Photo by Olga Dekell - Fujifilm XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 Lens - Close up

In this blog I’ll be reviewing the Fujifilm XF 18-55mm F/2.8-4 which I have owned since 2020. To this day it remains one of my most used lenses because of its versatile focal range which is roughly equivalent to the standard 24-70mm in the full format world. Over the years I’ve used this lens at home, when travelling, for night scenes, for day scenes and it has performed really well in all conditions. The type of photography and video that I do is mainly street, documentary and travel related as well as filming myself for YouTube, just to give you an idea of where I'm coming from in this review.

Build Quality & Durability

Let’s start with a close up look at front of the lens. There are a number of acronym letters across the rim which depict certain qualities of the lens. The R means that the lens has a dedicated aperture ring. The LM stands for linear motor which provides fast and quiet autofocus and is great for video work and OIS means that the lens has optical image stabilisation (OIS). The filter size is 58mm.

In terms of build quality, it’s pretty solid being made out of metal instead of plastic. It has a dedicated aperture, zoom and manual focus ring. The zoom moves in and out as you change focal lengths. There is a switch on the side for changing the aperture from auto to manual and another switch for turning the OIS on and off.

The lens is quite light coming in at only 310g, for a zoom with an aperture as low as f/2.8 that is great because it doesn't make the camera feel front heavy and I can say it fits nicely on the Fujifilm X-T4, X-T3 and X-E4. It's quite compact and portable as well as it doesn't take too much space when you're out and about. A full frame equivalent to this would be much bigger and heavier. So yes, I have nothing bad to really say about the construction and design. I do have a little wish list at the end, which I'll share, but so far so good.

To sum up in one word, I would say that this lens is pretty solid. It hasn’t let me down in any way. It still looks fairly new with hardly any signs of wear even after four years and I've used it quite a lot. I take good care of my lenses, but it’s been through many photo and video shoots and it still looks almost new. It does sometimes get tiny specs of fluff stuck in the grooves on the zoom ring but that's just a minor cosmetic thing and doesn’t affect performance. The extending zoom barrel could potentially introduce dust into the lens but this has not been an issue for me specifically.

Compact build so fits easily in a camera bag with plenty of room left for other accessories

Focal Length

Moving on to the focal length which is 18-55mm or 27-84mm in 35mm equivalent. It’s very close to the standard 24-70mm and with that range you can basically shoot 90% of everything other than getting super macro, very wide and very zoomed in shots. That focal range is really workable for almost every shoot from portraits to landscape to street to food and it performs really across all the different lengths. It's got markers for some of the main focal lengths - 18mm, 23mm, 35mm and 55mm. At 55mm there is quite a nice bokeh. The 18mm is wide enough to get good establishing shots, the 55mm takes care of the close-up shots and the 23mm and 35mm can be used for everything in between. Of course you can set the lens to any measurement in between 18-55mm, I’m just mentioning the common increments. With the low aperture of f/2.8-4 it can be used to cover both day and night events and all sorts of different styles of photography and video.

These images are taken in the same location (car) the first one is at 18mm and the second at 55mm, the lens has great focal coverage.

Image Stabilisation

The lens comes with inbuilt optical image stabilisation. It's got a little flick switch to change the mode from on to off quickly if need be. Having stabilisation on allows photographers and videographers to shoot handheld more confidently and at lower shutter speeds. It also eliminates all the little micro jitters in video. The feature also allows the lens to be a little bit more compatible with older cameras that don’t have onboard stabilisation. For example, the Fujifilm X-T3, which doesn’t have any stabilisation onboard.

Auto Focus

The autofocus is really quiet and smooth in this lens which is great for video work. The quiet linear motors are a big advantage here. I’ve used this lens a lot for video especially if I'm travelling. I'll just take this one lens and do all my photos and videos with it. This lens is nearly 12 years old so this is an impressive feature for its time. This feature also allows you to be really discreet if need be. It’s idea for shooting in quiet places like a library, church or a wedding where the noise levels need to be kept to a minimum.

Manual Focus

The manual focus ring is the one at the very front. It’s very smooth and quiet and its easy to use. Shooting in manual focus can be quite fun and well worth trying if you haven’t done so before. I often use the manual ring if I am shooting video other than of myself as it gives me full control of where I want the focus to be and also looks more movie like with the focus transitioning gradually from one point to the next. So this lens gives the best of both worlds auto and manual focus.

