A compact lens, very light and very useful for documentary work and every day pictures!
First Impression And The Fun Factor
It’s a compact lens, made of metal, very lightweight and very good looking with the square hood. It’s a lens that you can take it every where and it will make your Fujifilm camera very portable an capable!
Fujinon 18mm f2 Image Quality
Here are my impressions:
- Optics are looking like the 35mm 1.4 but it’s a wide angle lens
- Jpeg rendering it’s excellent in black and white and color
- Good for close up portraits too
- Bokeh – good for close up shots, nice smooth rendering, but being and APS-C lens you can’t expect miracles
Portraits with Fuji 18mm f2
So I think it’s nice lens for wide angle portraits. Of course Fujifilm 18mm f1.4 will perform better, because of the optics, resolution and f1.4 aperture, but I’m not at all disappointed with this lens for wide angle portraits.
Fujifilm XF 18mm f2 By Night
The biggest advantage over the Fujifilm XF10 it’s the fact that you can shoot with this lens in low light situations without problems, because you have an competent AF.
Also at f2 you can make astrophotography (didn’t had the chance to try it yet!).
Focusing
The AF of this lens it’s good in AF-S on X-PRO3, X-E4 and probably on X-T4, X-S10 (not tested by me). But it’s not an STM motor, so it will act like Fujifilm 35mm f1.4 lens. You don’t want to use this lens in AF-C and of course you will not use it in video. The front ring for manual focusing the lens, needs more dampening to feel good in the hand, but in practice I didn’t find a problem.
Build Quality – 9 / 10
Except from the noise from the AF motor I don’t have any complaints. I would have loved to be weather sealed but it’s not. I love that it’s made of metal and comes with two caps (one for the lens and one for the square hood) and it’s very lightweight.
Images Of The XF 18mm f2 Lens On X-PRO3 And X-E4
Fuji 18mm f2 on X-E4 vs X100V. The real 28mm alternative?
As you can see 18mm f2 on Fuji X-E4 becomes a small X100V with a 28mm full frame equivalent lens.
Fujifilm XF 18mm f/2 Image Samples
Conclusions
From my point of view it’s a very capable lens. It is a little pricey brand new, so my advice is to find a good copy on the used market. But if you don’t find, you will not regret it buying it new. The Fujinon 18mm f2 doesn’t compete with Fujinon 18mm f1.4 – if you just shoot for fun, and don’t need the 1.4 aperture than 18mm f2 it’s sufficient. And also if you wanted a small X100V with 28mm field of view, now you can get it on X-E4 with Fujifilm 18mm f2 lens – this setup weights the same as X100V – just 2 grams more!
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