Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR Review

Dustin Abbott

August 15th, 2023

Fuji’s move to the 40MP resolution point on some of their higher end cameras has been pretty punishing on many of their existing lenses, but it also really makes it clear which lenses are exceptional. I reviewed one such lens earlier this year in the form of the XF 33mm F1.4 R LM WR, and immediately people began to tell me that I needed to try out the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR as well, as it was even better. Well, they were right; this lens is awesome! It’s a clear and easy choice for those looking for a premium prime lens covering the classic 35mm angle of view (23mm is 34.5mm in full frame equivalence due to Fuji’s 1.5x crop factor). The XF 23mm has been out for roughly a year and a half now, but it feels like it was made for these new high resolution bodies. This is an easy lens to produce lovely photos with.

Fuji has opened up their platform to third party lenses, and there are a number of lenses that look pretty much identical on paper, but aren’t in practice. This includes a Tokina ATX-M 23mm F1.4 ($299 USD), Viltrox 23mm F1.4 ($299 USD, and the Sigma 23mm F1.4 DN that is rumored to soon be coming in Fuji X-mount ($549 USD). The Sigma, in many ways, will prove the most competitive (based on my findings with the Sony E-mount version), but I think there are still a number of ways where the Fuji XF 23mm F1.4 is operating on its own level. It’s got solid features, great autofocus, and gorgeous optics.

But that does come at a cost. The Fujifilm XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR retails for $899, which means that you are going to pay for that goodness. If we were all made of money, we would all choose the absolute best gear regardless of cost, but in the real world the reality of a lens costing hundreds of dollars more than the competition is going to be a factor. My review will remember that tension that you, as the consumer, have to deal with as a part of my assessment.

So should you add one to your kit? We’ll try to answer that question in this review. If you would prefer to watch your reviews, you can choose watch my definitive video review below…or just keep reading.

Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me the 23mm F1.4. I’ll be doing this review on my X-H2, which I reviewed here. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.

Fuji XF 23mm Build and Handling

Fuji likes to essentially build the feature list of their lenses right into the name, so if you learn to “speak Fuji” you can quickly get a sense of what a lens does and does not have right from the name. In this case, the name includes R, LM, and WR, which is a robust feature set.

R = Ring, or specifically an aperture ring.
LM = Linear Motor, Fuji’s premium focus system
WR = Weather Resistance

That adds up to a fairly premium lens despite the compact size of the lens. This lens is slightly larger and heavier than the previous generation 23mm F1.4, but the tradeoff is that it is better at everything. The Fuji XF 23mm F1.4 is pretty much identical to the 33mm F1.4, having very pleasing proportions that look very nice when mounted on the camera.

Now, to be fair, I tested both of these lenses on one of Fuji’s largest APS-C bodies – the X-H2, so if you are using one the very small bodies and want to travel as light as possible, there are smaller/lighter alternatives (the XF 23mm F2, for example). To me, however, this is a great size lens on the X-H2.

The dimensions of the XF 23mm F1.4 are 2.6 (D) x 3.1″ (L) / 67 x 77.8mm with a 58mm front filter thread size. The weight is a very moderate 13.2 oz or 375g. That makes the 23mm very slightly larger and heavier than the 33mm, but barely; it is just a few millimeters longer and about 5 grams heavier. As with the 33mm options, the two competing lenses from Viltrox and Tokina are identical in their own proportions and specifications. Both are 2.6 x 2.8″ (65 x 72mm) though the Viltrox weighs in at 260g while the Tokina is slightly heavier at 276g. But there’s more – they both have the same optical design (11 elements in 10 groups) and the same MFD (30cm) and maximum magnification (0.10x). Same filter thread size (52mm) and same number of aperture blades (9). That’s weirdly similar. The Sigma (in Sony form) is more unique at 65.8 x 79.2mm and 330g in weight, making it the most similar to the Fuji. Here’s a look at a comparison chart between the for lenses:

Bottom line is that while the Fuji is the heaviest of this group, it is also the best made, has full weather sealing, and has a slightly larger/more robust linear focus motor. The weight is still very light and I found the camera and lens effortless to carry around even without a strap for hours while exploring the Notre Dame campus in South Bend, Indiana.

The aperture ring is the Fuji standard. It moves nicely with defined detents at the one third stop marks and with markings at the full stops (F1.4. F2, F2.8, etc…). Rotate the lens all the way to the right and click the little button on the ring if you want to move into A (automatic) mode and control aperture from within the camera.

The manual focus ring works fairly well. I could focus with fairly good precision and didn’t notice visible stepping despite being a focus by wire system.

The Fuji XF 23mm is a very nicely made lens despite its light weight. It feels very “metal” and dense. The lens has a classic semi-glass black finish to it and is completed with thorough weather sealing (as already noted) that has a rear gasket and internal seals.

The included lens hood is is made of plastic but feels more substantial than the one on the 33mm that I tested.

There are no switches on the barrel, as AF/MF is handled via a lever/button on Fuji camera bodies. But many other lensmakers are including things like a focus hold button and/or declick option in lenses in this price zone, and it feels like the standard has been raised and Fuji isn’t quite meeting it. There is also no lens based optical stabilization. I used the X-H2 for this review, which has good in-camera-image-stabilization, so I didn’t actually miss it, but if you are shooting with an older camera, you might.

There are nine rounded aperture blades and I felt like the aperture did quite a good job of retaining a circular shape when stopped down. Here’s a look at the geometry at F1.4, F2, and F2.8:

There is significant lag in the aperture when trying to do aperture racking for video (already difficult because of the clicks) along with visible “steps”. There will be no smooth opening and closing of aperture for an aperture rack.

The minimum focus distance is 19cm, which allows for a reasonably high 0.20x, which is the best amongst these competing lenses (Viltrox and Tokina have 0.10x and the Sigma has about 0.14x). Here’s a look at MFD:

Up close performance is good, and this real world shot shows both the magnification level and the detail available.

Contrast certainly isn’t at macro level, but there’s enough detail there to make up close shots with strongly blurred backgrounds a definite strength.

Overall, the build and features of the lens are very nice, and, as noted in the intro, the compact nature of the lens makes it easy to bring along.

Fujinon XF 23mm Autofocus Performance

The Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 Macro is equipped with a linear focus motor, and that motor does the job of moving focus quickly and smoothly. It was also very accurate on my X-H2, which gave me more confidence using it than I typically feel when using Fuji. I really felt like I could rely on getting accurate autofocus in a wide variety of situations. I was a guest at a wedding, and when the bride and groom came through the door I only had a quick moment to turn and take a shot. They were backlit, there were about 10 rows of people between me and them, and I shot at F1.4. Autofocus was accurate despite all these factors.

General portrait work was very good, with consistently accurate focus.

Autofocus up close was good as well, allowing for lovely close shots:

Focus was quiet and quick, allowing me to grab shots even during action, like on the golf course.

As odd as it may seem, I was also relieved to see good focus at smaller apertures, like for landscapes or architecture. Sometimes lenses focus fine at wide apertures, but not at smaller apertures.

The XF 23mm F1.4 was also quite good for video work, though I continue to see a few Fuji quirks. Focus pulls were good, with no visible steps. Focus breathing is extremely low, which helps focus transitions look very smooth. But on the negative side, touching a new focus area on the screen doesn’t always produce a reaction, or sometimes the move to focus to a new area is delayed. I think that is largely on Fuji’s focus system and touchscreens, which just aren’t as responsive as some competing brands, but there is clearly the potential in the lens for strong performance for video.

When doing my hand test (blocking focus on my face with my hand and then removing it to allow focus to return to the eye), I saw mixed results. The problem was never focus on my face, but rather sometimes the focus system didn’t move to my hand. It would focus on the background beyond me instead. Bottom line: there’s still room for improvement on the video AF front for Fuji, but I actually don’t think that the lens is the problem.

Autofocus was definitely better than average, however, so I’m satisfied. Most of the time focus very – ahem – sweet:

This is the kind of lens I would want to have on my Fuji camera in critical focus situations.

Fuji XF 23mm Image Quality Breakdown

The Fuji XF 23mm has a complex optical formula of 15 elements in 10 groups, which includes 2 aspherical and 3 ED elements – essentially an identical optical design to the 33mm. The MTF chart shows very sharp center performance, a dip in the midframe, and then a minor correction where the edges of the frame are slightly sharper.

It’s worth noting that Fuji displays their MTF charts at higher values than usual. Most MTF charts use 10 and 30 lines/mm, but Fuji shows their MTF charts at 15 and 45 lines/mm. That’s actually useful since the release of their 40MP sensors, as the more demanding MTF chart (at 45 l/mm) is a more accurate representation of how lenses will perform on a high resolution body. As noted in the intro, I feel like the XF 23mm F1.4 has joined a very short list of lenses that I feel really thrive on the 40MP cameras.

Fuji’s correction profiles are typically quite good, but I’ll turn them off to take a look at the actual lens performance when it comes to vignette and distortion.

We can see that there is some barrel distortion and fairly heavy vignette present. If I do a manual correction I find that the distortion pattern is quite linear and is corrected with a value +13. The vignette is heavy, requiring a +81 to clear it up (about 3 stops). The correction profile does all of this easily either in camera for JPEG/Video or in software for RAW files.

