Strengths

The Fujifilm XF 18mm F2 lens is a fast wide-angle prime lens with an equivalent field of view of 28mm. The lens has a metal body and is really well built, much better than my modern Nikon lens. The autofocus on the lens is quick in good light, much faster than the Fujifilm 35mm 1.4 or the Fujifilm XF 27mm 2.8 prime lens that I own.   The lens has a close focus distance of 18 cm, which means that you can get some interesting shots with this wide-angle lens and the large aperture means that you can still get some background separation or bokeh in your image.

Weaknesses

As much as I love the build quality and autofocus of this lens, it has a lot of weaknesses and this is most likely my least favorite Fujifilm lens that I own. There are two major problems with this lens in my opinion.   The first major problem is the chromatic aberrations. The lens has more chromatic aberrations than any other lens that I have ever owned. Zoom into any shot that you have taken and will be guaranteed to find some nasty purple fringing in your image. You can fix this in post but it is annoying to correct this in every image that you take.   The second biggest problem that I have with the lens is the sharpness. The lens is not very sharp when shot wide open at F2 and even when you stop the lens down, it does not sharpen up a lot when compared to other Fujifilm xf lens. This is the softest lens that I currently have from Fujifilm.

Rendering

For me, this is one of the most important aspects of a lens. Most Fujifilm lens that I have shot with, have a great rendering. They are sharp, have great color, and the images they produce are stellar. I always felt that when I was shooting with the Fujifilm glass, that the glass was never holding me back, and it would give me the results that I wanted or even exceed what I was expecting. But things are not so good with the Fujifilm 18mm F2. When I look at the images that come out of the Fujifilm XT1, the images don’t have that creamy goodness that many of there other lens has. The image always leaves me feeling like the rendering is a little soft, cold, and unpleasant. It is not bad, but just not as good as the other lens that I have used from Fujifilm. Coupled with the chromatic aberrations, this means that I never have confidence that I nailed the shot. When I use this lens, I am always chimping and checking the results on the back of the LCD screen on the camera and this pulls you out of the shooting experience. A photographer needs to have confidence with his gear and concentrate on the image he wants to capture, the lens should get out of the way and allow that process to happen, but when your main concern is the lens and how it will affect the image that you are trying to capture, then that particular lens is a bad lens in my opinion.

Sample Images