Fujifilm XF 35mm F1.4 R Review

 

 

The Fujifilm XF 35mm F1.4 R lens is a fast 50mm equivalent prime released by Fuji in 2012. This small but chunky lens weighs only 187g but feels like a substantial piece of glass in your hands. The lens is extremely well built compared to other modern 50mm lenses released in the last few years and puts the 50mm f/1.4 Nikon lens that I have to shame. The lens has a metal body and comes with a square metal hood, which I absolutely love, and I wish all the Fuji lenses came with it.

 

Whats in the box

 

 

 

Design

 

 

 

Len on the Camera

 

 

Strengths

 

I am not really into the technical aspects of the lens, and to be honest, all I care about is the end results that a lens produces. When I use a lens, only three things are important to me: rendering, sharpness, and autofocus. The Fujifilm XF 35mm F1.4 R lens is simply outstanding, showing off how well Fujifilm can design top-quality glass. The rendering of images coming off this lens is probably the best of any 50mm lens that I have owned. It renders images that are tack sharp, with amazing colors and detail. I really enjoy the images that come from this lens, and I wish I could use it more often. The lens renders some really pleasing out-of-focus areas, or bokeh, in the images when shot wide open at f/1.4, while the focus area remains sharp. The bokeh is smooth and pleasing to the eye, giving images that 3D separation from the background that people like to see in their shots. The quality of the bokeh far outperforms my Nikon 50mm f/1.4.

The sharpness of a lens is an important factor for most people, and this lens is sharp. Even when shot wide open at f/1.4, this lens is sharp in the focused areas. A lot of prime lenses tend to be a little soft when shot wide open, but I have no problems shooting this lens at f/1.4. The images that the lens renders at f/1.4 are amazing to me, and even if you stop the lens down to f/4, there is only a marginal increase in sharpness, mostly in the corners of the image.

The autofocus of this lens is good now, fast and accurate. In good light, the lens will nail the focus nearly every single time. Even in difficult conditions, the autofocus is good, but it can be a little slower than the Fujifilm XF 18mm lens. In low light conditions, the autofocus is a little slower but not by much. Compared to my Nikon 50mm f/1.4 lens on my Nikon D3s, I would say that the focus is about the same in daylight, and only marginally slower in low light. The autofocus is really amazing on the Fujifilm XT1 with this lens now, but that has not always been the case.

When I first got the Fujifilm XT1 with this lens, the autofocus was fast but unreliable. Even in good light, and in bad light, it was slow as hell and often failed to find focus, enough to drive me crazy. In 2015, Fujifilm updated the firmware on the lens and changed the autofocus system on the Fujifilm XT1. Now the lens focuses quickly and accurately, just as fast as my Nikon 50mm lens and much more accurately. I get many more false-positive focuses from the Nikon 50mm lens now than I do with the Fujifilm lens.

50mm is not a focal length that I like to use too often. I prefer to use 28mm on my everyday carry-around camera, so I mostly use this to shoot portraits, and it is outstanding at doing that. Whenever I have to shoot portraits lately and they don’t require flash (Fujifilm cameras are horrible for flash work), this is my go-to setup now. If Fuji had to improve their flash system on their cameras, I would stop using my Nikons so much and use the Fuji much more often in my professional work. But as it stands right now, Fuji is for fun and Nikon is for work.

Weaknesses

The only negative thing I can say about this lens is the chromatic aberrations that can be generated. If you shoot a high-contrast scene, you will get some ugly color fringing. It’s not as bad as the Fujifilm 18mm F2 lens, but it is there if you look hard enough. However, the small amount of chromatic aberrations is more than acceptable this time around. If you have to go pixel peeping and hunting for chromatic aberrations, then the lens is doing a good job in my opinion.

The last problem I have with this lens, and with all Fujifilm lenses, is the aperture ring. Fujifilm decided to use an electronically controlled aperture, so you cannot see the aperture when the lens is not mounted, and I absolutely hate it. The aperture ring on all of my Fujifilm lenses is very loose and almost smooth, almost as if they had been de-clicked for video work, but that is not a good thing. It is too easy to bump and change the aperture while walking around, and when you want to take a shot, you have to change the aperture back to the correct setting. This is so frustrating, and I really hope that Fujifilm will fix this in the future.

Some people say that the aperture system on Fujifilm lenses is unique and that you should adapt to it, but I have simply missed too many shots while adjusting the aperture back to where it should be. The aperture ring is just too loose on this lens. PLEASE FIX THIS, FUJI.

That is about the only negative thing I can think of for this lens. The rest of the lens is simply outstanding.

 

 

 

Sample Images