Nothing too troubling here. How about chromatic aberrations? First of all, nothing jumped out at me in real world testing. When I went looking for longitudinal chromatic aberrations, I really could not find much of anything. Bokeh highlights were neutral, and there was little fringing to be seen. In this shot I don’t see any fringing either in the crystals or in the bokeh highlights beyond.

I saw next to no lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame either on my chart in on bare branches in real world shots, so nothing to worry about on that front.

Here’s a look at my test chart that the crops came from (40MP images from the X-H2):

Here’s a look at F1.4 crops (about 175% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and corner:

The XF 23mm F1.4 has more consistent sharpness, contrast, and detail across the frame than the 33mm did, making it one the sharpest Fuji prime lenses that I’ve yet tested. The results look very much like a good lens on one of the full frame platforms that I test, which is, frankly, very unusual on APS-C. I was very pleased to get high contrast, detailed results even at F1.4:

That’s very big deal when you are talking about this level of resolution. A full frame camera would have to be roughly 91MP to have a similar level of pixel density, so the XF 23mm F1.4 is being held to a higher standard in these tests than on any other platforms, and the fact that a compact lens is succeeding so well under these demands is very impressive. Don’t expect anywhere near this level of performance from the Viltrox or Tokina 23mm F1.4 lenses. I don’t have either of them on hand to compare to, but when I looked back on my review of the Viltrox, it didn’t deliver as good of results on Sony even though I tested it on just an 18MP resolution point. The Sigma will likely be the strongest competitor based on my Sony E-mount test, and I’ll revisit this comparison when I do a review on X-mount.

Even a mild stop down to F1.8 produces improved contrast across the frame and brighter corners.

Stopping the lens down to F2 adds a bit more contrast in the mid-frame and corner, with the center mostly staying the same. Stopping on down to F2.8 improves contrast and clarity to fantastic levels across the frame.

Real world images in this range are crisp and detailed all across the frame (this shot at F2.8):

The importance of this cannot be overstated, particularly if you are looking for lenses that are a good match for a high resolution body. Diffraction comes early on high resolution cameras, so being able to get your best results at wider apertures is really important. High resolution bodies also tend to be noisier at high ISO values, so the ability to get crisp results at large apertures allows one to keep the ISO down in lower light situations and get clean results. The XF 23mm F1.4 is one of the best pairings for Fuji’s 40MP sensors that I’ve yet reviewed.

At landscape apertures there is plenty of detail across the frame. Couple that with Fuji’s excellent color rendition, and you have a lens very well suited for landscape work:

Diffraction sets in pretty early on my X-H2, so by F8 images are starting to soften slightly, and by F16 the effect is very pronounced. On the new higher resolution bodies with the 40MP sensor, I would try to stay at F8 or larger as much as possible.

$31-Diffraction$

The 23mm is clearly sharper than the 33mm, but I would give the edge to the 33mm for the quality of the bokeh. It’s not unusual for the lens with wider focal lengths to be less “creamy” in the bokeh region than longer focal lengths. This shot of the morning dew shows what I would consider the biggest “bokeh issue” for the lens – it has more outlining than what I would like to see.

When you arrived at strongly defocused backgrounds (look at the upper portion of the image below), the bokeh looks quite good. But in the early transition to defocus there are still some harder edges.

You can see it here in this shot of votive candles: the defocused region is only okay, certainly not exceptional.

One final image to illustrate the point – this shot of an ornate stair rail shows a lot of outlined circles in the defocused regions; you certainly couldn’t classify it as “soft”.

This is often the Achille’s heel for very sharp, high contrast lenses. It’s hard to turn that contrast off in the defocused area. It’s a rare lens that can combine both intense contrast and sharpness with very soft and creamy defocused areas, so often lens designers have to look for some compromise between the two. The XF 23mm F1.4 is biased towards the sharpness side of the equation.

This isn’t to say the bokeh is bad (it’s not), but it’s just a little busier than I personally would like. When at its best the XF 23mm F1.4 delivers images that have great detail on the subject and fairly nice rendering in the background.

This image is a good segway into a discussion of flare resistance. You can see from the upper right portion of the image above that there was bright sunlight coming into the frame, and yet contrast has held up. There’s a hint of an artistic veiling effect that shows up a little more strongly in this image here:

I’m actually very partial to this effect, as it can add an artistic effect to images. In fact, one of my favorite images from the wedding I (casually) shot with this lens was this “getaway” image of the bride and groom where I intentionally got low to get some flare effectives in the image. Contrast is strong in the image, but there is a very nice sunstar effect. There is a moderate ghosting artifact near the bottom of the frame, but nothing too heinous.

I was very pleased with the look of the sunbursts from the lens. They are nicely defined with blades that end in points.

Color rendition is typically a strength for Fuji glass, and I think that’s true here. Color are rich, nicely saturated, and images have a pleasing “pop” to them.

Here’s another shot of an interior space that shows nice color rendition.

Skin tones were also very nice. I would consider this a great option for wedding photographers for a lot of the reasons I’ve already mentioned.

Like the 33mm, this is a lens that I would personally enjoy owning. I don’t love the bokeh, but it does pretty much everything else very well. Check out the image gallery here to see more of those images for yourself and to draw your own conclusions from them.

Conclusion

Fuji’s transition to the very high resolution point on some of their recent cameras has prompted my own move to the X-H2 as my Fuji camera and test body. I’ve quickly discovered that a 40MP APS-C sensor really changes the calculus of what lenses are going to be acceptable to someone who looks critically at lenses for a living. I’ve been left disappointed by a number of lenses that just don’t seem to ever get quite sharp enough to resolve this sensor, so a lens like the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR is a breath of fresh air. It makes my X-H2 essentially the equivalent of a full frame camera, with great detail and autofocus, but with a smaller, lighter form factor than what most full frame lenses can compare to. I love my Sony FE 35mm F1.4 G Master lens, and have marveled at how compact it is (for what it is), but there’s no arguing the fact that it is 50% bigger and heavier than this XF 23mm F1.4. That is the (potential) advantage of APS-C, and it is nice to see it realized here.

A lens like this is a great option in lower light or at night, as you can shoot with confidence at large apertures and still get crisp, detailed results.

Autofocus performance was also a clear cut above older Fuji lenses, and, while Fuji still has a ways to go to quite match what Sony and Canon are doing, the gap seems to be closing a bit. If you have purchased or are considering purchasing an X-H2 or X-T5 (or some future body with the 40MP sensor), then I can recommend the XF 23mm F1.4 to the short list of lenses that have high enough performance to thrive on that platform. At the same time, the price tag of $899 USD is not cheap, so a lens like the Sigma 23mm F1.4 DN might become the next best thing if you can’t afford the Fuji. I can also say, with confidence, that the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR is the best lens you can get at this focal length in X-mount.

Pros:

Well made lens in a compact package
Good build and weather sealing
Linear motor is quiet and fast
Good stickiness on eyes during focus
Focus pulls are smoothly damped
Very low focus breathing
Good sharpness across the frame from F1.4 on
Low levels of chromatic aberrations
Beautiful color rendition

Cons:

- No declick option or physical controls other than aperture ring
- Bokeh has some outlining
- Vignette fairly heavy

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

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Keywords: 23mm, 23mm F1.4, XF 23mm F1.4, Fuji, Fuji 23mm Review, Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 Review, LM, WR, R, 33mm, 33, 1.4, F1.4, F/1.4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-H2, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, IBIS, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA, #letthelightin, #fuji

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.

Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 LM WR Gallery

Dustin Abbott

August 15th, 2023

Fuji’s move to the 40MP resolution point on some of their higher end cameras has been pretty punishing on many of their existing lenses, but it also really makes it clear which lenses are exceptional. I reviewed one such lens earlier this year in the form of the XF 33mm F1.4 R LM WR, and immediately people began to tell me that I needed to try out the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR as well, as it was even better. Well, they were right; this lens is awesome! It’s a clear and easy choice for those looking for a premium prime lens covering the classic 35mm angle of view (23mm is 34.5mm in full frame equivalence due to Fuji’s 1.5x crop factor). The XF 23mm has been out for roughly a year and a half now, but it feels like it was made for these new high resolution bodies. This is an easy lens to produce lovely photos with.

Fuji has opened up their platform to third party lenses, and there are a number of lenses that look pretty much identical on paper, but aren’t in practice. This includes a Tokina ATX-M 23mm F1.4 ($299 USD), Viltrox 23mm F1.4 ($299 USD, and the Sigma 23mm F1.4 DN that is rumored to soon be coming in Fuji X-mount ($549 USD). The Sigma, in many ways, will prove the most competitive (based on my findings with the Sony E-mount version), but I think there are still a number of ways where the Fuji XF 23mm F1.4 is operating on its own level. It’s got solid features, great autofocus, and gorgeous optics.

But that does come at a cost. The Fujifilm XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR retails for $899, which means that you are going to pay for that goodness. If we were all made of money, we would all choose the absolute best gear regardless of cost, but in the real world the reality of a lens costing hundreds of dollars more than the competition is going to be a factor. My review will remember that tension that you, as the consumer, have to deal with as a part of my assessment.

So should you add one to your kit? We’ll try to answer that question in this review. If you want more information, you can choose to watch my definitive video review or read the text review…or just enjoy the photos below.

Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me the 23mm F1.4. I’ll be doing this review on my X-H2, which I reviewed here. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.

Images of the Fuji XF 23mm F1.4

Images Taken with Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Keywords: 23mm, 23mm F1.4, XF 23mm F1.4, Fuji, Fuji 23mm Review, Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 Review, LM, WR, R, 33mm, 33, 1.4, F1.4, F/1.4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-H2, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, IBIS, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA, #letthelightin, #fuji

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.

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM PZ WR Review

Dustin Abbott

July 20th, 2023

Powerzoom lenses are always a bit of the oddball in the room – caught between video and photography. The PowerZoom function is most reminiscent of the focus on camcorders or similar video cameras, but the cameras that a PZ lens will be mounted on is, at its heart, a device designed first and foremost for photography. Serious cinematographers tend to use more complex focus-follow systems and gearing for their systems, while many of those who are photographers first probably aren’t all that interested in the idea of zooming during video recording even if they do video. That leaves a fairly small niche for these lenses, which in many ways is a shame, as the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ is, in many ways, the perfect all-in-one zoom for Fuji X-mount. It has a great focal range (nearly 6.7x zoom ratio), a constant aperture of F4, quality autofocus via the linear motors, an internally zooming design, and fairly good optics throughout. That focal range is so useful, going from 18mm (27mm full frame equivalence):

to 120mm (183mm full frame equivalence):

The vast, vast majority of photography subjects fall within this range, and I found the lens very useful as a walkaround lens. I personally preferred it to either the 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS or the 16-80mm F4 OIS (though surely some will dispute the latter), but that is with a major caveat: I tested the lens on two bodies that have IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) – the Fujifilm X-H2 and the new X-S20. The one acronym missing from the 18-120mm PZ’s description is OIS – which stands for Optical Image Stabilizer. There is no in-lens stabilization, which is actually very rare for any Fuji zoom lenses with an aperture of F4. If you own a body with IBIS, you may not miss it, but it is a very odd decision in a video specific lens considering how many of Fuji’s cameras don’t have IBIS. Trying to get handheld video without stabilization is a nightmare! This is a lens that should probably only be seriously considered by those that have a camera with IBIS.

If you do own such a camera, Fuji has developed some of the best IBIS systems out there. My X-H2 held the viewfinder perfectly steady with the 18-120mm PZ zoomed out to 120mm, and I was able to easily get 120mm shots with 1/5th of a second shutter speeds (right over 5 stops) and some success going one stop lower to 0.5 second shutter speeds.

I’ve read a number of user reviews since this is a lens that has been on the market for a while before I’m actually reviewing it (it released in September 2022), and most of the criticisms seem to fall around the lack of OIS and some frustrations with the video specific aspects of the lens. I actually feel like the lens would have been better received if they had gone a more conventional route and added OIS rather than the powerzoom functionality.

There is some renewed interest in PZ lenses at the moment due to the release of the TG-BT1 Tripod Grip. I’ve reviewed several such accessories in the past for other platforms, and they are very useful for Bluetooth control, extending your reach for vlogging, a quick tabletop tripod, and even for video capture where you have the major controls right at hand. It’s particularly useful if you have one of the powerzoom lenses (like the kit lens 15-45mm OIS PZ) or the 18-120mm PZ as you can smoothly zoom in our out without grasping a ring of any kind. This definitely adds some versatility and reminds me of using a remote to zoom my camcorder in years past.

I’ve reviewed the 18-120mm PZ on two different camera bodies. One is the compact X-S20 body (which I reviewed here); the second is the larger, higher resolution X-H2 (my review here). The X-H2 is the camera I’ve done the optical tests on, and it is the most demanding platform at the moment for any lens to be tested on. So does this lens make sense? We’ll try to answer those questions and more in this review. If you would prefer to watch your reviews, you can choose to watch my definitive video review below…or just keep reading.

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Build and Handling

Fuji likes to essentially build the feature list of their lenses right into the name, so if you learn to “speak Fuji” you can quickly get a sense of what a lens does and does not have right from the name. In this case, the name includes LM, WR, and PZ

LM = Linear Motors, Fuji’s premium focus system
WR = Weather Resistance
PZ = Powerzoom

We’ve already mentioned that OIS is missing, but another interesting omission is R, which stands for aperture ring. This is another odd omission, as just about all of Fuji’s other zooms do have an aperture ring. The lack of an aperture ring is less unusual on most other platforms, but this has been one of the defining attributes of lens design on Fuji, so I suspect some photographers will definitely miss it as they are accustomed to using the ring as their point of control for aperture. This most likely means that you will have to assign one of the control wheels to aperture when using the lens.

Fuji has delivered a thoroughly weather sealed lens here with a gasket at the lens mount, internal seals (12 of them!), and a fluorine coating on both the front and rear elements. The latter helps deal with fingerprints or water and makes the elements easier to clean.

The overall shape of the 18-120mm PZ is different from competing zooms because of being an internally zooming design. This obviously will help with the weathersealing, as well, as nothing extends outside the lens during zooming. The dimensions of the XF 18-120mm PZ are 3 (D) x 4.9″ (L) / 77.3 x 123.5 mm with a 72mm front filter thread size. The weight is moderate at 1 lb or 470 g. It has a fairly long and slim lens profile, and while the internal zoom makes it a little longer for storage, there are a number of very positive trade-offs.

The primary one for video work is that this makes for a great gimbal lens. Depending on your gimbal, you may be able to activate the powerzoom feature right from your gimbal controls, and because of it being an internally zooming lens, the weight balance will be the same regardless of what focal length you are selecting.

Most of the physical controls are designed around two functions: zooming and focusing. In the case of zooming, you have three different ways to zoom. One is the typical zoom ring that most photographers will be familiar with (it’s the widest ring in the center of the lens). You can also use the unique Zoom/Focus control ring (the slimmer ring between the zoom ring and the Z/F button). There is also a small lever beneath the Z/F button that can be used for slow, controlled zooming. You would think that with three options here, there would certainly be at least one standout way to zoom the lens, but for stills, at least, that just isn’t the case.

Why?

Because all three approaches involve a “zoom-by-wire” functionality, where the input from the rings is actually routed through the powerzoom motor. Even the main zoom ring requires about five rotations to get from 18 to 120mm. There’s no quick way to zoom, which means that as a photographer, you will probably miss a few shots because you are intent on getting to the focal length you want but can’t quickly get there. It’s also worth noting that the powerzoom motor isn’t silent, so it is possible that you will pick up some sound if shooting in a very quiet environment.

The “rocker-style” zoom ring is a little more useful, as it is position sensitive. If you move it all the way in one direction or another, it will speed up the zoom, and the zoom action will be slower if you press it only partway forward or backward. This is good for smooth, continuous zooming (the main zoom ring will be limited by your wrist rotations, with a pause between them), but it still isn’t fast even if push the rocker all the way forward or backward. I started from 18mm moving as fast as it would allow and counted an easy “3 Mississippis” (roughly 3 seconds) before I reached 120mm. Not a lot of time in an absolute sense, but an eternity if you are desperate to get a shot.

The final option is the small lever/buttons under the Z/F button that allows you to do very slow, very controlled zooms by pressing in one on side of the rocker or the other. You can then release, as the lens will slowly and smoothly continue slowing panning out or in. And I mean slowly. I started a video and initiated the zoom, and it took nearly 30 seconds to go from 18 to 120mm! Obviously this is designed for slow pulls in or out and isn’t useful for much else.

The biggest challenge here is that the lens is not parfocal (focus is not at a consistent point throughout the zoom range), so as you zoom the lens must make small focus adjustments, and I could often see them. You can choose a small focus point and place it where you want, obviously, but what is small at 18mm is going to be huge by 120mm in terms of how much of the frame it occupies, so that almost certainly means that there will be some focus adjustments along the way. This was a lens that REALLY needed to be parfocal and is not. That’s a missed opportunity and is one of the chief complaints from real world users who wanted to love the lens but didn’t because of this.

In many ways the single biggest value of the powerzoom is the ability to remotely control it. That allows for the camera/lens to be tripod mounted and thus have pans in and out without the fear of introducing vibration. The TG-BT1 grip/remote is a good option for that. I break down its function in this short video:

The final piece of the puzzle is the Z/F button. It allows you to switch between Zoom or Focus for the rocker style ring at the back. The idea is to allow for smooth focus racks. It does work, though I found two issues with the actual operation. First, this only works if you want to do relatively small focus changes, because (you guessed it!) focus moves as slowly as the zoom action. A large focus change takes a LONG time even at the fastest setting. The second issue is that it is basically impossible to take pressure off the rocker (say at the end of your focus pull) without jarring the camera. That’s fine if you want to just focus right through your target (you can then cut the jarring out in post), but if you want to pull to your subject and then stay there, it is very difficult to do that smoothly. The upside is that you can do some focus pulls in a way that Fuji’s standard focus rings don’t really allow for, but the execution still isn’t quite there.

One final observation is that the Z/F button has a lot of travel and doesn’t activate until the end of it. You have to push a little harder (and deeper) than what you might expect.

In most other ways the lens feels like standard Fuji fare. It has quality feel to it and has Fuji’s attractive classic semi-gloss black finish.

