Which zoom (55-200 or 50-230)

Jared Huntr wrote:

slimandy wrote:

I read a few reviews and they same on a par in terms of IQ, either being better depending on who's review you read.

I would tend to believe this based on Fuji's product planner for X cameras who said of the 18-55:

"We made it f/2.8 to achieve both brightness and high image quality. Consequently the cost would be higher, so there was the problem with the price even though we wanted a wider range of people to use our product. This is why we then created the XC lens “XC16-50mm” and “XC50-230mm” as the beginners’ model. The only difference is the material used for the lens exterior. The inside is the same optical design and technology as the XF lens."

The last sentence is telling and throws cold water on all the baseless speculation in these threads. Yes, the XF lenses are typically designed to be faster (brighter) optics with metal bodies. But it is incorrect to assume that the XC glass is of poorer optical quality or resolution within the same operational parameters.

Having owned several lenses with plastic mounts, I'm convinced that owners that have had problems relating to the plastic mount tend to be abusive toward their equipment. Either that, or Fuji is different from CaNikon in that they made extremely fragile plastic mounts.

I don't know if you're trying to convince yourself or someone else. The lenses used may be the same but they are not the same design - how can they be when the XC lenses have 2 fewer elements and obvious difference in the groupings? I daresay they elements they do use are the same or similar. Checkout the Fuji website or numerous reviews which show the number and grouping of the elements. I bought a 16-50 XC mainly for use as an IR lens but reports of its usability for IR turned out to be false. I tried it alongside my 18-55mm taking exactly the same images with the same tripod mounted camera and found that from about 20mm to 50mm at apertures of f5.6 and f8 there was no difference I could see but outside of those parameters there was enough distortion at 16mm to need cropping, so no gain in focal length and comparatively poor image quality at wider than f5.6 and smaller than f8 (possibly because the XC lenses don't have the benefit of of LMO).

If I hadn't used better lenses and not done the test I would probably have been happy with the 16-50 XC. It's all compromise - my primes are better than the zoom but not so convenient.