Fujifilm XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR Lens Review

Flash forward to 2015 and every mirrorless system has a high-end body. Fujifilm's own X-T1 debuted in January of last year, taking over the reins from the X-Pro1. When it arrived, it boasted an incredible viewfinder, excellent build quality, and full weather sealing, but despite offering a plethora of available high-quality prime lenses, the system was missing one key elements: pro zooms.

This year, Fuji finally released the XF 16-55mm f/2.8 LM R WR (MSRP $1,199), the archetypical fast normal zoom lens that top-notch systems are built upon. The 16-55mm f/2.8 is an all-purpose zoom designed to master a wide variety of photographic pursuits. It’s also one of Fuji’s most ambitious lenses to date, offering top-notch image quality, weather sealing to match the brand's top camera, and phenomenal ergonomics.

And after spending some time with it in the lab and in the field, we're prepared to say it might just be the most useful lens in Fuji’s lineup.

Who's It For?

Fast normal zoom lenses like the Fujinon XF 16-55mm f/2.8 LM R WR are designed to be useful in just about every situation. With constant, bright apertures they’re able to handle dim lighting and unpredictable conditions, letting you zoom in and out without compromising your exposure. In the case of this particular lens, weather sealing further cements that flexibility, giving you the ability to keep shooting even in inclement weather.

Because Fujifilm’s X-series cameras use APS-C sensors that are smaller than the full-frame chips found in pro-grade cameras, this 16-55mm lens actually has a field of view equivalent to a full-frame 24-82.5mm lens. That’s pretty close to the 24-70mm f/2.8 pro zoom that you’ll find in the bags of most Canon and Nikon professionals.

Ultimately, this lens should appeal to both the relatively small number of pros shooting with the Fuji X system and the much larger pool of enthusiast/hobbyist photographers that is Fuji's core demographic. It's a great lens for weddings, parties, and travel—kind of like cramming a bag full of primes into a single lens tube.

Look and Feel

One of the things that separates Fujfilm’s lenses from those of its competitors is its reliance on old-school, physical controls. The bodies almost all feature ISO and shutter speed dials, and most XF lenses have dedicated aperture rings. This 16-55mm f/2.8 is no exception.

The aperture ring isn’t mechanically coupled to the lens iris, instead merely telling the camera what setting you want. An “A” setting lets relegate control to a dial on the camera itself. That makes it more of a fun extra than a core feature, and indeed it can be overridden in certain shooting modes. Still, the ring feels great, with the right amount of resistance and solid detents at every 1/3rd stop.

Forward from the aperture ring you’ll find the large zoom ring, which dominates the rest of the lens barrel. As you zoom, the barrel extends outward. Combined with the large front element necessary to maintain an f/2.8 max aperture, that makes the lens feel a bit unbalanced. It’s not a deal-breaker, but it could be problematic in certain circumstances, given the lens’s lack of image stabilization.

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Image Quality

The 16-55mm f/2.8 is a clear step up for Fujifilm's zoom lineup. This is true not only of its physical design, but its image quality as well. Both in and out of our lab we found this to be a strong performer, though it's clearly designed to excel at the wide end of the zoom range, with more compromises made as you zoom in.

At 16mm, the lens is a touch soft at f/2.8, but it quickly sharpens up from f/4 through f/8. The same is true at 35mm and 55mm, too, but the lens's overall resolving power gets gradually worse as you zoom in. Geometric distortion also gets slightly worse, but chromatic aberration (color fringing in high contrast scenes) drops away.

At the telephoto end, the bokeh—particularly at f/2.8—is quite beautiful. The lens is able to isolate subjects for portraiture at 55mm, and while it's not on par with a lens like the Fujinon XF 56mm f/1.2 R, it's a great replacement in a pinch.

Below you can see sample photos taken with the Fujinon XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR mounted on a Fujifilm X-T1. Click the link below each photo to download the full-resolution image.

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Conclusion

With pretty much every mirrorless camera maker now offering at least one high-end camera body, the rush is on to produce high-end lenses to match. While some systems already have a bevy of exceptional prime lenses at their disposal, fast zooms have been a little harder to come by.

There’s a reason for that: Constant-aperture zooms are expensive and difficult to manufacture, which tends to drive up the price. They're typically also a little less sharp than corresponding primes, but they're vastly more convenient. That's a big deal for wedding photographers and other pros who need flexibility and top-flight image quality without the hassle of constantly changing lenses.

While Fuji's 18-55mm f/2.8-4 kit lens is a solid option for those who don’t want to shell out $1,200 for a constant f/2.8 aperture, this is undoubtedly Fuji’s best all-purpose lens. The weather-sealing is a real boon if you're an X-T1 shooter, the low-light performance is exceptional, and it's sharp at most working apertures—even if it isn’t quite as good as the best lenses in this class.

Among Fuji’s lineup, this is a top-shelf option. Compared to pro zooms in other systems, however, it's only an average performer. It’s slightly unbalanced when zoomed all the way in, and it lacks image stabilization. That's not a deal-breaker—after all, Nikon and Canon's 24-70mm f/2.8 lenses also lack IS—but when every other Fujifilm zoom lens has OIS, it's a notable shortcoming.

