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Fujinon XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR ( 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 January 2016
Introduction
Thanks to the aggressive growth during the recent years, most of the mirrorless systems have a quite mature lens lineup ... that is with the exception of long tele lenses. The market is probably rather limited and long and heavy lenses are a bit of a tough sell in a market segment that emphasizes portability. The longest prime lens (as of the time of this review) made by Fujifilm is the the Fujinon XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR. In full format terms that's roughly equivalent to "140mm f/3.1" (field of view & depth-of-field). The creative potential of such a lens is highly interesting across a variety of applications such as portrait- or street photography and even nicely compressed landscape shots. Like often in the mirrorless arena, you literally have to pay a high price for the privilege of owning a high speed lens. A price tag of 950US$ or 900EUR can produce quite some headaches especially when looking over to the other side of the fence where lenses such as the comparable Canon EF 85mm f/1.8 USM or Nikkor AF-S 85mm f/1.8G are not only a magnitude cheaper but ... shockingly ... also more light-weight as well as more compact despite being full format DSLR lenses. So we can only hope that there is something very special about this Fujinon to ease the financial pain.
Typical for most Fujinon lenses, the build quality is very good thanks to a tightly assembled metal body based on a metal mount. The very broad focus ring operates very smoothly. The lens has a dedicated aperture ring with distinctive 1/3EV steps. A barrel-shaped lens hood made of plastic is part of the package. An annoying aspect is that the lens "rattles" when you shake it - actually a common characteristic among many Fujinon lenses. It seems as if Fujifilm is using a rather "loose" focus group to speed up the AF. The rattle is gone once you switch on the camera (and as such the AF system). The lens features a weather- and dust-resistant structure with seven seals and can also work in temperatures as low as -10°C.
The AF speed is pretty high thanks to a "quad linear motor". It's also essentially noiseless. Manual focusing works "by wire" thus by triggering the AF motor - the (manual focus) accuracy is fine from a real world perspective although we weren't so thrilled in the lab during our MTF tests (which require an exceedingly high precision here).
| Specifications |
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| Equiv. focal length | "140mm" (full format equivalent) |
| Equiv. aperture | "f/3.1" (full format equivalent, in terms of depth-of-field) |
| Optical construction | 11 elements 8 groups (incl. 3xED elements) |
| Number of aperture blades | 7 (circular) |
| min. focus distance | 0.6m (1:5) |
| Dimensions | 75x105mm |
| Weight | 540g |
| Filter size | 62mm |
| Hood | supplied, barrel-shaped, bayonet mount |
| Other features | weather-sealing |
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