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  • Look and Feel

  • Through the Finder

  • Conclusion

  • Look and Feel
  • Through the Finder
  • Conclusion

Look and Feel

Compact and inexpensive

Given the nature of this tiny little lens, we can't fault it for its cheap-feeling plastic body. While this little guy is made in Japan, it has a super simple construction with little flare. We're probably lucky that it even comes in two colors—silver and black.

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The only control on the little pancake is a simple dial that lets you switch between the three filters. Each filter is demarked by notches in the plastic dial that can easily be felt by your fingertips. Since there are only three filters and five settings on the dial, two of the positions on the dial are simply black plastic lens covers.

Through the Finder

Style over sharpness

This little lens doesn't have autofocus, so it's locked to infinity focus. It also has a fixed, f/8 aperture and four teeny tiny elements inside the lens, along with those three special filters. The field of view is 24mm, or 36mm full frame equivalent. In layman's terms, that makes it a wide/normal-ish lens, so you won't have to stand back too far for landscapes.

The filters you get inside the lens are a soft focus filter (not hard, given how soft the lens seems on its own), a cross/star filter, and a cool blue filter. Here at Fujifilm's booth at CP+, the coolest filter to try out was the cross filter, since the bright lights of the show floor filled the frame with stars.

Inside the XM-FL are some tiny lens elements and a fixed f/8 aperture.
Credit: Reviewed.com / Brendan Nystedt

Inside the XM-FL are some tiny lens elements and a fixed f/8 aperture.

The only hangup during use seems to be that the Fujifilm camera bodies need to be changed from a default setting. Normally, the shutter won't take a photo without contact with the lens. Once you change this setting, though, the XM-FL works just like you'd expect.

Conclusion

Gleefully different

While we've seen a couple of body cap lenses from Olympus in the past, Fujifilm's similar take has none of the pretense of those lenses. It's small, lightweight, and a super cute concept. Our only reservation is the price of this tiny lens, but we're always willing to pay a little bit more for something that's made in Japan, as the XM-FL is.

The XM-FL looks like a totally fun addition to the X-mount lineup.
Credit: Reviewed.com / Brendan Nystedt

The XM-FL looks like a totally fun addition to the X-mount lineup.

We think that the XM-FL will find a lot of love here in Japan, and we hope that Fujifilm puts it on offer in the United States, too. Everybody should have a fun toy lens in their bag, because, sometimes, why not?

Meet the tester

Brendan Nystedt

Brendan Nystedt

Contributor

@bnystedt

Brendan is originally from California. Prior to writing for Reviewed.com, he graduated from UC Santa Cruz and did IT support and wrote for a technology blog in the mythical Silicon Valley. Brendan enjoys history, Marx Brothers films, Vietnamese food, cars, and laughing loudly.

See all of Brendan Nystedt's reviews

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