Video

I wanted to give video it’s own section, even though I've covered most of the video content already. I just wanted to basically summarise that this is a great video lens and the reasons are that it's very quiet in its auto focus and it's got image stabilisation, which I think is mainly intended for photography, but it does reduce those micro jitters and just makes the image more usable. It's also got a great focal range and it shoots pretty well at night. So it's an all rounder lens that's been my go to for many video shoots over the past few years.

This YouTube short film was shot by me on the Fujifilm XF 18-55mm F/2.8-4 lens. If you are interested, more videos like this one are available to watch on my YouTube channel, link is in the header of my website.

Image Quality

My favorite topic. I think this lens gives beautiful images. I mean, I've not been unhappy with any of them. Day time, night time, cloudy, rain, it doesn't matter. Whatever the weather it renders so nicely. The colours are beautiful, it's sharp, it has good clarity, there's minimal distortion between the wide range and the narrow range. I think it produces really, really nice images and if I were to say anything about it, I guess I would say it’s a very nice base lens. It can have filters on it to make it little bit more dreamy or a bit crispier, whatever you want, it's a great base lens that can be used as is or can be used more creatively.

A sample of images taken on this lens are below:

Low Light Performance

In regards to night photography, I think that this lens is actually exceptional for what it is. I mean, it's a kit lens and I've had no issues shooting an entire night scene shoot with it and been then able to use that footage to produce a short film for YouTube.

So I don't think there's any issues there in the low light department. Obviously the ISO sometimes needs to be pushed a little bit higher and the bokeh may not be as stunning as a faster lens but I think as a whole it performs really well after dark and I feel confident taking it out as my only lens at night.

A sample of low light images taken on the lens are below:

Value for money

This lens provides great value for money in my opinion because of the wide range of features that come with it. It’s not just a fixed focal length it’s a lens that gives you all the options that make it good enough to shoot a mini movie with. From the wide shots, to the mediums, to zoomed in, to all the possible genres that it can be used for from wildlife to street to car to food, it has many possibilities. Further to that it’s durability, optical stabilization, easily accessible switches, fast and autofocus, make it a bargain lens for the price that it is. In my opinion, it's really good value.

Wish List

So that brings me to my wish list. The three things that I would love to see changed in this lens.

So first of all it would be handy to have weather sealing, just to sort of proof myself against any weather elements. I haven't had any close calls, but there's always a change of a bit of rain or a water splash that could happen. It would just take that away that background stress in such situations.

The second one would be to do with the zoom. The fact that it comes out of its tubing as it is zoomed from 18mm to 55mm is not ideal as it leaves the lens open to the elements. It also poses a problem if used on a gimbal with balancing issues. Also for daily use if for example it’s being used at 55mm on a walk it really needs to be retracted back to 18mm when travelling between places rather that being able to leave it at 55mm and this creates a bit of a time waste and wear and tear on the lens as you zoom in and out to keep it safe between destinations. So ideally it would be handy to a barrel that doesn’t extending.

My last wish would be to have aperture markings on the aperture ring. The lens has audible clicks when you change aperture manually but it doesn’t show you what the aperture on the lens as such, the screen or EVF need to be used to see the actual value. It maybe like this because of the variable nature of the aperture in relationship to the zoom. I didn't mention this earlier but the aperture ranges from f/2.8 -4 at the wide end, what this means is that when the lens is at 18mm the lowest aperture is f/2.8 but at 55mm the lowest aperture is f/4 (not f/2.8). So I'm assuming that's probably why that ring doesn't have the markings as it is variable and it would be hard to have these markings on it. Anyway they were my three wishes, now let's draw a conclusion.

Conclusion

So to summarise, I really like this lens. I've used it a lot and I’ve enjoyed taking images with it.

Who is it for? Well, I guess it's for everyone! It's a lens that doesn't really have a specific character or a genre. It really is an all rounder that can be used for a variety of projects. It's been like a solid staple in my collection for some time.

I think it's great and for the money and the quality, I think it's a really great lens for just a kit lens. I feel it was a leader in it’s time (like a lot of Fujifilm products) especially with the wide apertures of f/2.8-4 as a kit lens.

I hope you enjoyed this review I will writing more blogs soon as I'm trying to build up my blog portfolio to share my knowledge with others. Let’s chat in the comments, speak soon.

Olga.

P.S. I’m curious, what’s your go to lens?

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