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Fujinon XF 23mm f/1.4 R (Fujifilm) - Review / Test Report |
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Lens Reviews -
Fujifilm X
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Page 1 of 3
Review by Klaus Schroiff, published April 2014
Introduction
Fujifilm is on a mission. Their product release pace is like no other in the industry at the moment and rather than providing endless iterations of nearly identical low-cost kit lenses, they are busy adding high quality and high priced lenses to their system. This certainly helped to gain quite a reputation among enthusiasts as well as professionals. The new Fujinon XF 23mm f/1.4 R is another cornerstone in the already extensive list of prime lenses (for such a relatively new system). The Fujinon is obviously an ultra-fast, moderate wide-angle lens with a field of view equivalent to about "35mm" on full format cameras. Such lenses are especially popular among street photographers for instances.
Typical for most Fujinon lenses, the build quality is very good thanks to a tightly assembled metal body based on a metal mount. The focus ring operates smoothly. A specialty is the so-called focus clutch mechanism - thus you can push/pull the focus ring to engage/disengage the AF rather than switching the focusing mode on the camera. Whether this is a value-add or a workaround may be debatable in our book. The lens has also a dedicated aperture ring with distinctive 1/3EV steps. Its amount of friction feels alright in our sample.
AF operations aren't exactly fast but our relatively old X-E1 test camera has certainly its share in this issue. The AF noise level is low albeit noticeable. Manual focusing works "by wire" thus by triggering the AF motor - this works quite nicely. A depth-of-field guidance is provided both on the lens as well as in the camera viewfinder/on the LCD.
| Specifications |
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| Equiv. focal length | "35mm" (full format equivalent) |
| Equiv. aperture | "f/2.1" (full format equivalent, in terms of depth-of-field) |
| Optical construction | 11 elements in 8 groups inc. 1x aspherical element |
| Number of aperture blades | 7 (circular) |
| min. focus distance | 0.28m (1:10) |
| Dimensions | 72x63mm |
| Weight | 300g |
| Filter size | 62mm |
| Hood | supplied, petal-shaped, bayonet mount |
| Other features | Focus clutch mechanism |
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