I purchased the XF 50-140mm F2.8 OIS WR as soon as it was available, so I’ve had a considerable amount of experience shooting with it. From studio to travel, my copy of the standard telephoto zoom has done just about every kind of photography it can.
Much earlier this morning, Fujifilm officially announced their compact 5× standard zoom lens, the XF 16-80mm F4 OIS WR.→
Spec-wise, it’s a pretty enticing lens. I have every intention of adding this to my roster, and depending on how it performs optically, travelling with it instead of the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR (Review). The reason for that quite simply comes down to size and weight.
You’ve likely already seen the size comparisons, but I’ve been hoping for the weight difference to be equally, if not more appreciable. Let’s have look in chart form:
Not too shabby. Fuji’s claims about being about 40% lighter than DSLR versions of the zoom seem pretty accurate. It shouldn’t go unstated that f/4 on APS-C doesn’t have the same design challenges as on 35mm/full frame when it comes to keep size and weight down.
Reaching 6 stops plus technical shutter vibration reduction, and tripod detection, which Fuji claims will “adjust its performance to provide optimum image quality.” That’s pretty cool. I can’t count the number of times I’ve realized OIS on my lens is on when mounted to a tripod when it shouldn’t be.
It’s not quite my dream landscape travel lens, but I can't help but be eager to give this lens a try, and see how it stacks up to the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR in particular. The XF 16-80mm F4 OIS WR is also one more reason not to choose the XF 18-135mm F3.5-5.6 OIS WR, and I have a feeling Fuji’s noble kit—the XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS—will be sitting on more shelves soon. Hopefully Fuji adds the new XF 16-80mm F4 OIS WR as a kit option.
It’s been a long time coming, but my X-T3 review has been posted. Find out if Fuji’s 4th generation sensor and processor is worth your upgrade dollars, or the premium over the heavily discounted X-T2 and X-H1 with bundled vertical grip.
Way back on episode 40 of the FujiLove podcast—which, if you are reading this site and you like podcasts, you should probably be subscribed to—Jens and Billy Luong of FujiGuy fame had Product Manager Sharad Mangalick from Adobe on to talk about updates to Lightroom and ACR, and specifically the new feature “Enhance Details”.
For those who don’t yet know, Adobe’s own dialogue box says:
“Enhance Details uses machine learning1 to improve details and reduce artifacts in most RAW files. The enhanced results will be saved as a DNG file.
It’s a computationally intensive process that performs best with a fast GPU. The estimate Adobe gives me on my Late 2015 5K iMac for a single image is 5 seconds, and that seems about right. What’s really unfortunate is the file size of the resulting enhanced DNG version of a 24.6 MB compressed RAF out of an X-H1 is 117.7 MB.
The results out of this feature would have to be pretty spectacular for me to consider taking on that kind of additional data.2 I’m seeing some decent results in my own limited testing, but weirdly, the Enhance Details dialogue preview totally betrays what the feature is actually capable of in some cases. I had one image that looked significantly worse in the dialogue box preview—more false detail, crunchy texture where there shouldn’t be—and I was ready to call Adobe out on it. After I actually rendered the image though, it did look a fair bit better than the default rendering.
It’s fantastic that Adobe are putting in the time and effort to support X-Trans—they could easily have made this a Bayer-only feature since they obviously support many more Bayer cameras than they do X-Trans. I’m looking forward to the day this feature is part of Lightroom proper, vs. behaving more like a plug-in, but one comment from Sharad on the podcast really jumped out at me:
“Fuji’s proprietary RAW file, the RAF, it doesn’t have an openly documented specification that Adobe can use to add the additional information.”
This is the result of Adobe having to create a separate (huge) DNG files. An obvious question is why doesn’t Fuji open up the gates enough to allow Adobe to write this additional information to the RAF/a sidecar file so we don’t need to go through this cumbersome workflow? I’m sure Billy has asked Japan this question, and either his hands are tied or there’s a really good reason that he agrees with.3 Either way, I wish we got an inkling as to what the issue is there.
Another obvious question is why are other applications able to generate better results without having to create a separate file? What does Phase One know that Adobe doesn’t? Adobe talk about having to balance performance with resolution, but Lightroom isn’t exactly blowing away the competition when it comes to performance with RAF.
For the time being, unless you’re all in on Adobe and a Creative Cloud subscription maxes out your budget allotment for photo editing (which is perfectly reasonable), a strong case can still be made for better, more specialized tools like Iridient Developer for those really important or really challenging images.