Though they were built for different systems, we can't help but compare this to the Olympus 12-40mm f/2.8 Pro, which feels better balanced, can focus closer, and costs $200 less. If Fuji can get the price to that point, it’ll have a real hit on its hands. Until then, you’re still getting a great lens for the money, you’re just spending a bit more than you might if you owned a different camera. When evaluating any lens, we focus on four key areas: sharpness, distortion, chromatic aberration, and bokeh. A perfect lens would render the finest details accurately, wouldn’t distort straight lines or produce ugly fringing around high-contrast subjects, and would create smooth out-of-focus areas.

The Fujifilm 16-55mm f/2.8 is a landmark lens for Fujifilm's X system. The company's first pro-grade constant aperture zoom, it's designed to be the kind of lens that a working photographer can rely on, day in and day out. In our labs, it largely lived up to that goal, though there are a few weak spots, especially as you zoom in toward 55mm.

Sharpness

A lens's sharpness is its ability to render the finest details in photographs. In testing a lens, we consider sharpness across the entire frame, from the center of your images out to the extreme corners, using an average that gives extra weight to center performance. We quantify sharpness using line widths per picture height (LW/PH) at a contrast of MTF50.

The 16-55mm f/2.8 got off to a solid start in testing, producing its strongest results at 16mm. At f/2.8 it's already razor-sharp in the center, resolving over 2,100 lines in the middle. That drops a bit to around 1,850 lines in the midpoint regions, but it holds strong at 1,450 lines in the corner.

Stopping down doesn't offer any major improvement in the center, though resolution stays between 1,875 and 2,050 lines from f/4 to f/8. Off-center, however, stopping down produces much better results, peaking at over 1,900 lines at f/4 in the midpoint and 1,500 lines in the corner from f/4 to f/8.

As you zoom in, however, the overall performance gradually drops off. At 35mm, the corners have an almost identical performance profile, but the center starts around 1,600 lines and peaks at just over 1,975 at f/4 before dipping back into the 1,800s. That's good for the Fuji system, though slightly behind comparable full-frame lenses from Canon and Nikon.

At 55mm the center performance is stellar at f/2.8 and f/4, but the midpoint never gets above 1,400 lines and the corners barely hit 1,300 lines. Altogether it's not a bad result, making the lens a solid choice for everything from landscapes to portraits.

Distortion

We penalize lenses for distortion when they bend or warp images, causing normally straight lines to curve. 

There are two primary types of distortion: When the center of the frame seems to bulge outward toward you, that’s barrel distortion. It's typically a result of the challenges inherent in designing wide-angle lenses. When the center of the image looks like it's being sucked in, that’s pincushion distortion. Pincushion is more common in telephoto lenses. A third, less common variety (mustache distortion) produces wavy lines.

In addition to being sharper on the wide end, the 16-55mm f/2.8 also exhibits the least distortion at 16mm. In our test shots, we recorded around 0.4% pincushion distortion there, which is negligible. As you zoom in, the distortion gets slightly worse, but at 35mm and 55mm it only tops out at around 0.6%. Altogether, it's a very strong result—especially for a lens that covers wide and telephoto focal lengths.

Chromatic Aberration

Chromatic aberration refers to the various types of “fringing” that can appear around high contrast subjects in photos—like leaves set against a bright sky. The fringing is usually either green, blue, or magenta and while it’s relatively easy to remove the offensive color with software, it can also degrade image sharpness.

While the 16-55mm f/2.8 is sharpest at its widest focal length, it also displays significantly more chromatic aberration (color fringing). It's not a deal-breaker, but it definitely toes the line between "moderate" and "severe" throughout the entire frame. It's especially bad near the corners, which is typical.

As you zoom in, the CA drastically improves. By 35mm it's back to "low" levels, and you'll only see it in the corners of very high-contrast scenes. At 55mm results are even cleaner, with negligible aberrations.

Bokeh

Bokeh refers to the quality of the out of focus areas in a photo. It's important for a lens to render your subject with sharp details, but it's just as important that the background not distract from the focus of your shot. 

While some lenses have bokeh that's prized for its unique characteristics, most simply aim to produce extremely smooth backgrounds. In particular, photographers prize lenses that can produce bokeh with circular highlights that are free of aspherical distortion (or “coma”).

While we've been less than impressed with the bokeh from Fujifilm's other zoom lenses, the 16-55mm f/2.8 R knocks it out of the park. Predictably, 16mm is the weakest focal length, but by the time you get out to 55mm it's creamy smooth. Okay, it's no XF 56mm f/1.2, but it's very respectable for a zoom. If you need to take some headshots and this is the only lens on hand, you'll do just fine.

Perhaps most impressive is the subject separation you get, even though the lens tops out at f/2.8 and only covers the APS-C image sensor. In the sample shot above the focus is on the lens, but it's already falling off as you reach the body of the camera.