XF 16-55mm F2.8 WR Review Posted (also, how I’m packing for the Lake District, again)

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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 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.

Carry

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.

What about the X-T3? Where’s all that content?

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.

  1. A week after my last trip, I started a new job, which included the launch of a new bank. Turns out that’s a lot of work. ↩︎

XF 10-24mm F4 OIS Review (Re)Posted

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I can’t believe it’s been 4 years since I first tried the XF 10-24mm F4 OIS. I had just a few hours with the lens back then, and managed to get a pretty good feel for it, however those impressions were in desperate need of being fleshed out in parts, and wholly reconsidered in others.

There’s another impressions page that needs updating. Once that’s finished I’ll be getting back to new lens reviews until my X-H1 arrives.

In the meantime, here’s a proper XF 10-24mm F4 OIS review.

Fuji XF 35mm F2 WR Review Posted

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Barely made it in before the end of the year.

The XF 35mm F2 WR is a weird lens to review for me. In some ways it is inferior to the XF 35mm F1.4 (you can read lots more about that in my comparison here), but nevertheless, it’s still the lens I prefer to have mounted on my camera the majority of the time. Typically I would have some kind internal struggle in situations like this. “This lens has better optics and a larger aperture, but it could rain so…”. In the case of the XF 35mm F2 WR, I just mount it and go with hardly a second thought.

It’s nice to have two options at 50mm equivalence to recommend. Here’s the review.