji cameras and is fairly simple if you have a body that has the Focus Mode lever or button on the front. 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 Fuji 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 nicely flat plane of focus, meaning that real world results are nice and crisp:
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. This shot shows that you can really fill the frame fairly well by using this technique:
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 I don’t necessarily find that a great strength for the lens, and the shot above shows why.
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.
Autofocus and Video Performance
The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 has Tamron’s excellent Rapid eXtra-silent stepping Drive (RXD), and this is the first time I’ve used it on Fuji rather than Tamron. For stills, it is pretty much flawless, with fast, quiet focus on either the X-H2 or X-S20 bodies that I used for the review.
This is a far cry from some of the older Fuji lenses I’ve used, with noisy focus motors that were slow and rough. Quality of focus is more akin to the newest Linear Motor equipped lenses. I had no reservations in focus when taking photos.
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. I tested with both humans and also a sequence with Nala at a variety of focus distances and angles.
Video focus pulls were less stellar, however. While focus breathing was minimal, there is some visible stepping in the actual pulls; the initial focus move, a split second pause, and then the final adjustment. The results from my “hand test” were a little better, as the focus adjustment was more confident when moving back to the eye.
More subtle focus transitions during video capture were smooth, and I felt the lens did a nice job transitioning from subject to subject. I got a lot of nice clips with the lens.
What I did find was that sometimes shooting with a smaller aperture and a backlit scene resulting in some pulsing in and out of focus. In once sequence I was capturing flares through the leaves and focus went completely out several times due to a lot of light hitting the sensor. Another clip with some pulsing came when I was up on a cliff while hiking and shooting a big landscape scene over a river. Stills focus was fine, but my video clip pulsed in and out some (all points active) as if the camera/lens wasn’t quite sure what to focus on.
In general, however, I felt my focus experience was great (particularly for stills). And, to be fair, the video performance is better than just about everything I’ve seen until this most recent generation of Fujinon lenses, so Tamron’s RXD focus system and the transition to Fuji focus algorithms seems to have largely been successful here.
Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD Image Quality
The 11-20mm RXD sports 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. On a 24mm Sony sensor I found resolution to be fantastic, but Fuji’s 40MP sensor in my X-H2 is the most demanding sensor I’m currently testing on for any platform. It is is possible to get very nicely detailed images even on the X-H2’s sensor, however…even at F2.8:
Here’s a look at the vignette and distortion at 11mm:
We can see both moderate barrel distortion and vignette. The distortion is fairly linear, so I could get a reasonable result even with a manual correction of the distortion (I used a +9), and vignette was also manageable. I used a +79 and moved the midpoint over to zero for a nicely clean result. It did seem that I saw a bit more vignette on Fuji than I did on Sony, but that could be just a quirk of testing. Tamron seems to enjoy full in-camera correction support on Fuji, so use the standard profile in camera for JPEGs and Video for a cleaner still result. As always, RAW images will require using the correction profile in your editing software to get a nicely clean end result. Here’s a look at the in-camera corrected JPEG image.
As is typical for a lens like this, the distortion pattern flips to a pincushion style distortion at 20mm, though this distortion is even more linear and easier still to correct for. Vignette was also quite a bit lower. I’ve seen a lot of otherwise good lenses derailed by distortion or heavy vignette, but that’s not the case here; this is a very good result. Everything is easily correctable and none of the flaws extreme.
I watched for chromatic aberrations but saw little evidence of them. Longitudinal chromatic aberrations (fringing before or after the plane of focus) are minimal in this difficult shot of white blossoms transitioning out of focus, and the specular highlights (bokeh balls) are clean in the background.
I could see trace amounts of lateral chromatic aberrations on my chart (fringing in dark to light transitions near the edge of the frame) if I magnified to 200%, they were too insignificant to see in real world use, and a one click correction either in camera in (for RAWs) in software will clean those up nicely:
Let’s move on to resolution and contrast. I do my examinations at 200% magnification, as this clearly shows lens strengths and flaws for you to see. First, here’s my test chart:
We will start with F2.8 crops (near 200%) at 11mm from the center, mid-frame, and extreme lower right corner.
The center looks great, the mid-frame good, but the corners aren’t nearly as sharp. That’s the challenge of such a high resolution sensor on APS-C, though it’s not quite so dire in the real world. I compare results at 200% here. Out in the real world at a more typical 100% magnification things look much more reasonable (11mm, F2.8):
The corners improve a little when stopping down, but never to “wow” levels. This real world shot looks good, however, with good detail in the both the center of the frame and the bottom corner.
The lower resolution sensor point of the X-S20 is a little gentler. Here’s a shot that I felt really popped for color, contrast, and clarity at 11mm, F2.8:
I found that the 11-20mm RXD really hit its stride in the center of the zoom range, with more capacity for really crisp detail even in the corners when stopped down…even on the X-H2.
This is where I would shoot for optimal sharpness, which is truly excellent anywhere in the frame in a real world shot, whether in the foreground or background.
I’m also impressed with the performance at 20mm, which is nicely even across the frame by F4, though still very good across most of the frame even at F2.8. Midframe performance in particular stands out as excellent.
Close results at 20mm, F2.8 hold up well even on the X-H2:
At landscape apertures the lens delivers beautiful, highly detailed results.
While you don’t turn to wide angle lenses for bokeh, the quality of the blur is reasonably good here. This image at 20mm, F2.8 has a fairly nice transition to defocus.
I also think this image looks fairly good, as did others where the background was defocused.
Flare resistance is a bit of a mixed bag. The lens does well with the sun right out of frame, and sometimes directly in frame, but I found flare resistance better at large apertures than smaller apertures, where some ghosting artifacts can come into frame (see the vertical shot of the crimson maple leaves).
Coma performance is quite, with night sky images looking clean other than a bit of “star-stretching” in the corners.
Overall, however, we’ve got a very good lens optically. It’s a good wide angle zoom range, and can produce a lot of great looking images. If you compare the MTF charts to the older Tamron 10-24mm VC lens, the newer zoom is far superior optically
The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD will definitely bring an intriguing new option to the Fuji X platform. There’s a lot of good optically, and little major issues. You can check out more photos by visiting the image gallery page here.
Conclusion
The Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD is a welcome addition to the Fuji X-mount stable of lenses. It gives shooters a wide aperture, wide angle zoom option without resorting to the much more extreme Fujinon XF 8-16mm F2.8 LM WR lens. The Tamron is a far more practical lens, however, weighing a little over a third as much and costing less than half as much.
The 11-20mm F2.8 RXD has a nice (if plain) build with thorough weather sealing, good autofocus, and strong enough image quality to survive the demanding 40MP sensor of the X-H2. It is compact, lightweight, and handles great. Not a lot to complain about, really.
If you are looking for a reasonably priced, relatively compact wide angle zoom for your Fuji camera, the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 RXD is a very nice option. It’s not as feature rich as some Fuji lenses, but delivers very strong value relative to competing lenses. A lot of Sony shooters have loved the 11-20mm RXD, and now Fuji X-mount photographers can get in on the action. Great times for the Fuji platform!