The included lens hood is is a petal shaped design. As usual, I don’t feel like the hood feels quite as quality as the materials of the lens, and the finish is slightly more matte and seems to get rub-marks and scratches far more easily than the nicer finish on the lens barrel.

There are no other switches on the barrel, as AF/MF is handled via a lever/button on Fuji camera bodies. Thus far Fuji has nothing that is the equivalent of Sony’s “focus hold button” on their lenses, nor is there any option to declick the aperture. That seems like an odd omission in a lens so clearly designed around video.

The minimum focus distance is a not-particularly-close 60cm, but the magnification figure is a very useful 0.20x nonetheless. Here’s a look at MFD:

Up close performance is fairly good, with nice detail and nicely blurred out backgrounds.

You’ve probably been able to pick up on what has been the major issue with the 18-120mm PZ; it has a lot of promising ideas but doesn’t quite deliver on them. There are some key areas where the execution reduces the potential of the lens. On paper, I like a lot of the ideas here, but the lens doesn’t quite live up to expectations in real world use. I love the internally zooming design, the constant aperture, the weather sealing, and the modest weight of the lens. I don’t love the zooming and agree with other users that the aperture ring is missed.

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM Autofocus Performance

The Fujinon XF 18-120mm PZ is equipped with a linear focus motor, which is Fuji’s premium autofocus system. Focus was smooth, quiet, and fast. I had no problems locking on subjects, even if that subject was a bird on the wing.

Focus was also accurate around my bee hive, with the insect detection locking onto the bees as they moved in and out of the hive.

Focus of Nala on the move was also good, with good eye tracking and stickiness:

I startled a flock of gulls near the water, and while focus didn’t start on the gulls (I was bringing the camera up), you can see that focus adjusted and was accurate as I panned across the water to follow them.

Focus breathing was well controlled in my video focus pulls tests. I saw no visible steps during the actual pull, but I did see an unfortunate common Fuji trait – focus traveled the majority of the way but then would have a split second pause before settling on the final focus lock. Fuji still isn’t quite at the level of Sony or Canon in this area. My hand test (where I reach forward and block the view of my face before removing it and allowing focus to come back to my eye) was smoother. Fuji’s AI tracking is quite good, and it seems like focus is more confident if there is one of the “trackable” subjects in frame.

I had my daughter shoot a clip of me approaching in my truck for my Ford Maverick review, and the vehicle was tracked smoothly as it approached the camera and as she panned to capture me passing.

As noted, the lens is not parfocal, so when I filmed the fast zoom clip for my review, you could clearly see focus trying to catch up by the time I reached 120mm. Focus is fast, but not quite fast enough to keep up in that instance. Another problem that could have been solved by a parfocal design.

In general, however, autofocus is good for both stills and video work.

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Image Quality Breakdown

The Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ has an optical design of 15 elements in 12 groups, and this includes 3 aspherical and 3 ED elements. The MTF chart shows a very strong performance in the center of the frame at both 18mm and 120mm, with some regression near the mid-frame. At 18mm there is a further dip that improves right at the edge of the frame (a unique graph), while at 120mm the MTFs show a steady regression to the corners, which are fairly soft.

The extremely high resolution of the Fujifilm X-H2 (40.2MP) that I’m reviewing the lens on is essentially the most optically demanding platform I review on right now, offering much greater pixel density than the 61MP Sony a7RV or Fujifilm GF100S and its 100MP medium format sensor. I have quickly seen that not every lens holds up well to the demands of this sensor, so this will be a hard test. There were moments that I was pleasantly surprised, however, as in this shot of wildflowers (104mm, F4):

Fuji’s correction profiles are typically quite good, but I’ll turn them off to take a look at the actual lens performance when it comes to vignette and distortion. There is (unsurprisingly) a strong amount of barrel distortion present along with significant vignetting at 18mm:

I corrected the distortion with a +17, and while the manual correction isn’t perfect, the distortion did correct in a fairly linear fashion. Vignette is moderately heavy (nearly three stops) and required a +73 to fully correct.

As you progress through the zoom range, the distortion flips to pincushion style distortion that is progressively stronger as you zoom out. At 12omm it is the strongest, looking like this:

This distortion is nice and linear, and easy to correct, but there is a fair bit (-14 to correct). Vignette isn’t bad at all, however, requiring only a +39 to correct for it. As per usual, Fuji’s correction profiles do a nice job of adjusting for all of these issues.

How about chromatic aberrations? When I went looking for longitudinal chromatic aberrations, I found very little of them either on my test chart on in real world images. There is a very minor amount of fringing before and after the plane of focus on my test chart, but little that shows up in the real world…even with all of those pixels on the X-H2 to reveal them. You can see on these white blossoms that there are no apparent fringing issues:

As we’ll see a little later, however, I did some fringing in harsher outdoor lighting.

I also looked for the lateral chromatic aberrations that show up near the edge of the frame in high transition areas. There are minimal amounts of LaCA, that seem very concentrated at the very edge of the frame:

There’s no deal breaking flaws here. This is actually a pretty good performance for a zoom lens with such a broad zoom ratio.

So how about sharpness? Here’s a look at my test chart that the crops came from (40MP images from the X-H2):

Here’s a look at 18mm F4 crops (about 175% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and corner:

We see essentially what the MTF chart shows: a sharp center, a good mid-frame, and a fairly good corner performance. I’m not wowed by the amount of contrast and rending of fine details, though I’ve seen much worse. Unfortunately there isn’t a lot extra “in the tank” here if you stop the lens down. There’s a very mild improvement of contrast at F5.6, but no further gains at F8 due to diffraction already starting to limit what gains might naturally be there. Here’s a real world image at 18mm, F8 with crops.

You’ll see that detail is good but not exceptional, and the textures aren’t clearly defined even in the center, though the center has more contrast and detail than the crop from the edge of the frame.

Minimum aperture is F22, but you can see that diffraction has completely robbed the image of all sharpness and clarity.

It’s worth observing that very high resolution cameras like the X-H2 or X-T5 are going to be better served by large aperture lenses. They can be stopped down multiple stops before diffraction begins (it typically shows up between F5.6 and F8 and gets progressively worse as the aperture closes down). That allows these lenses to achieve maximum sharpness before diffraction occurs. A lens like the 150-600mm F5.6-8 is already past that diffraction point at its maximum aperture of F8 on the telephoto end, meaning that you can’t stop the lens down to improve sharpness effectively.

Moving on to 35mm shows an almost identical performance to the results at 18mm, though without the odd dip about 2/3rds of the way out. There’s a more consistently linear performance in sharpness, so my outer midframe results definitely look better even if the corners are about equal:

Stopping down to F5.6 gives a mild improvement in contrast. Real world results at landscape apertures look very nice on a global level even if the detail doesn’t pop off the screen at a pixel level.

The results at 50mm are the best yet, with a slight improvement over the 35mm results. There is more contrast and detail, and it shows up across the frame. It’s a mild improvement, but it is there. This real world image looks nice and crisp in the plane of focus:

There’s also slightly more capacity for increased sharpness when stopped down. I noticed a little more improvement than earlier focal lengths when stopping down to F5.6 or F8.

At 90mm the image was definitely softer at F4, though I saw a much more obvious improvement at F5.6 than usual. This real world result at F4 looks pretty good even if contrast isn’t fantastic.

My test results show a similar trend at 120mm. Results are a bit softer across the frame, and the corner performance is considerably weaker than at wider focal lengths. Stopping down to smaller apertures helps somewhat, but the lens never really gets particularly sharp.

This real world shot at F8 shows a pretty good performance in the center (though you can see some “blooming” in the highlights due to weak contrast), but the edge shot is quite soft and shows some strong aberrations on the edges of some of the brighter subjects.

Contrast seemed better at closer distances and easier lighting conditions.

On the flip side, I actually felt like the bokeh quality was pretty good at longer focal lengths for a zoom like this. At closer distances you have the ability to really blur out a background, and this image at 120mm, F4, looks great.

Likewise, the bokeh in this shot of bright leaves against the green background of a rainy day also looks great.

With a less ideal subject to background ratio, things can get a little busier, but not terrible:

You’ll get a little more outlining in the bokeh in the middle of the range (where the lens is sharper), but again, not bad:

I found that flare resistance was fairly good, and for normal, real world use, flare wasn’t a problem.

A typical strength of Fuji lenses is the color rendition, and that continues to be the case here. Colors in this big landscape scene are nice:

Colors on a more intimate level are also good, with nice saturation levels.

Forest greens had a beautiful saturation level – not overdone or garish, but just right.

Optically, this lens is fairly good. Sharpness isn’t exceptional, but it was good enough to produce nice looking images, and there aren’t any critical flaws to report. If you are shooting one of the high-resolution bodies, you’ll have to decide just how much of a pixel peeper you are. Thus far it has seemed to me that only the sharpest of Fuji primes are actually great on this demanding 40MP sensor, but the 18-120mm PZ doesn’t embarrass itself optically, either. Check out the image gallery to see more images for yourself and see if this is the lens for you.

Conclusion

I’m left with mixed emotions at the conclusion of my review period with the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ. There are a number of things I genuinely like about the lens. I love the zoom range, the constant maximum aperture, the quality weather sealed build, the good autofocus, and the internally zooming design. But there are also a number of questionable design decisions that hold back the potential of the lens. The decision to not include OIS will affect some Fuji shooters, and the inability to realize a parfocal lens really limits some of the video-specific elements. Traditional photographers are unlikely to enjoy the zoom mechanics and the lack of an aperture ring. And it’s a shame, as I think Fuji could have gone a more traditional route with this lens and really had a winner.