In the back half of the interview, the trio speak about Film Simulation Modes and how Adobe works with Fujifilm to ensure they have the same understanding of how each Film Simulation Mode should affect an image. This has been the official story for years now, and back when it was first told, Adobe’s interpretation of Fuji’s Film Simulation Modes were nowhere close to what we saw out of camera. To my eye, they’ve gotten better, but my recent experimentation with Capture One 12 suggests Phase One is quite a bit closer. Indeed, Phase One’s interpretations of Fuji’s Film Simulation Modes so far has been strikingly good. I’m on the cusp of switching to Capture One for much of my X-Trans processing needs for a few reasons, not needing to create whole separate files to get better detail out of my images and Film Simulation Modes are two big ones.
The XF 16-80mm F4 OIS WR is due to be announced anytime now. It’s poised to take over many a photographer’s travel lens needs, but having just finished another trip of fairly long distance hiking,1 what I’d like to see Fuji announce is is something even smaller, lighter, and ideally-suited for landscape photography. Something like this.
My landscape sweet spot is in the neighbourhood of 24mm in 35mm equivalence, with 21mm typically being my max. That gives us 14mm on the wide end. My favourite focal length is around 50mm (35ish APS-C), so I had to be sure that was included. With a bit of breathing room, that brings us to 40mm. Plus, “14 to 40 F4” has a nice ring to it. Spoiler alert on the aperture there.
For landscapes, I’m typically shooting between f/5.6 and f/11 so a Fuji lens closed down a stop should get me real close to maximum sharpness. Sure, I’d take f/2.8, but every extra stop means more size and weight, and I’m trying to be realistic with my desires. With a constant f/4 aperture, I’d be hoping for a lens about the size of the XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS. Having the front element fixed on zoom would be a bonus, but probably unlikely at 40mm.
As readers of this site know, the lack of weather sealing on the XF 10-24mm F4 OIS is my biggest issue with the lens. If that lens had weather sealing—and performed a little better at 24mm—I’d feel much less inclined to even write this article.
In this photographer’s opinion, XF lenses should no longer be released without weather sealing. Thankfully, that’s been the case for some time now.
I want to use this lens on cameras in which Fuji’s current in-body image stabilization (IBIS) will not fit.
This one’s important. Mockups of the XF 16-80mm F4 WR OIS from our friends at FujiRumors show it to be considerably smaller than the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR, but also considerably larger than the XF 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS. The former results in a camera + lens combination that stays in my bag more than I’d like it to. With proper cameras competing against smartphones for use, if they’re in a bag and your phone is in your pocket, it can be all too easy to just grab that travel snap with your phone, even though you might regret it later. As another old friend once wrote:
A camera in hand is 60% more likely to be used than one that's slung by its strap, 85% more likely than one in a shoulder bag, and 98% more likely than one in a backpack.
Bottom line, if my camera were small enough and light enough to be slug around my neck/shoulder all the time, it would be used more often.2
There are some lenses that are close to my landscape nirvana, but every one of them comes with compromises.
Now that Fuji have their core lineup of lenses pretty fleshed out, I want to see them move back to releasing lenses that are different, and well-suited to what X Series originally promised; superb, full-frame-rivalling image quality in a premium compact package. The exotics and ultra-fasts like the XF 200mm F/2 OIS WR and XF 33mm F1 are exciting, but they are big, heavy hunks of glass that are only mounted with purpose. They’re certainly not ever going to be my daily carry. Same goes for the “Red Badge” zooms. By most accounts, Fuji needed to get the “standard” zooms like the XF 16-55mm F/2.8 WR and XF 50-140mm F/2.8 OIS WR shipped. Perhaps now it’s time for something less standard.
I love what Fuji has done with primes recently with their F2WR3 lineup, and the XF 16-80mm F4 OIS WR is a step in the right direction, but weather resistant zooms could still use some slimming down. I admit I’m as guilty as the next photographer for wanting those pro zooms made available, but I think that has resulted in a zoom lens lineup that’s typical, and less interesting and differentiated than it could be.
In my X-H1 review I noted that the Q Menu button placement was a problem. I decided to leave it enabled in the hope that my muscle memory would eventually compensate. It hasn’t. During my last couple of trips I was constantly pressing that button when I didn’t mean to. When removing the camera from my bag, making composition adjustments with it mounted in a tripod, even when I just hold the camera, my thumb lands squarely on that button. It actually hindered my ability to take pictures. That might sound hyperbolic, but when you’re trying to frame an image with the LCD and the Quick Menu pops open, it’s a hinderance. Likewise, hastily pulling the camera from your bag to catch fleeting glimpses of sunlight through clouds, and pressing the viewfinder to your eye only to see the Quick Menu can result in missing a photograph entirely.