Pros:
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 at 11mm never got incredibly sharp
Focus hunted a bit during certain video situations
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 2022 Fuji began to really open up their platform to third party development, and that has opened a floodgate of both new and “ported” lenses from Tamron, Sigma, Samyang, Viltrox, and more. It was that move along with the excellent camera design of the Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) that triggered my first Fujifilm camera purchase (I had always borrowed Fuji cameras for previous reviews). I had previously reviewed the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD on Sony E-mount in 2021 but I’ve been interested in revisiting the lenses on X-mount for two primary reasons: 1) to see how autofocus performs on a new platform and 2) to see how the lens’ optics survive the very pixel dense 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor on some of their new cameras. This really pushes the envelope of lens performance, as that high resolution exposes any optical shortcomings in a big way! I won’t be doing an entirely new review, so there will be some redundant parts in this article, but I am going through and updating the content in key areas that are specific to the performance on Fuji X-mount. The Fuji platform is different from the Sony E-mount “lens” that I viewed the Tamron 11-20mm RXD from before, as there are more premium options on Fuji and a higher standard for what features are expected there. Can the Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 Di III-A RXD compete in the Fuji X-mount arena?
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, which is similar to the linear motors employed on many of Fuji’s better lenses.
There are few legitimate alternatives to this lens on the Fuji platform, as while there are a number of quality wide angle primes, there are only a couple of wide angle zooms. The first is the premium XF 8-16mm F2.8 (my review here). That lens is large (15mm wider and 35mm longer), heavy (2 1/2 times as heavy as the Tamron), and expensive ($670 more). The focal range does have some overlap, obviously, and the maximum aperture is the same, but there are few similarities outside of that. A more direct competitor is the Fujinon XF 10-24mm F4 OIS, though unfortunately I have not reviewed that lens. The XF 10-24mm is more similar in focal range, size, and price ($999 vs $829 for the Tamron), though it has a maximum aperture of F4 rather than F2.8. That lens does have OIS (optical stabilizer) and an aperture ring along with a larger zoom range, while the Tamron offers the larger maximum aperture, lower price, superior focus system, and (on paper) a superior optical performance, particularly on the telephoto end. Here’s a look at how the raw specs of these three lenses compare:
Thanks to Tamron USA for sending me an loaner of the lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. I have used both my personal Fujifilm X-H2 (my review here) and a loaner of the X-S20 for this review.
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.
Talk about ratcheting up the complexity! I’ve reviewed a number of TTArtisan lenses before, and they have mostly fallen into the categories that are filled by a lot of what I call “Boutique Third Parties”. These include various manual everything prime lenses with varying maximum aperture sizes. While engineering for larger apertures (like their F0.95 lenses) are more challenging, their newest lens adds a LOT of new moving parts. That lens is the TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2X Macro Tilt/Shift (we’ll shorten that to TTA100M for this review).
Designing a lens that goes past 1:1 to 2:1 macro (2X) takes a lot of engineering. That’s twice as high of magnification as most macro lenses. Designing a tilt/shift lens takes even more engineering. I’ve never personally seen a lens that combines both of these elements before, so this is certainly a courageous move for TTArtisan, particularly since this is designed for full frame mirrorless mounts (I’m testing it on Sony E-mount, but it will also be available for Canon RF, Nikon Z, Leica L, and then smaller sensors like Fuji X and M43). This is also the longest focal length that TTArtisan has tackled to this point, which makes it a very interesting lens.
There are a variety of things that you can do with both ultra macro and tilt/shift, but it does mean that this is primarily going to be a “tripod lens”. Trying to do 2x macro work handheld (even with a camera body with IBIS) is very difficult, and all the moving parts of tilting and/or shifting are also going to be difficult to do handheld. If you take your time, however, you can produce some really unique photos with this lens.
I enjoyed playing with this lens in all the things that it can do, though in some ways its very ambition might be its greatest weakness, too. The TTA100M maybe tries to do too much, and all of the knobs and moving parts make for some ergonomic frustrations. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that this is a lot of lens for the money. This will be the cheapest point of entry for either a 2x macro lens or a tilt/shift lens that any of us have ever seen at about $400 USD, which in my mind makes this more attractive. You can judge for yourself by either watching my video review below or reading on to get the full picture.
Thanks to TTArtisan for sending me a pre-release review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7IV along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).
TTA100M Build and Handling
TTArtisan has produced one autofocusing lens at this point, but their lenses have primarily been manual focus only. That’s the case here as well, though it is pretty typical for tilt/shift lenses to be manual focus anyway. As noted in the intro, there’s a lot going on here, so let’s break it all down.
This is a full frame 100mm lens, and, as such, it isn’t particularly small. It has a long, slender profile that reminds me of the Laowa 100mm F2.8 2x APO Macro lens that I reviewed a few years ago. I weighed it at 841g (29.6oz) and measured it at 73mm (2.87″) in diameter (not including the protrusions of the knobs) and 147mm (5.78″) in length.
Like the Laowa, this is an internally focusing design (the length doesn’t change during focus), though you can see the elements moving forwards and backwards inside during focus. There’s several inches of travel inside. This isn’t a weather sealed lens, but many people do feel that an internally focusing lens has more of a natural seal because nothing is moving in and out.
There are knobs on each side of the lens near the lens mount. Two of these are adjustment knobs while the other two are for tension. For some reason on of the tension/locking knobs is shaped more like a lever, and I found it very hard to access when the lens was mounted on a tripod.
I tested the TTA100M on a Sony E-mount, and this particular lens design unfortunately plays into what is a real weakness for Sony bodies – namely that there isn’t a lot of room between the grip and many lenses. The E-mount itself is quite small for a full frame design, so often lenses have to flare out quickly after having to taper quite small at the mount end of the lens. That creates a bit of pinch for your knuckles between the lens barrel and the grip. In this case the lens doesn’t flare out, but it does have a tension or adjustment knob on every side of the lens, so there is always going to be something protruding and hitting on your knuckles.
There is a button that allows you to rotate the barrel of the lens about 90º, but because there is some kind of knob on each side of the lens, you will always have something in the way there. This will probably be less of a problem on Canon or Nikon where the bodies are a little wider and there is a little more room to play with for the knobs.
After the rotating section that houses the tilt and shift functions there is an aperture ring which can be controlled in half stop increments from F2.8 to F11 and then has single stops from F11 to F22 (minimum aperture here). Everything moves smoothly here.
In between the aperture ring and the wide, ribbed focus ring there is a hyper focal scale (with markings at F4/8/11/22. There’s also markings for the distance scale in both metric (marked in white) and Imperial (in yellow).
The wide focus ring has a nice damping and moves smoothly, though I did feel a very slight play/slippage. The focus throw is not as long as I expected at about 170°. I expected it to be a bit longer due to having a wide range of focus possibilities (the higher the magnification, the more potential focus possibilities).
There are several places near the front of the lens where threaded hole can accommodate screws to use in conjunction with a stabilizer.
Up front there is a very common 67mm front filter size. There is no included lens hood, and the lens is not bayoneted to receive one. The front cap fits over the lens barrel but is a tight enough fit that I see no potential for it to fall off.
My biggest complaint about the ergonomics comes down to the tilt and shift functions of the lens. It is very difficult to dial in just enough tension for making fine adjustments (particularly if gravity is working against you). The lens is long and has most of the weight beyond the adjustment portion of the lens, and so most of the time the lens just flops to the farther extreme point of the adjustment.
Further complicating this is that one of the tension “knobs” is more like a tension lever. It is very small and often hard to access…and definitely hard to dial in a moderate amount of tension for making small adjustments. As I said in the intro, doing a tilt/shift lens is hard, and there is room for growth in this area.
On the positive note, all of these adjustment knobs and levers are made of metal and don’t feel flimsy. I’ve used cheaper tilt/shift lenses before that had plasticky knobs that felt very vulnerable. I see 6mm of shift in each direction and 8° of tilt in each direction. That’s a bit less shift than what is offered by some lenses, though the TTArtisan lens is much, much cheaper than those lenses.
