A First Glance At The Fuji XF 18mm F1.4 R LM WR

Today Fujifilm announces a new prime lens to join the XF lineup - the XF 18mm f/1.4 R LM WR. This versatile and fast prime is bound to be a great choice for landscape photographers, street photographers, and everywhere inbetween. With its weather resistance, you won't have to worry about shooting in incliment weather either. We had the chance to try out the new XF18mm for a few days - read on to see more details and sample images.




The design of the XF18mm is very similar to other XF lenses from Fujifilm. The lens features a nice and large focusing ring, an aperture ring with a locking "A" position, and a 62mm filter thread. The lens comes with a petal style lens hood, but an aluminum rectangluar lens hood will be available as an accessory for an additional $69.




With a full-frame equivalent focal length of 27mm, the XF18mm is a very versatile lens. Coming in at 3 inches long, and weighing just a hair over 13oz, carrying the lens around downtown Pittsburgh for a day paired with a X-T3 made for a lightweight combo, that was versatile enough to shoot the skyline, but also capture some of the finer details of the city.



The autofocus on the lens is snappy and quiet. Even after sunset the lens didn't have any issues focusing reliably. After dark the autofocus was a bit slower than in bright sunlight, but that's to be expected with most lenses. Not only is the lens wide, but it allows you to get close to whatever you're capturing with a minmum focusing distance of just 7.9 inches. Even though the lens is relatively small, it features 8 points of weather sealing, providing a sense of security if you're shooting in the snow, rain, or in dusty conditions. The rounded 9 blade aperture provides a nice and pleasing out of focus area. Distortion is pretty minimal for a 27mm fx-equivalent lens, and the sharpess is top-notch. Chromatic aberration is well controlled, and even though the sun was in and out of the clouds, I didn't notice any sun flaring in any of the images.



Sample Photos (paired with a X-T3)









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While we didn't get a chance to do a side-by-side comparison against the xf18mm f/2, this lens is vastly superior to the 18mm f/2 in build quality, sharpness, AF performance, and features. A more fair comparison would likely be against the XF16mm f/1.4 R WR, which is almost the same price, size, and weight, though the 18mm's autofocus seemed to be significantly better. Personally I wish the XF18mm f/1.4 had a clutch-style focusing ring, which would be useful for astrophotography, but the focus by wire ring on the 18mm has a pretty good feel to it and should be pretty easy to use for capturing the night sky.


The Fujifilm XF18mm f/1.4 R LM WR will cost $999 and should start shipping around May 27th. You can pre-order the XF18mm f/1.4 here.