Photography News issue 23

Photography News Issue 23 absolutephoto.com

Reviews

FujifilmXF16mm f/1.4 RWR £729

Specs

Construction 13 elements in 11 groups Angle of view 83° Aperture range f/1.4-16 Filter thread 67mm Minimum focus 15cm Aperture blades 67mm Lens mount Fujifilm X-bayonet Weight 375g Contact Fujifilm.eu/uk

Verdict

Above The 16mm is ideal for interiors and in situations where space is at a premium. The interior of the Emmanuel Chapel in Cambridge was exposed at 1/40sec at f/2 and ISO 200. The lens does not have VR but handholding at relatively slow shutter speeds is no problem at all.

The Fujifilm 16mm f/1.4 is a high-spec wide-angle from the top drawer and it is priced accordingly. But £729 does buy you a first-class, very versatile optic that delivers an impressive optical performance at every aperture setting. Overall There is a great deal to admire and enjoy with this high quality, fast aperture wide-angle lens and it’s very much a class act, mechnically and optically. Definitely a lens for X-system owners to shortlist. Pros Very useful focal length, close focusing skills, image quality Cons No focusing tweaking in AF mode, price slightly on the high side Above left Scenes rich in fine detail are no problem for the 16mm f/1.4, even when used at its wider apertures. In fact, stopping down increases depth-of-field but does little to improve the already impressively high standard of optical performance.

Review by Will Cheung

In my opinion, one key reason why Fujifilm has been so successful with its X-system, aside from the cameras being able to deliver excellent results, is its lens system which is generously endowed with fast-aperture, high-spec primes of useful focal lengths. Sowe have beauties like the 23mmf/1.4, 35mm f/1.4 and the 56mm f/1.2. They have now been joined by the 16mm f/1.4 that with the format’s 1.5x crop factor means it is equivalent to a 24mm f/1.4 in the 35mm format. Thus this lens has great potential for documentary, street, interiors and scenics and much more. Potentially, it’s an excellent all-round wide-angle lens. One thing with the equivalent spec lenses for the 35mm format is that they are generally quite chunky pieces of glass – the Canon 24mm f/1.4 weighs in at 650g. So you won’t be surprised to hear that the Fujifilm 16mm f/1.4 is a solidly made lens but much lighter at 375g and of course it is physically smaller although its filter thread is still 67mm. Its 13 elements in 11-group construction includes two aspheric and two extra-low dispersion elements, and each lens surface is coated with Fujifilm’s HT-EBC. HT-EBC stands for High Transmittance Electron Beam Coating that was originally designed for TV broadcast lenses to help achieve clear images in difficult lighting and is now used on consumer Fujifilm products. Finally, one surface has Nano GI coating that’s said to reduce ghosting and flare from diagonal incident light. One important feature is that the lens is weather and dust resistant with nine seals in eight areas around the lens barrel. A design that minimises the temperature difference between the inside and the outside of the lens plus the use of electronic parts enables the lens to perform perfectly in temperatures as low as -10°C. The smooth aperture ring is clicked-stopped in 0.3EV steps like other X-series lenses and

there are no other controls apart from the focus barrel that clicks back to give manual focusing. Manual focusing itself is smooth and minimum focus is 15cm – focus this closely and the lens front is a couple of inches away from the subject. Being able to focus this closely and shoot at f/1.4 gives plenty of potential for creative focusing effects. A rare sight nowadays is the lens’s depth-of- field scale, which has become less important now with the instant feedback of digital but still a welcome feature. Of course having a fast aperture counts for nought if it can’t deliver sharp pictures. No worries here though, and this lens can be used at maximum aperture with confidence – just get the focus right particularly when you are in close. It means you have the freedom to set the aperture to suit the depth-of-field you want in the scene and not worry about setting an optimum aperture. I made several 19x13in prints from f/1.4 shots, using an Epson P600 printer (tested opposite). With default sharpening in Lightroom CC, the quality is excellent. If the scene has fine detail this lens will do a great job of recording it. Stopping down does have a benefit but the standard is so high wide open that the improvements are relatively limited. Diffraction at f/16 has an impact too but not too much and the lens is perfectly good for critical use at its minimum aperture. Autofocusing is quick thanks to the lens’s Rear Focusing System driven by a high torque DC coreless motor. I used it on an X-T1 running v4 firmware and the new X-T10 and had no issues with AF speed. Accuracy was good too, just make sure that you move the AF point to

focus in the right part of the scene when the lens is wide open. One small negative is a feature available on some X-lenses is not available on this lens. With manual focus override, you can fine-tune the camera’s attempt at AF manually even in AF mode. On this lens, you can’t although it is only marginally slower pulling the lens collar back to engage manual focus – it’s just less instinctive.

Above The 16mm f/1.4’s minimum focusing distance of 15cm from the focal plane means you can get in very close, and shoot at f/1.4 but it means depth-of-field is very shallow indeed. For such shots, using focus lock risks poor focusing so the camera’s AF point needs positioning over the subject. Exposure was 1/340sec at f/1.4 and ISO 200.