While the shift capabilities in a telephoto lens are perhaps less relevant for interior shots, I still liked being able to take a few vertical shots to stack together and get this shot of our music area in our home with great lines and details. This image is not cropped at all; this is how it came out after merging the images together.
I also enjoyed shifting horizontally to produce a unique, very high resolution macro panorama of these four screws.
Minimum focus distance is 25cm even at 2:1 macro levels, leaving you with a reasonable 9cm or so in front of the lens as a working distance. Not too bad, really, and 1:1 macro leaves you with a good 13-14cm of working distance.
Tilting is most often used for the miniature effect, but that is most useful in a city situation where you can be high up and look down on your subject (which I did not have the opportunity to do). It can also be used to interesting effect for depth of field, however, like in this shot of a chess board where I’ve created a plane of focus only on the head of the golfer.
You can also create an unusual amount of bokeh with the lens by using the tilt function. Here’s a shot without the tilt effect:
…and here’s one with the tilt effect:
All other settings are the same (aperture, exposure), so the vastly increased background blur is the result of tilting that area away from the sensor. An application of this could be for portrait work where you can create unique depth of field effects.
All in all, the build quality is quite good for a lens at this price point, but the ergonomics leave somewhat to be desired when it comes to the tilt and shift functionality.
TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2X Macro Image Quality
I was very pleasantly surprised by the macro performance and sharpness of the very inexpensive TTArtisan 40mm F2.8 Macro for APS-C (my review here), and that skill carries on here. Even wide open at 2:1 macro levels, we have very strong detail and sharpness from the optical formula compromised of 14 elements in 10 groups.
Since I was reviewing a pre-release copy of the lens and the vital statistics are not yet published anywhere, I’ve had to do my own measurements and counts. I believe that I count 12 aperture blades, and these work very well to maintain a circular shape even as the lens is stopped down:
You can tell by this test that bokeh is going to be soft and creamy, which is always a very nice feature in a macro lens.
It also means that the TTA100M will double nicely as a portrait lens if you don’t mind manually focusing.
Important for macro work is the control of Longitudinal Chromatic Aberrations (LoCA), and the TTA100M does a very good job here. You can see little fringing even on the very shiny surfaces of my subject here (the gears of a crescent wrench).
Of less concern on a lens like this is Lateral Chromatic Aberrations (LaCA) that show up near the edges of the frame, but we can see here that this isn’t a problem, either. I see no fringing in the bare branches along the edges of the frame in this landscape shot.
Typically macro lenses need to have fairly low distortion to be effective, and that’s the case here. Both distortion and vignette are quite slow even at F2.8, with a very mild amount of pincushion distortion (just a -2 to manually correct for in Lightroom) and a little over a stop of vignette (requiring a +36 to correct for).
That’s a great performance and means that in most situations you won’t need to worry about either issue.
So how about resolution and contrast? Here’s a look at my test chart. I’m using a 50MP Sony Alpha 1 for this test, and do my critical observations of chart tests at 200% magnification.
Here are F2.8 crops at roughly 175% magnification from across the frame (center, mid-frame, and bottom right corner):
Performance across most the frame is quite good, with good detail in the center and midframe but some serious drop-off in the corners. Wide open contrast is not amazingly strong, though, so there isn’t quite as much “bite” as one of Laowa’s Apochromatic designs. You can see it in this portrait shot, for example, which has a unique look that is slightly “dreamy” when viewed globally, though the crop shows that the actual detail on my model is quite good.
The payoff is that the bokeh is very soft and creamy, making this a unique portrait option. I shot this lens alongside the brand new Sigma 50mm F1.4 DN ART, and you can see that the Sigma result is higher contrast.
I don’t think that one approach is automatically better than the other – but they are different, and I think the rendering of each lens will probably appeal to different people.
Stopping the TTA100M down to F4 gives a contrast boost, and detail also increases basically everywhere save the extreme corners.
By F5.6 the results are excellent everywhere save the extreme corners, which are only marginally improved. Peak performance comes at F8 where the sharpness profile covers basically the whole frame, though the corners never reach the level of excellence found elsewhere.
Landscape images at these smaller apertures look good with fine detail all across the frame.
Perhaps more import is that macro detail is excellent at smaller apertures, allowing you to get nicely detailed macro shots.
I’ve used the TTA100M for a lot of my product shots during my review period, and it gave me a nice balance between detail on my subject and soft bokeh rendering.
I got some cool close-up shots of unique subjects like the tension knob on the tripod foot of this Fuji lens here.
Or how about this dial on the new Fujifilm X-T5?
I did feel the bokeh was pretty nice from the lens, overall, and you can see a lot of layers of focus here in this shot of a chess board:
These Christmas decorations also look lovely in this fairly close shot.
I saw a few signs that the lens could be a little flare prone in certain situations, and, since it doesn’t have a hood, you’ll need to keep an eye on that.
There’s a lot you can do with a lens like this, and, while I don’t love the ergonomics, there is no end to the types of photography you can pursue with a lens that does so much. In short, there really isn’t a lot to complain about optically here. You can check out even more photos by visiting the lens image gallery here.
Conclusion
There aren’t many companies that are making 2x macro lenses, and there also aren’t many that are producing Tilt/Shift lenses. Kudos to TTArtisan for tackling both with the TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2X Macro Tilt/Shift lens. This was an unexpected lens from them, but while it has a few flaws, it mostly succeeds in some very challenging tasks.
Weaknesses mostly lie in some of the ergonomics. It isn’t easy to design a lens like this, and there are a few engineering shortcomings when it comes to adjustments on the tilting and shifting aspects of the lens. This is a lot of lens for the asking price of roughly $400 USD, however.
But if you’re patient, there are so many different kinds of photography you can do with this lens, and there is the potential to create all kinds of unique and interesting images. This is a lens that I’m definitely interested in experimenting with further, and macro lenses are one solid way to find some creativity during the long winter months. This very possibly may be your first experience with either 2x macro or tilting and shifting due to the lower price point, but if you’ll stick out the learning curve, the TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2x Macro Tilt/Shift might just become your favorite lens.
Pros:
Excellent price to performance ratio
Very versatile lens
Nice bokeh rendering
2x macro
Internally focusing lens
Makes for a unique portrait option
Soft bokeh
Keeps nicely circular aperture iris
Tilting and shifting offers up many creative opportunities
Low distortion and vignette
Cons:
Knobs can be hard to access
Making fine adjustments to tilt or shift difficult
Contrast isn’t as high as some competing lenses
Corner performance never quite matches the rest of the frame
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Receive a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Keywords: TTArtisan, TTArtisan 100mm, TTArtisan 100 Macro, 100mm, F2.8, Tilt/Shift, T/S, Tilt, Shift, 2x, 2:1, TTArtisan 100mm Macro Review, Macro, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, sony a7III, sony a7RIV, a9II, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1 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.
Talk about ratcheting up the complexity! I’ve reviewed a number of TTArtisan lenses before, and they have mostly fallen into the categories that are filled by a lot of what I call “Boutique Third Parties”. These include various manual everything prime lenses with varying maximum aperture sizes. While engineering for larger apertures (like their F0.95 lenses) are more challenging, their newest lens adds a LOT of new moving parts. That lens is the TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2X Macro Tilt/Shift.
Designing a lens that goes past 1:1 to 2:1 macro (2X) takes a lot of engineering. That’s twice as high of magnification as most macro lenses. Designing a tilt/shift lens takes even more engineering. I’ve never personally seen a lens that combines both of these elements before, so this is certainly a courageous move for TTArtisan, particularly since this is designed for full frame mirrorless mounts (I’m testing it on Sony E-mount, but it will also be available for Canon RF, Nikon Z, Leica L, and then smaller sensors like Fuji X and M43). This is also the longest focal length that TTArtisan has tackled to this point, which makes it a very interesting lens.