So I’ve once again turned the Q-Menu off altogether on my X-H1 and updated my review accordingly. It’s a shame that a marquee feature of Fuji’s UI gets in my way so much that I have to disable it.
Part of the reason I bring this up again is that outside of the X-T3, all of Fuji’s higher end X Series and GFX bodies have the Q Menu button—and sometimes even a second Function button—in a simlar location. This seems to have become a trend, and I really don’t like it. I hope Fuji either move back to an X-T button arrangement, or at the very least figure out a way to recess these buttons as they did on the X-Pro2, a camera with which I’ve never had issues with accidental button presses.
The good news is I (finally) have an X-T3. I quipped in my last post that it doesn’t have enough to warrant an immediate upgrade. The placement of that button is at least one thing that will make me reach for it over the X-H1 when IBIS isn’t an issue.
It’s been a while. Work. Busy. Whatever, I’m back.1
My last post was about how I packed for my trip to the Lake District, which included the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR. Fuji’s standard zoom ended up being the lens I used most for my hiking/landscape shooting. In fact, I think I came away with just a single image from the XF 50-140mm F2.8 WR.
As it happens, not only have I just posted my review of the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR, but my wife and I are also headed back to the Lake District once again. We tell ourselves this will be the last time for a while, but who knows.
Perhaps the biggest praise I can give the standard zoom is that it will be joining me once again. The XF 50-140mm F2.8 WR most certainly will not. It might have been my headspace at the time, but I just didn’t have the desire to change lenses. So I’m stripping my gear selection way back to just the X-H1 and XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR and maybe a second smaller lens, primary for review material. No second body. One and done.
I always knew the XF 16-55mm F/2.8 WR would be my travel lens sometime, but I always figured it would be on an X-T body.
I’ve also been rethinking my carry strategy from my September trip in part because of the change in equipment. The reduced kit had me considering my Billingham Hadley Small (see my comparison to the ONA Bowery) as my “personal item”. Sadly, the X-H1 + XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR combination is so large it really doesn’t leave me with much room for anything else, so I’ll be sticking to my trusty LowePro Photo Sport 200 AW.
Good question. The truth is the X-T3 is the only camera Fuji has released aside from the X-E3 (and the X-E2S, but let’s be real about camera releases) that didn’t compel me to buy it right away. For my shooting, the upgrades over an X-T2 or X-H1 simply aren’t a big enough draw. And then there’s the downgrade of lacking IBIS compared to the X-H1.
I had also grown tired, even a little frustrated by how quickly Fuji were releasing bodies. I could easily review nothing but bodies and fill my limited time. But while bodies come and go, lenses stick around a fair bit longer so I’ve been putting my time into using lenses more in order to write accurate reviews.
I do hope to get caught up in the next little while. In the meantime, don’t miss my XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR review.
This summer has been an adventure. Back in May, we had booked a trip back to the Lake District for the beginning of September. Lakeland is probably our favourite place on earth. The density of glacially carved mountains and lakes, and village cafe and pub splendour is unmatched. After publishing my review of the X-H1, I got to work on my XH1 vs. X-T2 article. It was coming along great, and as a bit of a spoiler, I was excited to finally shoot in The Lakes with Fuji cameras,1 and eager to put the XF 16-55mm F/2.8 WR to work on a stabilized body.
But in early June, one of our 4 cats got sick. Real sick. My wife and I spent 11 weeks exhausting every possible resource and sparing no expense trying to nurse our beloved cat back to health. After multiple opinions, and even more trips to veterinarian services, we decided there was no choice but to cancel our trip, believing we would still be getting Charlie back on his feet.
Things didn’t pan out that way, and sadly, we had to let Charlie go on August 19, 2018.2
…
A few days later, my wife and I talked about what we would do with the vacation time we had already booked off work. No way we could go away, right? But then, what were we going to do otherwise, sit around at home? We decided to look into what was still available, and incredibly, everything we had previously booked still was, so we will be walking the fells of North West England in tribute to Charlie.
Now, with all that time lost, I had to figure out what the hell to bring. It’s been a bit of a scramble the last couple of weeks, but given I leave today I’m settled on my photographic gear selection.
