4, its only for fujis x, mount system cameras where it offers the full frame equivalent field of view of 27 millimeter a reasonably wide angle, useful for all kinds Of everyday shooting its very bright maximum aperture of f 1.4 ensures youll, be happily shooting away in darker situations too, and even be able to get some out of focus backgrounds in your images, its a very expensive lens at a thousand us dollars, or about over 850 Pounds here in the uk – and this lens has already picked up for itself – a spectacular reputation for sharpness on the internet in various reviews, so lets see what it can really do. First off build quality. The lens is gorgeous. The first thing you notice is that its actually quite small, considering its bright maximum aperture and as normal for one of fujis higher tier xf lenses. The build quality is pretty much second to none with lots of metal used in its body throughout, not to mention weather ceiling. One black mark, though, is that, when its not attached to a camera, thats turned on this lenses. Internal elements shake around within the lens body, something i saw on fujis 80 millimeter macro lens, which i seriously hate. It doesnt inspire confidence in the lenses. Longevity we also get one of fijis clicking aperture rings toward the rear of the lens. This time it can be locked in and out of the automatic mode, which is a great idea from fuji.
Otherwise those rings can easily be set incorrectly. Then comes the metallic manual focus ring which turns incredibly smoothly, but it responds quite jerkly, with the lenss focus motor. Like many other fuji lenses, ive tested, when focusing in and out at normal distances, the lens displays a small amount of focus breathing. Nothing serious, though, however, when focusing very closely the land suddenly zooms in just a little, that wont be a serious problem for video makers. Unless youre doing really enormous focus pulls the lenses autofocus motor works very quickly, confidently and very accurately, not to mention completely silently the lens comes with a plastic hood, which is nice and deep. Considering the wide angle were working at here and its front filter size is 62 millimeters wide. It does not feature image stabilization overall. This lenss build quality is exceptional, its really tough and handles beautifully in just about every way, and i particularly like that fuji managed to keep it so small. Alright lets take a look at image quality now: im testing it out on a fuji xt3 camera with its 26 megapixel aps c sized sensor at f 1.4 in the middle of the image. Sharpness and contrast are truly awesome, spectacular really and over in the image corners. Wow thats a nice surprise, even at f 1.4. We are seeing excellent sharpness and contrast there too stop down to f2 and those corners join the middle of the image and looking absolutely perfect. The lens stays.
The sharp down to f11 and f16 does look softer due to the effect of diffraction, but overall this is one of the sharpest aps c camera lenses. I have ever seen straight from f 1.4. What an achievement here from fuji my compliment to the lenses designers. Okay, lets take a look at distortion and vignetting. I have taken and processed these images in war in order to get around fujis in camera corrections. However, we only see negligible barrel distortion here, vignetting at f 1.4 is very strong, though stop down to f2 and most of the darkness in those corners clears up. Although its topping down any further than this doesnt lead to further improvements. A nice bonus feature of this particular lens is its very close. Minimum focus distance of only 20 centimeters fantastic for grabbing pictures of any smaller subject. The further good news is that even at f 1.4 close up image quality remains pretty much perfect. What an excellent performance there lets see how the lens works against bright lights. Now here we see a slight hiccup and optical quality in the form of some quite clear, flaring and glaring, when bright lights are in the image ive seen much worse than this before, but still a slight disappointment and while were working in the dark lets. Take a look at coma levels at f, 1.4 bright points of light in the corners see almost no coma smearing, which will be a boom for astrophotographers lets zoom out and look for some sun stars now stop down to f8 and they begin to emerge quite nicely At f11 and f16, they become quite spectacular, so thats.
Another feather in this lenses cap now lets take a look at the quality of this lenses, bokeh yet again, im happy to give the lens a clean bill of health. Apart from the usual slight cat, size shape toboka balls in the image corners, there are no issues and your autofocus backgrounds will always look lovely and smooth and finally, related to bokeh comes longitudinal, chromatic aberration. Yet again, fuji have performed some kind of weird magic trick here. As even at f 1.4 theres, essentially no real color fringing on contrasting edges overall well, i am basically left with the impression that this lens fell from a spaceship or or was somehow transported back in time from some technologically idyllic future, because it really is virtually perfect. Small tough, excellent, auto focus bright, aperture razor sharp with soft blocker excellent contrast and virtually no image quality issues at all im, not normally a fan of the 18 millimeter focal length on an aps c camera. I tend to find it a little boring myself and find myself wanting something a bit wider, but this is the kind of lens that could completely change my mind about that. I reckon fuji released it to make up for the shortcomings of their older 16 millimeter. F. 1.4 lens ive been testing that one out recently and the difference in quality between both lenses is astonishing. Anyway, if you hadnt guessed already, my conclusion is quite simple: this is a stellar optic and it comes highly recommended.
I hope you enjoyed this review and found it helpful, its not often im able to give any lens such a glowing report. If you find these videos helpful, then do consider checking out my patreon page.