There are a variety of things that you can do with both ultra macro and tilt/shift, but it does mean that this is primarily going to be a “tripod lens”. Trying to do 2x macro work handheld (even with a camera body with IBIS) is very difficult, and all the moving parts of tilting and/or shifting are also going to be difficult to do handheld. If you take your time, however, you can produce some really unique photos with this lens.
I enjoyed playing with this lens in all the things that it can do, though in some ways its very ambition might be its greatest weakness, too. The TTA100M maybe tries to do too much, and all of the knobs and moving parts make for some ergonomic frustrations. At the same time, it must be acknowledged that this is a lot of lens for the money. This will be the cheapest point of entry for either a 2x macro lens or a tilt/shift lens that any of us have ever seen at about $400 USD, which in my mind makes this more attractive. You can judge for yourself by either watching my video review below or reading on to get the full picture.
Thanks to TTArtisan for sending me a pre-release review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7IV along with the Sony Alpha 1 which will serve as my benchmark camera for the foreseeable future (my review here).
Images of the TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2x Macro T/S
Images taken with the TTArtisan 100mm F2.8 2X Macro T/S
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Purchasing your gear through B&H and these links helps fund this website and keeps the articles coming. You can also make a donation here if you would like. Visit my Amazon page for some of my gear of choice! Thank you for your support.
Receive a 5% discount on all purchases at Amplis Foto, Canada’s Leading Photographic Supplier. Please enter discount code: AMPLIS52018DA in your cart. It is good for everything in your cart, and is stackable with other coupons, too! It will take 5% off your entire order! Proceeds go towards keeping this site going and providing you with new reviews!
Keywords: TTArtisan, TTArtisan 100mm, TTArtisan 100 Macro, 100mm, F2.8, Tilt/Shift, T/S, Tilt, Shift, 2x, 2:1, TTArtisan 100mm Macro Review, Macro, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Sony a9, sony a7III, sony a7RIV, a9II, Sony Alpha 1, Sony A1 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.
When I was reviewing the Fujfilm X-T5 a few months ago I was impressed by the overall progress Fuji has made with this most recent in the X-T series, but I couldn’t help drawing parallels to another recent Fuji camera – Fujifilm X-H2. I hadn’t reviewed the X-H2 yet, but on paper, I noticed that many of my critiques of the X-T5 were answered in the X-H2…for only a few hundred dollars more. I was eager to spend time with the X-H2, but it took a few months before I could fit it into my schedule, but I’m glad I did. After spending some quality time with the X-H2, I can safely say that this is the next Fuji camera I will personally buy. I think of it as the APS-C equivalent of a camera like the Canon EOS R5 – a high resolution camera that also manages to be a good action camera…and video camera. In this case the X-H2 was the first Fuji model to sport an ultra-high resolution 40.2MP sensor that delivers wonderfully detailed 7728 x 5152 pixel images. The new sensor is definitely the headline new feature here, though there are a number of other improvements that we’ll explore as a part of our review…including robust focus and deep buffers.
As noted, the Fujfilm X-H2 is sold slightly upmarket of the X-T5 at a price point of about $2000 USD. That additional $300 nets you a more professional grade body, much deeper buffers, improved viewfinder, and more robust video features and is well worth considering if you have deeper pockets. The X-T and X-H lines differ in terms of their basic design philosophy. The X-T series employs a retro-design with a lot of physical controls (some of which are very useful, others less so) while the X-H series employs more moderns controls along with having the top mounted LCD screen commonly associated with premium cameras.
There is a certain amount of market parity these days, and there are some things that Sony, Canon, and Nikon do better, though Fuji has had a long investment in the APS-C mirrorless space, and it shows in the maturity of the system. These other brands are more focused in the full frame market, but Fuji has focused on APS-C and never entered the full frame space. That has led to more lens development (including a revamping of same aging designs with new MK II version) along with a fully fleshed out accessory market. And, as noted, the opening up of the platform to third party development has lead to some excellent third party options at more affordable price points which helps close the gap with a company like Sony that has long been more third party friendly. I primarily used three excellent lenses in this review – the high end XF 200mm F2 (and 1.4x TC) to test tracking action (my review of the lens here), the amazing third party Viltrox Pro AF 75mm F1.2 portrait lens (my review here), and the new(ish) Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 – a wonderfully compact large aperture lens with a roughly “normal” angle of view (my review here).
I’ll refer to to it more in this review, but it should be noted that Fuji also makes the X-H2S, a sports oriented model that retails for about $500 more ($2500 USD). While the X-H2S has a lower resolution point of 26MP, it features a stacked BSI sensor (like those found in cameras like the Canon EOS R3, Sony Alpha 1, or Sony a9 series). It allows you to record up to 40FPS in electronic shutter mode (double the X-H2) with deeper buffers and also minimizes rolling shutter, something that can be an issue with the X-H2. That’s why I compare the X-H2 to something like the Canon EOS R5, as it is more of a high end jack-of-all-trades.
There are still some areas where Fuji lags a bit, and my primary complaints are focused on some rolling shutter issues, an autofocus system that, while vastly improved, still lags in some areas behind the other brands along with my continued frustration with navigating Fuji’s Q-menu. I’ve not seen any real progress on their touchscreen capabilities in four years. But while I might prefer the focus system of, say, the Canon R7 (my review here), the complete lack of appealing lenses there means that Fuji is still offering the more appealing system in general. There are a lot of great things about Fuji’s approach to APS-C, so let’s take a closer look if the flagship Fuji X-H2 meets your needs for photography and/or video. If you would prefer to watch your reviews, you can choose watch my definitive video review below…or just keep reading.
Follow Me @ YouTube | Patreon | Instagram | Facebook | DA Merchandise | Flickr | 500pxThanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me the X-H2 and lenses for this review. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.
X-H2 Build, Handling, and Features
Here are the highlights of the new features:
40MP APS-C X-Trans5 BSI Sensor
7-Stop In-Body Image Stabilization
8K 30p, 4K 60p, FHD 240p 10-Bit Video
5.76m-Dot OLED Electronic Viewfinder
160MP Pixel Shift Multi-Shot
20 fps E-Shutter, 15 fps Mech. Shutter
CFexpress Type B & SD UHS-II Card Slots
ProRes Raw, Blackmagic Raw via HDMI
Intelligent Hybrid Autofocus
There are a lot of core improvements to the X-H2, including the unprecedented resolution level for APS-C, the inclusion of video recording up to 8K, improved IBIS, and some improvements to ergonomic elements like a higher resolution OLED viewfinder. All of this adds up to a camera that ticks a lot of the boxes for me.
That starts with the basic ergonomics of the camera. The X-H2 is easily my favorite Fuji APS-C camera to handle thus far, as, being slightly larger, it fits my hands much better. The X-T5 is 130 x 91 x 64mm (5.1 x 3.6 x 2.5″) and weighs 557g (16.8oz), while the X-H2 is 136.3 x 92.9 x 84.6 mm (5.4 x 3.7 x 3.3″) and weighs 1.5 lb / 660g. All of those dimensions are slightly larger, but the most significant difference is in the depth (20mm difference), which makes for a much more robust grip that fills my hands better. The X-H2 and the Canon EOS R7 are my favorite mirrorless APS-C models to handle and use for similar reasons.
