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My Least Favorite XF Lens

Started Feb 27, 2019 | User reviews thread
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Henrik Helmers
Henrik Helmers Regular Member • Posts: 265
My Least Favorite XF Lens
14

The XF 18-55 looks good on paper. It is fairly small, stabilized and fast on the wide end. It is also well built, and fairly quiet.

There are, however, three areas where I find it lacking:

  1. Firstly, the lens suffers from massive chromatic aberrations. It is so significant that I struggle to remove it from RAW files. This is bad for image quality, and also my enthusiasm when I spot it.
  2. Focus on older bodies (it was bought along with an X-E1) can be very slow.
  3. It is not very fast. 2.8 is an ok number but it does not stay at 2.8 when you zoom in.

I sometimes pick up the XF 18-55, and every time it reminds me of why I did not enjoy it in the first place.

All in all, I am a bit sad that this is sold as a kit lens. In my experience does not show the Fujifilm X system from its best side. There are many great lenses to try, especially primes.

 Henrik Helmers's gear list:Henrik Helmers's gear list
Fujifilm X-T4 Fujifilm GFX 100S XF 90mm Fujifilm GF 100-200mm F5.6 Fujifilm GF 45-100mm F4 +3 more
Fujifilm XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 R LM OIS
Zoom lens • Fujifilm X • 16276479
Announced: Sep 6, 2012
Henrik Helmers's score
2.0
Average community score
3.6
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