This the second PZ lens for Fuji, and it obviously occupies a much more premium space than the inexpensive 15-45mm PZ kit lens. There is certain a market for powerzoom lenses, and this 18-120mm PZ is a vast improvement on the performance, build, autofocus, and focal range of the kit lens. I also found the combination of the 18-120 and the new TG-BT1 tripod grip an interesting combination, as it gives you remote control of the powerzoom functionality. It could be particularly useful for working off-camera.

The current price of the 18-120mm PZ sits at $899 USD. That prices it above the more traditional Fujifilm XF 16-80mm F4 OIS lens. There are things I prefer about the 18-120mm, but there’s no question that the 16-80mm will prove more popular with the photography crowd. Some of the execution and ergonomic misses that I’ve detailed have lessened the excitement over this lens. It’s unfortunate, as this is a lens that had a lot of potential. There is a market for this lens, but I would only recommend buying if you are seriously interested in powerzoom.

Pros:

Well made lens
Good build and weather sealing
Internally zooming – great for balancing on gimbal
Smooth, quiet autofocus
Great focal range
Constant aperture
Balances well on a gimbal
Can control powerzoom from gimbal or tripod grip
Bokeh quality fairly good for a big zoom ratio
Low levels of chromatic aberrations in most situations
Beautiful color rendition
Fairly good flare resistance

Cons:

No aperture ring
No OIS
No quick way to zoom
The lens is not parfocal
Bright conditions cause some fringing
Sharpness only okay

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

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Keywords: 18-120mm, 18-120mm F4, XF 18-120mm F4, Fuji, Fuji 18-120mm Review, Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 Review, WR, LM, PZ, Powerzoom, F4, F/4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-S20, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, Wide Angle, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, 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.

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ Gallery

Dustin Abbott

July 20th, 2023

Powerzoom lenses are always a bit of the oddball in the room – caught between video and photography. The PowerZoom function is most reminiscent of the focus on camcorders or similar video cameras, but the cameras that a PZ lens will be mounted on is, at its heart, a device designed first and foremost for photography. Serious cinematographers tend to use more complex focus-follow systems and gearing for their systems, while many of those who are photographers first probably aren’t all that interested in the idea of zooming during video recording even if they do video. That leaves a fairly small niche for these lenses, which in many ways is a shame, as the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM WR PZ is, in many ways, the perfect all-in-one zoom for Fuji X-mount. It has a great focal range (nearly 6.7x zoom ratio), a constant aperture of F4, quality autofocus via the linear motors, an internally zooming design, and fairly good optics throughout. That focal range is so useful, going from 18mm (27mm full frame equivalence):

to 120mm (183mm full frame equivalence):

The vast, vast majority of photography subjects fall within this range, and I found the lens very useful as a walkaround lens. I personally preferred it to either the 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS or the 16-80mm F4 OIS (though surely some will dispute the latter), but that is with a major caveat: I tested the lens on two bodies that have IBIS (In Body Image Stabilization) – the Fujifilm X-H2 and the new X-S20. The one acronym missing from the 18-120mm PZ’s description is OIS – which stands for Optical Image Stabilizer. There is no in-lens stabilization, which is actually very rare for any Fuji zoom lenses with an aperture of F4. If you own a body with IBIS, you may not miss it, but it is a very odd decision in a video specific lens considering how many of Fuji’s cameras don’t have IBIS. Trying to get handheld video without stabilization is a nightmare! This is a lens that should probably only be seriously considered by those that have a camera with IBIS.

If you do own such a camera, Fuji has developed some of the best IBIS systems out there. My X-H2 held the viewfinder perfectly steady with the 18-120mm PZ zoomed out to 120mm, and I was able to easily get 120mm shots with 1/5th of a second shutter speeds (right over 5 stops) and some success going one stop lower to 0.5 second shutter speeds.

I’ve read a number of user reviews since this is a lens that has been on the market for a while before I’m actually reviewing it (it released in September 2022), and most of the criticisms seem to fall around the lack of OIS and some frustrations with the video specific aspects of the lens. I actually feel like the lens would have been better received if they had gone a more conventional route and added OIS rather than the powerzoom functionality.

There is some renewed interest in PZ lenses at the moment due to the release of the TG-BT1 Tripod Grip. I’ve reviewed several such accessories in the past for other platforms, and they are very useful for Bluetooth control, extending your reach for vlogging, a quick tabletop tripod, and even for video capture where you have the major controls right at hand. It’s particularly useful if you have one of the powerzoom lenses (like the kit lens 15-45mm OIS PZ) or the 18-120mm PZ as you can smoothly zoom in our out without grasping a ring of any kind. This definitely adds some versatility and reminds me of using a remote to zoom my camcorder in years past.

I’ve reviewed the 18-120mm PZ on two different camera bodies. One is the compact X-S20 body (which I reviewed here); the second is the larger, higher resolution X-H2 (my review here). The X-H2 is the camera I’ve done the optical tests on, and it is the most demanding platform at the moment for any lens to be tested on. So does this lens make sense? You can read my thoughts in my text review, watch the video review below, or just enjoy the photos!

https://youtu.be/OLA0yiOjwtg

Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me this lens for review. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.

Photos of the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Photos Taken with the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

Buy DA Merchandise https://bit.ly/TWIMerch

Keywords: 18-120mm, 18-120mm F4, XF 18-120mm F4, Fuji, Fuji 18-120mm Review, Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 Review, WR, LM, PZ, Powerzoom, F4, F/4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-S20, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, Wide Angle, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, 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.

Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 WR Review

Dustin Abbott

July 3rd, 2023

A prime lens with a maximum aperture of F3.5 rarely gets anyone excited, but the rules change when you are talking about a compact lens with an angle of view of 120°! The Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 R WR is a very welcome lens – a tiny wide angle prime with a full frame equivalent focal length of 12mm. This extreme wide angle ties the large and expensive XF 8-16mm F2.8 (my review here) for the widest perspective available for Fuji’s X-mount. This focal length, when used properly, allows you to get wonderfully dynamic images.

The two ways to get to 8mm on Fuji couldn’t be more different. The 8-16mm zoom weighs nearly 4x as much (805 vs 215g), is over twice as long (121.2 vs 55.8mm), and is over 20mm wider (88 vs 68mm). The new 8mm prime allows you to use filters (62mm) where as the big zoom does not, and the little prime costs about half as much ($799 vs $1499 USD). The zoom has great image quality, more focal length flexibility, and a larger maximum aperture. This is two radically different approaches to this focal length, but I suspect there will be a lot of people who really appreciate being able to go this wide in such a small package.

I’ve reviewed the lens on two different camera bodies. One is the compact X-S20 body (which I reviewed here); the second is the larger, higher resolution X-H2 (my review here). The new XF 8mm is obviously a better size match to Fuji’s smaller cameras, where it adds little weight or bulk.

The XF 8mm certainly counts as a small but premium lens. Were there some compromises to get that small size? So should you add one to your kit? We’ll try to answer those questions and more in this review. If you would prefer to watch your reviews, you can choose to watch my definitive video review below…or just keep reading.

Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for loaning me this lens for review. As always, this is a completely independent review and my conclusions are my own.

Fuji XF 8mm Build and Handling

Fuji likes to essentially build the feature list of their lenses right into the name, so if you learn to “speak Fuji” you can quickly get a sense of what a lens does and does not have right from the name. In this case, the name includes R and WR.

R = Ring, or specifically an aperture ring.
WR = Weather Resistance

Despite being small, Fuji found room to fit in the aperture ring, and obviously having a weather sealed design is incredibly important for a lens that will be used for a lot of outdoor photography where there, you know, weather!

The dimensions of the XF 8mm are 2.67 (D) x 2.07″ (L) / 68mm×52.8mm with a 62mm front filter thread size. As noted, the weight comes in at 7.6 oz or 215g. This is an extremely compact lens, particularly when one considers how wide a focal length is covered here. Fuji managed that in part by not trying to go for an F2.8 aperture here. That makes the lens a little less attractive for low light photography (or astrophotography), but isn’t a big deal for many of the typical subjects a wide angle lens like this will cover. This is a great example of how good lens design can leverage the smaller sensor size that the lens is being developed for and provide the size of lens that you just won’t see on full frame. It is dwarfed by the relatively compact Tamron 11-20mm F2.8 wide angle zoom:

The aperture ring is the Fuji standard. It moves nicely with defined detents at the one third stop marks and with markings at the full stops (F1.4. F2, F2.8, etc…). Rotate the lens all the way to the right and click the little button on the ring if you want to move into A (automatic) mode and control aperture from within the camera.

The manual focus ring works fairly well. I could focus with fairly good precision and didn’t notice visible stepping despite being a focus by wire system. The nature of a lens like this is that often a lot is in focus

The Fuji XF 8mm is a very nicely made lens despite its light weight. It feels very “metal” and dense. The lens has a classic semi-glass black finish to it and is completed with thorough weather sealing (as already noted) that has a rear gasket and internal seals.

The included lens hood is is a petal shaped design that is fairly (but not extremely) shallow.