As noted, the control scheme is more traditional as well. The X-T5 utilizes a lot of dials for basic controls like ISO, shutter speed, etc… The X-H2 utilizes the traditional front and back wheels for control and utilizes a button/wheel combination for choosing ISO. This is helped by the top LCD screen which gives you immediate feedback on your selection.
My only gripe is that I would prefer a third wheel rather than the D-pad arranged around the Menu/OK button.
Further navigation comes via a nice little joystick (that is also clickable as another button).
There is a three inch fully articulating 1.62m dot resolution LCD screen there as well, and while the resolution of the X-T5’s tilting screen is slightly higher (1.84m dot), I personally strongly prefer the flexibility of the fully articulated screen. For one, it allows you to front monitor the camera for video, and as someone who sets up shots and then sits in front of the camera, I can tell you that this can be a big deal for being able to monitor the framing of the shot (is my head half out of the frame?) but also catching some recording issues (full memory card, depleted battery, etc…) Articulating screens are also more flexible for the angles that they can be used at compared to a tilting screen, though at least Fuji’s tilt screen allow them to be tilted on a couple of different axis. A lot of people debate which is better – tilting or articulating – though I’ll note Sony has managed to go one better in their recent a7RV camera which has a cleverly designed rear LCD that is both articulating and tilting.
The touch functionality hasn’t really progressed in the past five years, and the touch action isn’t as responsive or useful as Canon’s mirrorless cameras (where all menu options can be accessed via touch and the screen is nicely responsive) or even as useful as the newer Sony cameras. The X-H2 does allow for things like dragging the focus point around with a thumb when you are looking through the viewfinder, and will also allow one to tap an autofocus point and even take a photo through that means. I didn’t find it as responsive as either Canon or Sony’s touchscreens for touching to focus during video mode. There’s some definite input lag before autofocus responds. You can navigate the Q menu (to some degree) by touch, but the main menu has no touch navigation.
Other physical controls take the form of seven buttons on the back of the camera along with a four-position directional pad (each direction can also be programmed for a different function). One of these is a dedicated Q (quick menu) button. This is similar to Canon’s approach, though I prefer Canon’s method of navigation in that menu. There are a number of options there (16, typically) in the Q Menu, which is good, but when you select one of those options with the tiny joystick also located on the back, the logical (at least for me) choice is to select the option you want to change by hitting either the OK button on clicking the little joystick (clicking it in works similarly to the OK button). Instead of opening up the options for that choice, however, it okays the choice already made and closes the Q menu.
Frustrating. Just like it was on the ten other Fuji cameras I’ve tested.
What the camera actually wants you to do is to move over to the desired setting you want to change and then rotate the rear wheel to change the settings (without another dialogue box ever being opened). I don’t find this a very intuitive process even after reviewing 10 Fuji cameras over the past several years and, more often than not, I’ll click either the joystick or the OK button and have to start the process over again. What’s interesting about this is that while you cannot use the touchscreen to select in the regular menus, you can tap on the icons for the various options in the Q menu and it will open up a dialogue box and allow to select the option you want (by a tap on it) in the way that you would expect the menu to work all the time.
On top we have the aforementioned LCD readout, a large mode dial (complete with a total of 7!!! custom modes), three buttons to the right of the LCD, then the shutter and video record buttons close together. The video record button is on the small side, but there is some logic to having them both close together there.
What we don’t have is a switch that allows us to fully switch between a video and stills layout.
There are two custom buttons on the front, with one occupying the position where Fuji puts the M/C/S dial, though by default the button there controls a similar function. I think I prefer the dial, personally, but the button does have the advantage of letting you control that without moving the camera away from your eye.
Another strength of Fuji’s cameras (though one that takes some familiarity to execute) is that most of the buttons and dials can be customized and have different values assigned to them. I mostly like the configuration of the buttons and vastly prefer the X-H2’s placement of the Q button relative to the X-T5. I don’t love the Fuji’s approach to reviewing and deleting images. Typically the delete button on other cameras is in the location of the Display/Back button, while on Fuji camera’s it is next to the play button on the upper left. Deleting images also takes one more step than on other cameras, and I just don’t find it quite as intuitive.
One of the headline improvements is that the IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) has improved. I’ve been impressed with Fuji’s stabilization in general, whether in-camera or in-lens, and the IBIS in the new X-H2 is rated at up to 7 stops, making it one of the most robust IBIS system I’ve tested to date by the numbers. I put the X-T5 (with similar stabilization) in the hands of a friend who is an industry professional (he does the ads/branding for a significant company) and he was wowed by the stability of the system for fluid handheld video shots.
At this stage I would say that the IBIS performance in real world use does improve on what I’ve seen with Sony and even Canon, though, as always, I find that getting perfectly sharp images at extremely low shutters speeds is an unreliable process. The practicality of “seven stops” in many applications is not going to happen. For example, I should be able to handhold the XF 35mm F1.4 R for nearly 4 second shutter speeds. That just isn’t realistic. I’m personally more concerned more concerned with eliminating motion blur in normal shots where the shutter speeds fall outside the margins and getting stable handheld video, and by these metrics the IBIS is a success.
Effective IBIS is wonderful because it applies to all lenses, making a longer portrait lens like the XF 90mm F2 (my review here) much more useful and easier to use. Though the XF 200mm F2 does have lens stabilization as well, I was able to get a stabilized image at 280mm (200mm F2 + 1.4x) and at 1/5th of a second. That’s well over 400mm in full frame equivalent, making for somewhere right under 7 stops. That’s pretty impressive!
The X-H2 utilized the newer NP-W235 battery, a 2350 mAh pack which is rated by CIPA to give 540 shots per charge (680 in Economy mode), which is slightly less than the X-T5. The battery life is competitive across the board (for mirrorless), and I think it worthy of note that the X-H2’s battery can be charged via the USB-C port in camera by most any power source…including a portable power bank. There is also an included USB-C charging cord and AC power adapter included in the box. I found that my real world battery performance was better than what I’m seeing from the four other cameras that I currently own.
Unlike the X-T5, the X-H2 is compatible with a battery grip. The VG-XH grip runs about $400 and allows you to have vertical controls plus a second battery for easy all-day shooting. You can also purchase an innovative fan attachment (Fan-001) that allows for active cooling and ensures you can shoot high bitrate video for long periods without worrying about overheating.
The X-H2 has a nicely damped shutter that has good feel and a great “schnick” sound to it. The shutter speed limit is the typical 1/8000th of a second. The headline improvement here is in the electronic shutter, which increases the maximum shutter speed from 1/32,000th of a second to a massive 1/180,000th of a second, allowing you to really freeze action (if you can achieve the ideal conditions that allow for such a fast shutter speed). This is probably not really a practical improvement for most people in most situations. One feature I do like is the ability to set the shutter option to where the camera smartly chooses the right shutter option for most situations. Up to 1/2000th of a second it will choose Electronic Front Shutter, then mechanical shutter (without EF) until the mechanical limit of 1/8000th, then electronic shutter takes over after that for really fast shutter speeds.
There is a little port on the front of the camera that is the flash sync port. It unscrews and pops off, but is also very small, so be careful not to lose it! On the left side of the camera are four small doors that cover different connection ports. There are a couple of key improvements here over the X-T5 is you want to capture video. The most important is that we have a full size HDMI port rather than the dinky micro-HDMI found on the X-T5. The X-T5 also lacked a headphone monitoring jack, whereas the X-H2 includes one in the port underneath the microphone input. The final door covers the USB-C port. Charging can be done via the USB-C port, and I was happy to find that even small power-banks would help to quickly charge the camera.