In the grip section of my X-H1 review, I noted that I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to deal with the heft of a gripped X-H1 and an L-plate, or stick to a body-only L-plate. As it turns out, I ended up getting both. The convenience of 3 batteries was too much turn down any time I wanted to use proper support, but I knew a gripped and plated X-H1 would be too big to travel with. Not only is it big and heavy, the size also has an affect on potential carry options.
The last time I was in the Lake District, I packed my Nikon gear in a newly acquired LowePro Photo Sport 200 AW→ after quite a bit of agonizing. I still love this bag. It’s crazy light, super adjustable, and has superb straps, both for your shoulders, and your waist. It is an excellent bag for hiking. Note that this is the first version of the bag. I have not yet tried the LowePro Photo Sport 200 AW II,→ but it looks like they haven’t fixed unbroken things.
Based on the main camera compartment of that bag and my memory, the X-H1 with L-plate is fairly similar in size to the Nikon D700 I had in it before. It fits perfectly, where a gripped body would not.
I always thought when I traveled back to The Lake District, I’d bring something along the lines of my Invincible Landscaper kit. I’ll be bringing the lenses, but I won’t have a body dedicated to each. Instead, my second body will be an X-Pro2 with a weather sealed prime mounted for casual documentary shots.
The X-H1 will mostly have the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR mounted on it. The section below the main camera compartment in my bag is just large enough to hold an XF 50-140mm F2.8 WR without the tripod collar attached. It’s not ideal, but it seems about as sturdy to have the camera mounted on my tripod as it would be using the rather flex-prone tripod collar.
When I last took in these dramatic landscapes, I went wide with the Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8. This time around, 16mm on APS-C—24mm in 35mm equivalence—is the widest focal length I’ll have with me, and instead of going wider, I’m going much longer. This should open up my shooting possibilities a fair bit, but I’m wondering if I’ll miss the wide end.
Now, if this trip were happening a few months from now, there’s a very good chance I would repeat my focal length choice from last time with the XF 8-16mm F2.8 WR.
The XF 10-24mm F4 OIS sadly wasn’t even on the consideration list because weather sealing. If that lens came with those two magical initials, “W” and “R,” I’d be bringing that lens instead of the XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR along with a set of 72mm filters, rather than 77mm plus a step-up ring.
On my X-Pro2, it should come as no surprise that I’ll have the XF 35mm F2 WR mounted. I’m tossing around the idea of leaving the second body at home, but I really think I would regret it.
I’m pretty shameless about going overboard on the support side of things. Luckily the tripod is one area that has gotten considerably smaller, and lighter. The TVC-23 and BH-40 I had for the full frame DSLR, protruded from my backpack a ridiculous amount. The TQC-14 I have now is much better suited for travel. I’ve thought about moving to the TFC-14 for travel for less weight, even more compactness, and to get closer to the ground, but the Quick Column is extremely convenient for quick (yes, quick) adjustments to height without having to reset 3 tripod legs and my composition. When it comes to getting low to the ground, I have one of Really Right Stuff’s Pocket Pods. And finally, when a tripod with won’t fit or isn’t allowed, I also have their Travel Clamp, which is proved to be remarkably versatile. Finally, I have a mobile phone clamp for capturing time lapses from fell tops and or while shooting long exposures.
I’ve stepped the XF 50-140mm F2.8 WR up to 77mm via a Breakthrough Photography 72-77mm step-up ring so I can use a single set of 77mm filters—also from Breakthrough—for both Red Badge zooms. 3-stop, 6-stop, and 10-stop NDs as well as a Circular Polarizer are all in a tiny Tiffen filter case. They say it’s only for 58mm filters and smaller, but I get 77mm filters in there no problem.
The step-up ring means I need to go hoodless with the XF 50-140mm F2.8 WR, so I won’t be able to use it if the rain goes sideways. It’s a tradeoff I’m willing to make.
One of the main reasons for our trip is to seriously get our hike on. For that, a good pair of boots, waterproof jacket, an accurate set of maps, and a compass are imperative. I’m new to Harvey “Superwalker” maps, but I already like them better than the OS maps I’ve used before. I find them so much clearer. For guided navigation, and to avoid the bother of a working smartphone, we use a Garmin Oregon 600, which has served us very well on trips to Europe in the past. We’ll see how it fairs on the minor roads in the Lakes.
Fujifilm
Really Right Stuff
Breakthrough Photography
Other
See you in a couple weeks.
Fuji vs. Fuji is site dedicated to comparing and contrasting Fujifilm X Series mirrorless cameras, FUJINON and X Mount compatible lenses, and related accessories.
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