There are no switches on the barrel, as AF/MF is handled via a lever/button on Fuji camera bodies. Thus far Fuji has nothing that is the equivalent of Sony’s “focus hold button” on their lenses, nor is there any option to declick the aperture. There is also no lens based optical stabilization. Both the X-H2 and X-S20 have good in-camera-image-stabilization, so I didn’t actually miss it, but if you are shooting with an older camera, you might.

The minimum focus distance is 18cm, which produces a quite low magnification figure of 0.07x. Here’s a look at MFD:

Up close performance is fairly good, with nice detail even if the magnification isn’t high.

Fuji sticks to a pretty consistent design formula for its XF lenses, and so there aren’t really any surprises here either good or bad. Build quality is nice, with good materials, the rings work well, and the lens has a nice, quality feel to the construction. I wouldn’t mind seeing Fuji advance the ball in terms of the feature set on its lenses, but neither is there anything “wrong” with what’s here.

Fujinon XF 8mm Autofocus Performance

The Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 is not equipped with a linear focus motor, as Fuji obviously concluded that the small elements inside this tiny lens didn’t really need the extra power (and size) of a linear motor. While Fuji doesn’t elaborate on the motor here, I suspect it is some kind of stepping (STM) motor that does the job of moving focus quickly and smoothly. So much stays in focus all the time with such a wide angle lens (with a smaller maximum aperture) that there aren’t a lot of big focus changes needed most of the time anyway, so focus felt pretty instantaneous…and able to keep up when the subject gets way too close!

This shot highlights the nature of a wide angle lens like this. This is rarely going to be a portrait lens unless you are looking for exaggerated and funny. Anything close to the camera will be stretched and exaggerated. The one exception to this rule is if you are shooting a big scene and just putting your subject relatively small and centered in it. Look at how extreme this concrete corner is when I compose with it in the foreground:

Focus accuracy was generally good as well, delivering well focused results in the various shooting situations I was is in.

Outside of basically a meter of the lens, pretty much everything is going to be in focus, so the only focus issue I typically see with wide angle lenses is some pulsing. I didn’t really encounter that here, however, so I just didn’t really think about autofocus during stills capture, which is the way you want it.

There was very little to do see when doing autofocus pulls. There is so little focus changing during my typically pulls test that I had to put my hand up to the camera to give a more obvious focus change, but even in that there was relatively little change. As a byproduct there is no real obvious focus movement (so very smooth) and no apparent focus breathing at all. This would make for a very interesting gimbal lens if you wanted a wide angle of view and for pretty much everything to be in focus. It would be very nice for interior walkthroughs for real estate, for example, or even for vlogging if you don’t mind a bit of a distorted look.

So while the XF 8mm doesn’t boast Fuji’s LM (Linear Motor) designation, it is because it doesn’t need it. A quick look at their wide angle lenses show that they reserve the linear motors for the wide aperture zoom (8-16mm) or for large aperture primes (F1.4 lenses). I’ve got nothing to complain about for autofocus; the focus system got the job done here.

Fuji XF 8mm Image Quality Breakdown

The Fuji XF 8mm has a surprisingly complex optical formula for such a tiny lens. There are 12 elements in 9 groups, and this includes 3 aspherical and 2 ED elements. The MTF chart shows a very strong performance in the center (near perfect), a good mid-frame performance, and some regression at the edges of the frame.

The extremely high resolution of the Fujifilm X-H2 (40.2MP) that I’m reviewing the lens on is essentially the most optically demanding platform I review on right now, offering much greater pixel density than the 61MP Sony a7RV or Fujifilm GF100S and its 100MP medium format sensor. I have quickly seen that not every lens holds up well to the demands of this sensor, but the XF 8mm does pretty well.

Fuji’s correction profiles are typically quite good, but I’ll turn them off to take a look at the actual lens performance when it comes to vignette and distortion. There is (unsurprisingly) a strong amount of barrel distortion present along with significant vignetting.

I’ve seen much worse distortion, though obviously this amount will definitely spoil images if not corrected. My manual correction (shown on the right above) has a +25 to correct the barrel distortion and a +76 to correct for vignette. The correction profile does all of this easily either in camera for JPEG/Video or in software for RAW files, and I felt the correction profile in Lightroom did a cleaner job with the distortion than what I could do manually, though I did feel it was overly aggressive in cropping the image. Here’s a look at that result:

You’ll see that my manual correction earlier got rid of the distortion fairly well while leaving a lot more image. My recommendation: if you want the extra width in your shot, do a manual correction instead.

How about chromatic aberrations? When I went looking for longitudinal chromatic aberrations, I was essentially unable to find them. A wide angle lens like this with a relatively small maximum aperture is rarely going to have an issue with fringing before or after the plane of focus because the plane of focus is so large. You can see on these white blossoms that there are no apparent fringing issues:

The more common issue for wide angle lenses is lateral chromatic aberrations that show up near the edge of the frame in high transition areas. That doesn’t seem to be an issue here even with corrections turned off. The edges of the frame show no fringing in this real world shot.

Here’s a look at my test chart that the crops came from (40MP images from the X-H2):

Here’s a look at F3.5 crops (about 175% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and corner:

We see essentially what the MTF chart shows: a very sharp center, a good mid-frame, and a drop to the corners…though not to unusable levels. Over most of the frame the lens is pretty much equally sharp at F3.5 as it is at a smaller aperture like F5.6. Here’s a look at 100% magnification of a real world shot of beautifully aged wood on the side of a barn – not much to distinguish between wide open and stopped down a bit:

Stopping down to F4 produces little difference over most of the frame, though the corners are slightly improved (and brighter!). A more significant difference in the corners can be seen by F5.6 (here at 200% magnification):

By F8 diffraction on my high resolution X-H2 essentially stops any further gains, with F5.6 and F8 looking largely the same. The corners never quite reach the levels of the center of the frame. I can’t blame that entirely on the ultra high resolution, however, as even on the 26MP X-S20 results aren’t as sharp in the corners.

To put things in perspective, however, it is extremely difficult to engineer such a wide angle lens with excellent corner sharpness. I’ve seen plenty of ultra wide angle lenses whose corners were mush…which isn’t the case here. The expensive 8-16mm F2.8 is very slightly better mid-frame, but very slightly worse in the corners, so if you want to go this wide, this is essentially as good of corner performance as you’re going to get. Images looks quite good to my eye, too, with good sharpness across the frame except maybe that last little percentage in the extreme corners.

Minimum aperture is F22, but on most cameras diffraction is going to really play havoc with contrast and acuity. Things look pretty soft by comparison even with F3.5:

$29-Diffraction$

Bokeh quality is not really a major concern with a lens like this, as it is pretty difficult to create a blurred out background. I was quite close to these flowers, but you can see that the further objects really aren’t all that out of focus.

In this shot of Nala you can see a lot of outlining in the trees beyond.

That’s just a strength of a lens this wide, and frankly, not all that important, as you buy a lens like this more to have a lot IN focus rather than to try to create out of focus areas.

Far more important is flare resistance, as this wide of an angle of view is often going to have bright lights in the frame. At wider apertures flare resistance is quite good (first image), though at smaller apertures there are few ghosting blobs of multicolored light (images 2 and 3). Nothing terrible, however.

A great strength of Fuji lenses tends to be their color rendition, and I did find colors really nice. Images looked quite rich:

Forest greens had a beautiful saturation level – not overdone or garish, but just right.

Images had a nice punch to them that I appreciate.

This spring/summer has been a difficult season for astrophotography in Eastern Canada due to the wildfires that are leaving haze and smoke in the air all the time, so I didn’t get any astro images. The maximum aperture of F3.5 doesn’t make this a top choice for astrophotography, anyway, but I would have liked to have seen the stars a bit!

Overall, however, I was very pleased with the XF 8mm. It packs good image quality into an amazingly compact package. It’s a LONG way to my shoes with a lens this wide!

Check out the image gallery to see more images for yourself and see if this is the lens for you.

Conclusion

The Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 WR is evidence that there are still some unique lenses for Fuji to build for their X-mount platform, and I feel like they’ve nailed the formula here. The XF 8mm is small enough to fit on the smaller X cameras while being strong enough optically to work on the high resolution monsters.

One has to have a different eye for composition when shooting with a lens this wide. You’ll often have to get closer than what you’d expect. In the shot below, the bright leaves at the top of the shot were literally above my head at the time I clicked the shutter.

I know that there is a lot of interest in the XF 8mm from both photographers and videographers. I can see only one potential problem, and that’s price. Such a small lens with a maximum aperture of F3.5 that retails for $799 USD or $1079 CDN is going to seem expensive to some. So many third party lenses are coming out now at lower price points (though none quite like this!), and sometimes very small lenses seem expensive in the strange sense that we often equate size with value. Put another way, it is easier for people to perceive a large lens as premium and deserving of a higher price than a small lens. But once people have paid the money, they are going to love having this extreme perspective in such a small, portable package. The XF 8mm is a very welcome new lens to the Fuji platform, particularly when it actually fills a need that no other lens is filling at the moment.