The right side of the camera houses the card slots. The X-H2 has one CF Express Type B standard and a UHS-II compatible SD slot as well. CF Express Type B cards are more expensive, but they offer much faster write speeds, which is a big part of why the buffer depth is so much deeper in the X-H2 relative to the X-T5 (which has only SD slots).
The X-H2 sports a OLED electronic viewfinder design with a 5.76m-dot resolution and 0.80x magnification. That’s definitely a higher resolution point than the 3.69m dot resolution of the X-T5.
The camera body is made of a magnesium alloy and sports quality weather sealing. Fuji touts 79 different weather sealing points in the body, giving it about 25% more seals than the X-T5. The camera feels very tough and durable. There are a lot of little things that add up to a more premium camera made for professional use.
The menu is very familiar, with little changes that I can see. Fuji has a wide range of menu options, and nearly all controls can be customized to the user’s preference. Every camera maker has a different way of organizing such menus, and so expect to have to learn where everything is if you aren’t a long-time Fuji shooter, but I found the menus fairly logical once I began to learn how Fuji labels things. Everything is organized under seven main groups: (Image Quality, AF/MF, Shooting Settings, Flash Settings, Movie Settings, Setup, and Network). There is an eighth tab called “My” (My Menu) that will be populated once you select custom functions to be there. I like to task commonly used settings that I haven’t assigned to a physical control to that area. If you aren’t confident navigating menus, however, you may find these menus a little overwhelming. There is a LOT of room for customization, and little instruction for what different settings do.
Many of my critiques here are my general gripes about Fuji cameras; the X-H2 is my favorite Fuji body thus far…and that includes the four GF (medium format) cameras I’ve tested.
Fuji X-H2 Autofocus Performance
The X-T5 and X-H2 share a common focus system. Improvements are more along the lines of improved focus algorithms and potentially better processing of the focus data via the X-Processor 5. Fuji’s marketing says, “X-Processor 5 features subject-detection AF based on Deep Learning technology that automatically detects and tracks a broad range of subjects, including animals, birds, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, airplanes, and trains – as well as human faces and eyes. Image-makers can concentrate on composition and creativity, confident that X-H2 will track focus accurately.” Note that phase detection “pixels” is not the same as phase detection points, as we have the same number of selectable AF points (425) as we’ve had over the past two generations. The key improvement is the addition of Deep Learning AI technology that improves Eye detection and the number of subjects that can be identified and tracked. In addition to human subjects this now includes animals, birds, cars, motorcycles, bicycles, airplanes, and trains.
As before we have 425 selectable AF points spread over most of the frame.
Phase Detect sensitivity is rated down to -7 EV (with the 50mm F1.0 lens), but that will vary depending on the maximum aperture of the lens you have mounted. I had good focus results (though some reduced focus speed, as per usual) in very low light conditions. It always helps to have an edge on your subject (a contrast point) to aid AF, but I was able to lock accurate focus in varied lighting conditions with good success. This shot is at 1/12th second, F2.8, ISO 12,800 (very dim conditions!).
An area where Fuji’s focus system is actually very good is in the tracking of high speed action. Tracking is improved on the X-H2 with the ability to do the Deep Learning AI tracking of a wide variety of subjects. The burst rate with the mechanical shutter is 15 FPS (with full continuous autofocus). This is obviously exceptionally fast, and easily exceeds the 11FPS offered by the Sony a6600 and matches the 15FPS of the Canon EOS R7. The mechanical shutter allows you up to 1/8000th second shutter speeds. You can go faster, however, by selecting the electronic shutter which is rated at shutter speeds up to 1/180,000th of a second. This enables Sports Crop Mode (1.2px) that gives you a bit of additional reach and allows the burst rate to climb to 20 FPS, though surprisingly the 30FPS option of the X-T3 and X-T4 is gone. The Canon R7 gives you 30 FPS, and the X-H2S will give you 40FPS, but those are also lower resolution points and a little more focused on sports.
I tested this while shooting some pickup basketball and found that for certain things (like basketball) rolling shutter becomes a major issue with the X-H2 if used with the electronic shutter. Rolling shutter is a type of image distortion that occurs when the motion of a subject is moving too fast for the camera’s sensor to capture properly. It happens most often during panning action. I found that the basketball and even player’s heads got stretched and distorted during certain sequences, like this:
The solution is fairly simple, and that is to use the mechanical shutter in those type of situations, though obviously you have to settle for the slower (15FPS) burst rate.
I used the mechanical shutter for some bird in flight (BIF) tests and had no issue with rolling shutter.
I should note that there were sequences during the basketball setting that were just fine, and I did notice the rolling shutter mostly with the longer telephoto combination (200mm F2 + 1.4x). At the same time, I’ve never seen rolling shutter effects quite so pronounced. If you want the best Fuji camera for action, choose the X-H2S with its stacked sensor (the faster readout from stacked sensors largely mitigates the effects of rolling shutter).
One of my laments during the X-T5 review was the shallow buffer depth, and it was one of the things that stood out to me as a compelling reason to consider the X-H2 instead. The X-H2 can record up to 1000+ JPEGs and over 400 RAW files at 20FPS (and 1000+ lossless compressed RAWs at the 15FPS mechanical level) as compared 168 JPEGs, up to 72 compressed RAW files, up to 41 lossless compressed RAWs, and only 23 uncompressed RAW files on the X-T5. If you want to shoot with the mechanical shutter on the X-T5 (without the “sports crop”), the buffer will fill faster still. You can get 119 JPEGs, 39 Compressed RAWs, 22 Lossless Compressed RAWs, and only 19 uncompressed RAWs. I found that the buffer filled very quickly in my tests of the X-T5 with less than 1.5 seconds (with RAW files) to capture your action sequence before the frame rate drops. The X-H2 is much more robust in this area.
I had no such problem with the X-H2, shooting long sequences of actions without a concern about the buffer depth, and the faster memory card (CF-E Type B) meant that I never saw any downtime for the buffer to clear. It’s quite liberating to not have to worry about timing the burst perfectly and being able to hold down that shutter button just a bit longer. It also makes the X-H2 a more versatile camera than the X-T5, which is one more reason why I would consider the X-H2 a more compelling choice personally. It just means that you won’t miss the killer shot in the sequence.
During shooting BIF I found that once tracking was attached to the subject (shooting in “Bird” mode), I had good results along with a strong visual connection to tracking the eyes or head of the bird. I felt that subject acquisition wasn’t as good as the sports models from Canon or Sony (focus didn’t “snap” onto the subject as fast when trying to acquire a bird on the wing), but tracking was good once I got focus established. Bottom line is that the AF system is excellent for tracking action, and I’ve considered this to be one of the strengths for the system. I would give the edge to the Canon EOS R7 as the best APS-C camera for action, but I give the X-H2 high marks for overall versatility.
Fuji has been gradually improving their Eye AF tracking via firmware and updated algorithms, and the X-H2 benefits from having the newest iteration of that. I found Eye detection better than on previous Fuji bodies, but still not quite as effortless on what I’m seeing on recent Sony and Canon bodies. I was typically able to get very good focus accuracy, though it takes a little more work than on those other brands. In this shot, for example, there are a lot of distracting layers before the deer, but focus ignored the obstacles and grabbed the right subject.
I also took this shot of Ferrari at F1.4 with the XF 33mm F1.4, and you can see excellent focus on the eye.
I used the X-H2 in an event setting and had nice focus accuracy. It gave me quick detection of the eye and tracked it accurately whether the eye was facing the camera or in profile.
It’s also worth noting that autofocus has improved on the excellent Viltrox 75mm F1.2 (still a Fuji exclusive at the moment) due to firmware updating, and I was pleasantly surprised by the consistency of focus during the same pickup basketball game. It acquired focus fairly quickly and tracked the players consistently without swings to front or back focus.
