Menu
With an upcoming photoshoot with a client requiring the bonkers wide Fuji XF 8-16mm f2.8 LM WR this week, I decided to tack a few extra days on to the hire period to see how I got on with this beast of a lens.
I don’t like it.
It is brutally sharp (think 90mm f2 kind of sharp), renders beautifully, like the other red badge XF lenses, and feels as solid and reliable that we have come to think as standard for pro Fuji kit. When I first clicked it on to my XT-3 and took some snaps in the garden, I was blown away by the depth and tonality that it delivered. Honestly, optically this is outstanding regardless of the mind-bending physics going on inside it. It handles flare well, distortion is manageable and it doesn’t really suffer from any fringing either. It’s a miraculous piece of photographic equipment.
I took the family to Blaen-y-Glyn in the Brecon Beacons to explore the waterfalls. The problem I have with this lens became apparent quite quickly. I have become too accustomed to the 33mm 1.4 and X100V which are my two work horses, for professional and personal. I like 16/18mm focal lengths, but they really are as wide as I like to go.
The problem with the Fuji 8-16mm is that it is too wide and I just can’t focus on anything. I can’t compose an image when everything is in it. I experience this with design briefs all the time, clients often ask for everything to have equal prominence, when in reality the eye needs something to focus on.
Put in the hands of a good landscape photographer who knows how to compose such dramatically wide images and this lens will be unbeatable, especially on the new X-H2.
For me, it is just too much lens, physically and metaphorically. It made my camera very heavy all of a sudden, when the lure to Fuji was the small form factor. This is much the same reason that I moved my 50-140mm on, it was just too much for me.