Pros:

Well made lens in a compact package
Good build and weather sealing
Extremely compact for such a wide perspective
Ties for the widest perspective on X-mount.
Autofocus is smooth and quiet
Good center and mid-frame sharpness from F3.5 on
Low levels of chromatic aberrations
Beautiful color rendition
Fairly good flare resistance

Cons:

No declick option or physical controls other than aperture ring
Some strong barrel distortion
Corners never get extremely sharp

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: 8mm, 8mm F3.5, XF 8mm F3.5, Fuji, Fuji 8mm Review, Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 Review, WR, R, 8mm, 8, 3.5, F3.5, F/3.5, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-S20, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, Wide Angle, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, 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.

Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 WR Image Gallery

Dustin Abbott

July 3rd, 2023

A prime lens with a maximum aperture of F3.5 rarely gets anyone excited, but the rules change when you are talking about a compact lens with an angle of view of 120°! The Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 R WR is a very welcome lens – a tiny wide angle prime with a full frame equivalent focal length of 12mm. This extreme wide angle ties the large and expensive XF 8-16mm F2.8 (my review here) for the widest perspective available for Fuji’s X-mount. This focal length, when used properly, allows you to get wonderfully dynamic images.

The two ways to get to 8mm on Fuji couldn’t be more different. The 8-16mm zoom weighs nearly 4x as much (805 vs 215g), is over twice as long (121.2 vs 55.8mm), and is over 20mm wider (88 vs 68mm). The new 8mm prime allows you to use filters (62mm) where as the big zoom does not, and the little prime costs about half as much ($799 vs $1499 USD). The zoom has great image quality, more focal length flexibility, and a larger maximum aperture. This is two radically different approaches to this focal length, but I suspect there will be a lot of people who really appreciate being able to go this wide in such a small package.

I’ve reviewed the lens on two different camera bodies. One is the compact X-S20 body (which I reviewed here); the second is the larger, higher resolution X-H2 (my review here). The new XF 8mm is obviously a better size match to Fuji’s smaller cameras, where it adds little weight or bulk.

The XF 8mm certainly counts as a small but premium lens. Were there some compromises to get that small size? So should you add one to your kit? Find out my thoughts in my text review or by watching my video review.

Images of the Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5

Images Taken with the Fuji XF 8mm F3.5

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

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Keywords: 8mm, 8mm F3.5, XF 8mm F3.5, Fuji, Fuji 8mm Review, Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 Review, WR, R, 8mm, 8, 3.5, F3.5, F/3.5, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-S20, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, Wide Angle, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA

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Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 LM WR Image Gallery

Dustin Abbott

May 22nd, 2023

One of the biggest advantages for APS-C is the ability to have large aperture prime lenses that are still compact and lightweight. The Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 R LM WR weighs only 360g while boasting an extremely nice build quality, great weather sealing, good autofocus, and having the nice color rendition that Fuji optical glass provides. It was announced in September 2021, and, being a newer lens, has Fuji’s updated focus design that makes it more versatile for things like video. The XF 33mm offers a full frame 50mm equivalent angle of view (normal), and as such is going to be an indispensable addition to many photographer’s kit. This is an easy lens to produce lovely photos with.

The single greatest challenge for the XF 33mm is not some flaw of its own but rather the fact that there are two other XF mount 33mm F1.4 lenses to choose from: the Viltrox 33mm F1.4 at under $300 and the Tokina atx-m 33mm F1.4 at $350. The Fuji XF 33mm comes in at a much more premium $800 price point. I haven’t spent time with the Tokina, but I did review the Viltrox and found it to be fairly strong lens. The Fuji is the more mature, nuanced lens, but it will face a bit of a value question by comparison.

That’s a financial decision, obviously, but I will say that this has been one of my favorite Fuji primes that I’ve reviewed thus far. The lens offers nice colors, a decent magnification ratio that bests the other two alternatives, pleasant bokeh, and good sharpness.

So should you add one to your kit? You can answer that question by watching my video review, reading the text review, or just enjoy the photos below.

Images of the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4

Image Taken with the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Viltrox AF 33mm F1.4 XF @ Viltrox Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T4 @B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Keywords: 33mm, 33mm F1.4, XF 33mm F1.4, Fuji, Fuji 33mm Review, Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 Review, LM, WR, R, 33mm, 33, 1.4, F1.4, F/1.4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-H2, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, IBIS, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, 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.

Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 LM WR Review

Dustin Abbott

May 22nd, 2023

One of the biggest advantages for APS-C is the ability to have large aperture prime lenses that are still compact and lightweight. The Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 R LM WR weighs only 360g while boasting an extremely nice build quality, great weather sealing, good autofocus, and having the nice color rendition that Fuji optical glass provides. It was announced in September 2021, and, being a newer lens, has Fuji’s updated focus design that makes it more versatile for things like video. The XF 33mm offers a full frame 50mm equivalent angle of view (normal), and as such is going to be an indispensable addition to many photographer’s kit. This is an easy lens to produce lovely photos with.

The single greatest challenge for the XF 33mm is not some flaw of its own but rather the fact that there are two other XF mount 33mm F1.4 lenses to choose from: the Viltrox 33mm F1.4 at under $300 and the Tokina atx-m 33mm F1.4 at $350. The Fuji XF 33mm comes in at a much more premium $800 price point. I haven’t spent time with the Tokina, but I did review the Viltrox and found it to be fairly strong lens. The Fuji is the more mature, nuanced lens, but it will face a bit of a value question by comparison.

That’s a financial decision, obviously, but I will say that this has been one of my favorite Fuji primes that I’ve reviewed thus far. The lens offers nice colors, a decent magnification ratio that bests the other two alternatives, pleasant bokeh, and good sharpness.

So should you add one to your kit? We’ll try to answer that question in this review. If you would prefer to watch your reviews, you can choose watch my definitive video review below…or just keep reading.

Fuji XF 33mm Build and Handling

Fuji likes to essentially build the feature list of their lenses right into the name, so if you learn to “speak Fuji” you can quickly get a sense of what a lens does and does not have right from the name. In this case, the name includes R, LM, and WR, which is a robust feature set.

R = Ring, or specifically an aperture ring.
LM = Linear Motor, Fuji’s premium focus system
WR = Weather Resistance

That adds up to a fairly premium lens despite the compact size of the lens. The Fuji XF 33mm F1.4 has very pleasing proportions that look very nice when mounted on the camera.

Now, to be fair, I tested the lens on one of Fuji’s largest APS-C bodies – the X-H2, so if you are using one the very small bodies and want to travel as light as possible, there are smaller/lighter alternatives. To me, however, this is a great size lens on the X-H2.

The dimensions of the XF 33mm are 2.6 (D) x 2.9″ (L) / 67 x 73.5mm with a 58mm front filter thread size. As noted, the weight comes in at 12.7 oz or 360g. What’s weird is that the two competing lenses (Viltrox and Tokina) are identical in their own proportions and specifications. Both are 2.6 x 2.8″ (65 x 72mm) though the Viltrox weighs in at 270g while the Tokina is slightly heavier at 285g. But there’s more – they both have the same optical design (10 elements in 9 groups) and the same MFD (40cm) and maximum magnification (0.10x). Same filter thread size (52mm) and same number of aperture blades (9). The angle of view isn’t identical, so they aren’t the same optical design, but I have very rarely seen two lenses from two different companies with such similar specs. Here’s a look at a comparison chart between the three lenses:

The Fuji looks slightly larger than the Viltrox side by side, but nothing significant.

The aperture ring is the Fuji standard. It moves nicely with defined detents at the one third stop marks and with markings at the full stops (F1.4. F2, F2.8, etc…). Rotate the lens all the way to the right and click the little button on the ring if you want to move into A (automatic) mode and control aperture from within the camera.

The manual focus ring works fairly well. I could focus with fairly good precision and didn’t notice visible stepping despite being a focus by wire system.

The Fuji XF 33mm is a very nicely made lens despite its light weight. It feels very “metal” and dense. The lens has a classic semi-glass black finish to it and is completed with thorough weather sealing (as already noted) that has a rear gasket and internal seals.

The included lens hood is is made of plastic and is nothing particularly special. It feels like a cheap tack on compared to the build quality of the lens, and it stands out because the Viltrox costs 2 1/2x less but has a very nice metal lens hood that matches the lens better. The hood doesn’t even match in terms of texture.

There are no switches on the barrel, as AF/MF is handled via a lever/button on Fuji camera bodies. But many other lensmakers are including things like a focus hold button and/or declick option in lenses in this price zone, and it feels like the standard has been raised and Fuji isn’t quite meeting it. There is also no lens based optical stabilization. I used the X-H2 for this review, which has good in-camera-image-stabilization, so I didn’t actually miss it, but if you are shooting with an older camera, you might.

There are nine rounded aperture blades and I felt like the aperture did quite a good job of retaining a circular shape when stopped down. Here’s a look at the geometry at F1.4, F2, and F2.8:

The minimum focus distance is 30cm, which allows for a pretty average (for a 50mm lens) 0.15x magnification, though both the Viltrox and Tokina underwhelm with a 0.10x magnification, making the Fuji look pretty generous by comparison. Here’s a look at MFD:

Up close performance is good, and this real world shot shows both the magnification level and the detail available.

Contrast certainly isn’t at macro level, but there’s enough detail there to make up close shots with strongly blurred backgrounds a definite strength.

Overall, the build and features of the lens are very nice, and, as noted in the intro, the compact nature of the lens makes it easy to bring along.