I largely had good overall focus accuracy during my time with the X-H2, though I don’t enjoy Fuji’s approach to whole sensor tracking. It’s fine for the most part once a subject has been selected, but even when you expand the focus area to whole sensor tracking a smaller green box remains. You can move that box around by touch or the joystick, but you essentially have to get that green box on the subject before whole sensor tracking begins. But there’s no question that Fuji’s autofocus is becoming more competitive with the leading brands. If you are looking specifically for a sports-oriented Fujifilm camera, consider the X-H2S, but the X-H2 does a pretty remarkable job of being quite good at everything…including tracking action. Just watch out for that rolling shutter.
Fuji X-H2 Sensor Performance
The headline improvement of the X-H2 is the new 40.2MP X-Trans CMOS 5 HR sensor that is shared with the X-T5 (and future models, I’m sure). Fuji says this of the new sensor, “The high-resolution 40.2MP X-Trans CMOS 5 HR sensor has an enhanced image-processing algorithm that boosts resolution without compromising the signal-to-noise ratio, delivering astonishing image quality.” I’m liking this new sensor, which in many ways seems to deliver more resolution than the 32MP sensor found in Canon’s EOS R7 without adding any new compromises.
If you want even more resolution (and have the right kind of subject), you can use the new Pixel Shift Multi-Shot which utilizes the sensor shifting ability to combine 16 shots into a single 160MP shot…though you’ll have to download the free Pixel Shift Combiner software from Fuji to combine the images (it can’t be done in camera, unfortunately). That’s more of a commitment than I had time to make to this review, so you’ll have to explore this feature for yourself.
We’ve improved the resolution here but have retained the very rich Fujifilm color science that delivers very pleasing images.
Many people love Fuji colors, and they include a number of their film emulations that can give a unique “feel” to images and/or video footage. Feel free to skip over the technical information if it doesn’t interest you; any modern camera can give you fantastic images.
Fuji X-H2 ISO Performance
As the sensor is shared with the X-T5, I’m going to reuse my tests from my X-T5 review to avoid redundancy. Fuji tends to be a little more conservative with their native ISO range than other companies and resort to less marketing hype, though I frankly find the ISO performance to be ever bit as good as the best from Canon and Sony (the other brands I test). In this case the native range is expanded slightly, but on the bottom end, as the base ISO is now 125 rather than 160. The native limit is still 12,800, though expanded options at 25,600 and 51,200 are available. I didn’t really feel like there was much of a step back relative to the 26MP sensor of the past despite the increased resolution, with images at ISO 6400 looking usable in real world situations.
At ISO 800 there is a mild addition of noise only detectable in the shadows. There isn’t a lot of difference from base ISO, however, and moving on to ISO 1600 shows little difference. At ISO 3200 there is slightly less contrast and slightly more noise, and that pattern continues at ISO 6400 and 12,800, where the noise becomes rougher and more visible in shadow areas. The first stop in the expanded range (25,600) looks about the same as what you would find on a Sony or Canon camera (where it is included in the native ISO range), with more visible noise and black levels that aren’t as deep due to “hot” pixels. ISO 51,200 should be be avoided, as image quality is several stops worse even though that is only one stop more. There’s a fair difference between ISO 3200 and 12,800:
Fuji says that the X-Trans sensor produces a more film-grain-like noise pattern, but it mostly looks like the pattern noise I see with most cameras.
What is a strength, however, is color fidelity. I never really see a shift to greens or magenta as the ISO raises, nor do I see obvious banding in the shadow areas. Overall I’m impressed with the performance. This real world image at ISO 12,800 looks perfectly useful to me.
Switch it to a monochrome where a bit of grain is desirable (Acros +R here) and you’ve got a great looking shot.
This is all very impressive considering how much the resolution has increased. The 26MP sensor had a pixel pitch of 3.74 µm; this 42MP sensor has a pixel pitch of 3.04 µm. That’s a lot of pixels packed close together, and it is very impressive how Fuji has managed to pair high resolution with fairly clean ISO performance.
Fuji X-H2 Dynamic Range Performance
I value dynamic range within a camera in two specific areas: the ability to cleanly lift shadows without introducing noise or color banding and the ability to recover highlights without introducing “hot spots” where information has been permanently lost.
Having good dynamic range (particularly if you shoot RAW), allows you a lot more creative vision over how the final image will turn out, though it is always worth mentioning that just because you can raise shadows or reduce highlights it doesn’t always mean you should. Sometimes a photo with crushed shadows or blown out highlights is the better one.
Fuji has an extra trick up its sleeve to help you maximize dynamic range performance in such scenes, which we’ll get to in just a moment.
In my tests, I found that the X-H2 did an excellent job of recovering shadows very cleanly. Here we have an image that I purposefully underexposed by four stops. As you can see in the original RAW image, there is very little information left there. In post I added those four stops back into the recovered image. What we find is an image that has been recovered with very little penalty, whether viewed globally:
…or at a pixel level:
I could even recover shadows fairly cleanly at five stops, though you can see some additional noise has been introduced in the checkerboard pattern of the tabletop.
As is often the case, however, highlight recovery lags behind shadow recovery. Even at 3 stops of recovered highlights there is damage done to the image with both “hotspots” (information that cannot be recovered) and the loss of some colors in our swatches.
Sony is about a half-stop better in this regard, but Fuji has one other trick that I previously mentioned. If you move beyond the base ISO to either ISO 250 or 500 (and beyond), two new options open up in the menu. These are DR200 (available at ISO 250) and DR400 (available at ISO 400). What these do is essentially split the sensor readout so that the shadow information is gathered from the current ISO setting while the highlight information comes from base ISO. At ISO 250 that gives you one additional stop in the highlights (DR200), while at ISO 500 you gain two (DR400). This allows you to overexpose the image slightly so that you have plenty of information in the shadows, but since there is one or two stops less exposure in the highlights, you have plenty of ability to recover blown out areas in post. I also find that you retain better contrast even if you underexpose and recover using this method (here’s the DR400 recovered result at three stops of overexposure compared to the base ISO three-stop recovery):
Note how much more detailed and bright the right (DR400) recovery result looks. The shadow information looks the same on the two images (ISO 500 isn’t high enough to really introduce any additional noise), but the highlights are brighter and have much great fidelity. You’ll also note how much richer the colors are in the swatches by comparison. The better retention of highlights has vastly improved the overall contrast. I would pick the image on the right every time. It looks like a natural photograph despite the fairly radical recovery of highlights.
The original looked like a complete mistake (misfiring flash, wrong settings, etc..), while the recovered image looks like a perfectly exposed shot. This is a technique well worth utilizing where needed, though I found that for the most part I did have enough dynamic range to edit as desired even at the base ISO. This shot, for example, has full information in the shadows but has also allowed me to retain the beautiful nuances of the morning sky.
That’s a very useful amount of dynamic range, and if you need more, just use the DR200 or DR400 modes (I did use DR200 in the shot above). It’s worth noting that due to the increased sensitivity in the ISO (base ISO of 125 vs 160) both of those are available earlier than they were previously, meaning that you can keep the noise down even more than on previous Fuji bodies.
On the video front we find that the X-H2 has Fuji’s F-LOG2 which boasts over 13 stops of dynamic range, meaning that you have more video dynamic range available than on previous models that only had the original F-LOG profile.
