Review by Klaus Schroiff, published August 2014

Introduction

The Fujinon XC 50-230mm f/4.5-6.7 OIS is a consumer-grade lens where cost-cutting measures are more apparent. The lens body is made of plastics down to the lens mount. However, the plastic quality is fairly decent and the control rings turn smoothly. The lens extends when zooming towards the long end of the range but the front element does not rotate. The inner lens tube wobbles a bit when fully extended - not terribly but noticeable. "XC" lenses don't feature a dedicated aperture ring, thus you have to control the aperture via the main dial on the camera. This breach in handling concept may be a little disturbing when using the lens in conjunction with Fujinon XF or Zeiss lenses. Fuji also skipped the dedicated OIS switch although most users will surely prefer to leave the OIS activated all the time - otherwise you can use the camera menu to adjust the setting.

The lens has an essentially noiseless, internal AF micro-motor. The AF speed is generally pretty good except in low light. This aspect relies heavily on the used camera though. Manual focusing works "by wire" thus by triggering the AF motor which feels less fine grained than on its bigger brother. A focus distance guidance is provided in the camera viewfinder/on the LCD. Regarding the OIS (optical image stabilizer), Fuji claims an efficiency of up to 4 f-stops. However, as always, we suggest to calculate with at least one stop less though.