Fujinon XF 33mm Autofocus Performance

The Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 Macro is equipped with a linear focus motor, and that motor does the job of moving focus quickly and smoothly.

Focus accuracy was generally good as well, delivering well focused results in a variety of lighting conditions. This shot of Ferrari shows good focus even at F1.4:

I used it at a games night with friends, and it delivered nicely focused results in typical room lighting.

Focus was quiet and quick, and focus accuracy is most situations was very good. Here, for example, focus grabbed the tiny spring buds that I was trying to capture.

I will noted that if the “green box” was not on the area that I wanted, focus would not grab an obvious foreground subject even with whole sensor tracking engaged. I got this shot, for example:

When what I was looking for was this shot:

This seems to be a Fuji issue and not this particular lens, however.

If I tested focus pulls in stills mode, I would hear a little clacking not from the focus motor but the aperture blades. Focus was tuned for speed there. If I switched to video mode, the damping was definitely increased, and focus pulls were more smooth and gradual rather than snappy. This is good, though I did see a few visible steps, particularly right before final subject lock. Not a flawless performance, but definitely better than what I saw from earlier Fuji lenses. Worth noting is that focus breathing is very minimal as well.

When doing my hand test I had a hard time getting the focus system to leave my face even with my hand covering most of the frame. I had to intentionally block all of my face before focus would shift to my hand. It was a little frustrating for that exercise, but I did appreciate that if I passed my hand back and forth laterally in front of the camera focus never wavered from my eyes, so stickiness was good.

Here’s another shot that shows off real world precision of focus (on an X-H2), and I thought it did a good job:

I was satisfied with the focus performance here in general, and, if focus isn’t quite at the top tier level I see from other brands like Sony or Canon, I don’t feel like the gap between Fuji products and them is quite as wide anymore.

Fuji XF 33mm Image Quality Breakdown

The Fuji XF 33mm has a complex optical formula of 15 elements in 10 groups, which includes 2 aspherical and 3 ED elements. That’s 5 elements more than either the Viltrox or the Tokina. It does pay off here, however, as I feel like the XF 33mm strikes a very nice balance between sharpness, bokeh, and general rendering. The MTF chart suggests a sharp center with a fairly steep decline to the mid-frame, but the sharpness essentially flatlines from there to the edge of the frame.

The extremely high resolution of the Fujifilm X-H2 (40.2MP) that I’m reviewing the lens on will give it a sterner test than any of the available cameras when it was released, though I would largely say that the XF 33mm is up to the task. Images have nice detail, and this simple shot of pine needles in the rain (at F1.4) stood out to me.

Fuji’s correction profiles are typically quite good, but I’ll turn them off to take a look at the actual lens performance when it comes to vignette and distortion.

We can see that there is some distortion (pincushion style) and vignette. If I do a manual correction I find that the distortion pattern is very linear and easily fixes with a value of -5. The vignette is a bit heavier, but a +62 clears it up (about 2 1/4 stops). The correction profile does all of this easily either in camera for JPEG/Video or in software for RAW files.

Nothing too troubling here. How about chromatic aberrations? First of all, nothing jumped out at me in real world testing. When I went looking for longitudinal chromatic aberrations, I was able to find some mostly in the form of some blue/green fringing around some specular bokeh highlights, but nothing obvious or egregious.

I saw next to no lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame either on my chart in on bare branches in real world shots, so nothing to worry about on that front.

Here’s a look at my test chart that the crops came from (40MP images from the X-H2):

Here’s a look at F1.4 crops (about 175% magnification) from the center, mid-frame, and corner:

You can see that the resolution does indeed drop off significantly from the center to the mid-frame results, with a very shallow decline from there to the corners. Fortunately real world images at wide apertures are mostly composed in the area where resolution is higher on a lens like this, and when you hit the sweet spot, you can get nice, high contrast results.

Contrast isn’t off the charts, but I did think that the detail in this night scene at F1.4 was perfectly usable.

When I compared to the Viltrox at F1.4 the Fuji had a clear advantage in sharpness across the frame.

Stopping the lens down to F2 starts to improve the contrast across the frame, and I do see better detail starting to emerge in the midframe and corners.

Things are looking better by F2.8, and better still by F4. Smaller aperture images have nice detail across the frame, like this shot at F5.6:

How about this old barn at F5.6, where I see only a slight bit less contrast near the edge of the frame:

If I check back in with the Viltrox, one of the biggest things I see is how much more consistent the metering was with the Fuji lens when shooting my chart tests. The Viltrox rendered oddly dark even though there was only a very minor difference in shutter speed. The Fuji is sharper and better centered across the frame. This is a case of “you get what you pay for”:

Minimum aperture is F16, but on a high resolution body like the X-H2 diffraction has long set in and robbed the image of most clarity and contrast:

On the new higher resolution bodies with the 40MP sensor, I would try to stay at F8 or larger as much as possible.

So detail is quite good, but my favorite part of the lens is the combination of sharpness and bokeh. It renders very nicely, with a nicely blurred background. Up close (where the background blur is increased) the bokeh is very soft and creamy:

Even if you move back a bit and allow for a more complicated background, the rendering remained quite good and not strongly “jittery”.

I also continued to like the bokeh with the lens stopped down a bit (F2.8 here):

When I let the sun into the frame I found that contrast dipped a bit but neither did I see anything too appalling.

Color rendition were very nice – punchy and clean.

After being a little underwhelmed by the 30mm F2.8 Macro, it’s very nice to wrap up a review on a recent Fuji prime and think, “that’s a lens I’d like to own!” I generally liked the images that I got with the XF 33mm and appreciate the nice balanced design of the optics. Check out the image gallery to see more of those images for yourself and to draw your own conclusions from them.

Conclusion

Fuji has taken quite a few “kicks at the can” at the “normal” focal length, with three previous 35mm designs, and, while I liked the XF 35mm F2 a fair bit, this newer Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 checks the most boxes for me. It delivers a really nice blend of sharpness, bokeh, and color rendition while having a nice weather sealed build, good autofocus, and a compact form factor.

There’s relatively little to criticize, as while the wide open contrast isn’t record breaking, it’s also what allows for the nice defocus in the background.

The XF 33mm is a lens that isn’t outclassed by the daunting new 40MP Fuji sensors which is huge in and of itself. While I can’t speak for the Tokinon 33mm F1.4, the copy of the Viltrox 33mm F1.4 is easily outclassed by the Fuji, which does help to justify the higher price tag. The Fuji also has a more sophisticated focus system, weather sealing, and much nicer color. The Viltrox or Tokina are probably still good budget alternatives, but I suspect that those who are looking for a great normal lens will be most satisfied by saving up and adding the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4. It’s one of the more complete short prime lenses that I’ve tested thus far on Fuji.

Pros:

Well made lens in a compact package
Good build and weather sealing
Linear motor is quiet and fast
Good stickiness on eyes during focus
Focus pulls are smoothly damped
Good center sharpness from F1.4 on
Excellent sharpness across frame when stopped down
Very nice bokeh
Low levels of chromatic aberrations
Beautiful color rendition

Cons:

Lens hood feels cheap
No declick option or physical controls other than aperture ring
Softer in midframe and corner at large apertures
Some slight stepping in video focus pulls

Gear Used:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Viltrox AF 33mm F1.4 XF @ Viltrox Store | B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T4 @B&H Photo | Amazon | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Keywords: 33mm, 33mm F1.4, XF 33mm F1.4, Fuji, Fuji 33mm Review, Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 Review, LM, WR, R, 33mm, 33, 1.4, F1.4, F/1.4, Fujinon, Fujifilm, X-H2, FujiFILM X-H2, X-H2 Review, X-T5, Fuji X-H2, Fuji X-H2 Review, Fujinon, Dustin Abbott, Review, Sensor, Tracking, IBIS, Stabilization, Eye AF, Viltrox, XF, Review, Hands On, Video Test, Sharpness, High ISO, Autofocus, Dynamic Range, 40MP, 40 MP, Lens, Comparison, Test, Dustinabbott.net, APS-C, X-Trans, letthelightin, DA

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Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 R LM WR Review

Dustin Abbott

August 15th, 2023

Fuji XF 23mm Build and Handling

Fujinon XF 23mm Autofocus Performance

Fuji XF 23mm Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 LM WR Gallery

Dustin Abbott

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Images of the Fuji XF 23mm F1.4

Images Taken with Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4

Purchase the Fujinon XF 23mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujinon XF 33mm F1.4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Build and Handling

Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 LM Autofocus Performance

Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Photos of the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Photos Taken with the Fuji XF 18-120mm PZ

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

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Dustin Abbott

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Fuji XF 8mm Build and Handling

Fujinon XF 8mm Autofocus Performance

Fuji XF 8mm Image Quality Breakdown

Conclusion

Pros:

Cons:

Purchase the Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-T5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Find it Used at KEH

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S20 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujifilm X-S10 @ B&H Photo | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany | Ebay

Purchase the Fujinon XF 18-120mm F4 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo | Amazon | Adorama | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Ebay | Make a donation via Paypal

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Images of the Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5

Images Taken with the Fuji XF 8mm F3.5

Purchase the Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany

Purchase the Fujifilm X-H2 @ B&H Photo | Adorama | Amazon | Camera Canada | Amazon Canada | Amazon UK | Amazon Germany