X-H2Resolution and Detail
The new 40.2MP sensor is a whopping 53% higher in pixel count than the 26.16MP sensor on previous Fuji cameras. That additional resolution has a lot of potential value, particularly when, as we’ve seen above, it doesn’t come with a lot of extra baggage in terms of reduced ISO performance. For portrait photographers, that high resolution means that you can take one portrait and get multiple different crops out of just one image.
For landscape photographers, you get the same kind of versatility. I can tighten the crop to show more detail from the scene…and I’m still at the resolution level of the 26MP cameras:
Macro photographers can increase their level of magnification while also retaining plenty of resolution for printing or sharing. I can crop in this much while retaining 100% of the resolution of the 26MP sensor:
I could obviously crop much deeper and still have plenty of resolution for most applications.
Wildlife photographers will also enjoy the flexibility of deeply cropping. In this original shot there are a lot of distractions in the frame, and the great detail on the gull isn’t as highlighted as I would like.
A deep crop removes the distractions and allows the image to be simple and clean.
I’m having a hard time finding a downside to the resolution here, particularly when there is a Lossless Compressed RAW file option that keeps the file size down to a reasonable 40MB(ish) size, JPEGs are around 18MB, and if you want even smaller file sizes, you now can choose the HEIF image format which delivers 10-bit image quality in files up to 30% smaller than standard JPEGs.
X-H2 Color
Fujifilm has a solid reputation when it comes to color science. Their long experience with film (it’s right there in the name!!) has translated into a retro-oriented view at film emulation in their digital cameras. You can choose from 19 simulated Fujifilm film stocks in camera from color film simulations to a variety of monochrome stocks as well. These include: (PROVIA/Standard, Velvia/Vivid, ASTIA/Soft, Classic Chrome, PRO Neg.Hi, PRO Neg.Std, Classic Neg., Nostalgic Neg., ETERNA/Cinema, ETERNA BLEACH BYPASS, ACROS, ACROS + Ye Filter, ACROS + R Filter, ACROS + G Filter, Black & White, Black & White + Ye Filter, Black & White + R Filter, Black & White + G Filter, Sepia). One of my personal favorites is Classic Chrome. Here’s a JPEG shot in Classic Chrome that shows off the slightly blue shadows and general look that I enjoy about the simulation.
You can also control grain (if that’s your thing) in camera as well. Most of these tweaks in-camera will only matter if you are shooting JPEGs. If you are shooting RAWs you can do all of this in post. Here’s the same scene from the RAW image rendered in Astia/Soft, Velvia/Vivid, and then Provia/Standard:
Many that have chosen Fuji have done so for their ability to shoot JPEGs and get what they like right out of camera. If that sounds like you, then the Fuji X-T5 might be a great choice. It’s certainly got a lot of customization available for influencing the output. The RAW colors are nice to process as well. Here’s one that I’ve processed using the Velvia profile (and the 30mm F2.8 Macro):
I would recommend that you take a long look at the Image Galleries page to see if you like what is there – most of which has received minimal processing so you can make a fair determination.
Fuji X-H2 Video
A new sensor means new video possibilities as well, and in this case while the X-T5 maxed out at 6.2K at 30P, the X-H2 allows you to jump all the way up to 8K30. Video options include:
[8K(16:9)] 7680 x 4320 29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[6.2K(16:9)] 6240 x 3510 29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[DCI4K HQ(17:9)] 4096 x 2160 29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[4K HQ(16:9)] 3840 x 2160 29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[DCI4K(17:9)] 4096 x 2160 59.94p/50p/29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[4K(16:9)] 3840 x 2160 59.94p/50p/29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[Full HD(17:9)] 2048 x 1080 59.94p/50p/29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[Full HD(16:9)] 1920 x 1080 59.94p/50p/29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 720Mbps/360Mbps/200Mbps/100Mbps/50Mbps
[Full HD(17:9) High speed rec.] 2048 x 1080 240p/200p/120p/100p 720Mbps(recording)/360Mbps(recording)/200Mbps(recording)
[Full HD(16:9) High speed rec.] 1920 x 1080 240p/200p/120p/100p 720Mbps(recording)/360Mbps(recording)/200Mbps(recording)
4K frame rate still tops out at 60FPS, so you’ll have to drop to Full HD for the best slow motion performance, though in this case that’s as fast as 240FPS. This is obviously a very robust suite of video options and bitrates. The inclusion of the aforementioned F-LOG2 also helps give you more editing headroom, and footage looks really nice off the X-H2.
The improved IBIS is obviously a huge benefit to the X-H2’s video capture, giving the ability to move around a bit while retaining smooth footage. The newer Fuji lenses tend to perform better with focus pulls than older lenses (which often showed a lot of visible stepping). When I tested the new Fuji 30mm F2.8 Macro (with Linear Motor focus) on the X-T5, I found that focus pulls were as fast and smooth as what I’m seeing on any other platform.
The X-H2 allows has better cooling built into the body design, a headphone monitoring jack, and that full size HDMI output that adds up to a more serious video rig than the X-T5. Add to this the fully articulating LCD screen and the ability to output ProRes Raw, Blackmagic Raw via HDMI and you’ve got a very nice video camera. You’ll need to utilize the CF Express Type B card for some of those higher bitrates (and you’ll need a good size card if you record at 720Mbps), but that’s true of any such camera. Those who prioritize video will probably find the video specs the most compelling reason to spend the extra on the X-H2 over the X-T5.
Conclusion
The FUJIFILM X-H2 is my favorite Fuji APS-C camera to date, and the new 40MP sensor is definitely a standout. I definitely prefer it to the older 26MP sensor and am impressed with what Fuji has managed to do with it. It compares favorably to Canon’s 32MP sensor on the EOS R7 while offering superior resolution. Image quality is definitely lovely from this camera.
There are some who prefer the retro aesthetic of the X-T series, but I found the X-H2 to be ergonomically sound for the most part and easy to get familiar with. I love the way the camera feels in the hand and have relatively few critiques unique to the X-H2 itself. The great film simulations and beautiful JPEGs are a delight to many Fuji fans, and that retro aesthetic to the design and the film simulations appeal to the “purists” who only grudgingly accept the digital era. Here’s an “Acros” monochrome.
Autofocus continues to improve, though this is probably the area that I would still like to see the biggest refining in. I would prefer some tweaking to the way that whole sensor tracking and continuous autofocus is handled, as I feel that both Sony and especially Canon have some advantages here, but the X-H2 does delight with a deep buffer that allows you to keep shooting to nail the action.
Though I liked the X-T5, I definitely prefer the X-H2 as it adds a number of features including: much deeper buffers, superior memory card technology, 8K video, fully articulating LCD screen, higher resolution viewfinder, has a full size HDMI port along with a native headphone jack, and can be gotten with a vertical grip and cooling fan. It just feels better in my hands, too. The difference in price is only $300, and if your work includes either video or sports photography, it is probably well worth that additional $300. The X-H2 is one of the most compelling arguments for those that feel that APS-C cameras can be sound replacements for full frame cameras at a lower price point, and I think that Fuji has done a great job of executing a highly skilled jack-of-all-trades in the Fujifilm X-H2.
Pros:
The new 40MP sensor is excellent
Beautiful build with a great grip
Improved IBIS works better than ever
Excellent focus system with Deep Learning AI for tracking action
Competitive burst rates
Very deep buffers
Shutter rated up to 500,000 actuations
High resolution viewfinder
Good battery performance
Good detail, ISO performance, and dynamic range
Robust video specs, including 8K30P options
Huge amounts of customization available for images and controls
Solid ergonomics
Great lens selection
Cons:
Eye AF performance still lags behind Sony and Canon
Whole screen tracking not as smoothly implemented as competitors
Some obvious rolling shutter with electronic shutter
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