Fuji XF 18mm f/1.4 R WR Gallery: Real-world sample images from Fujifilm’s latest fast wide-angle prime
posted Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 2:15 PM EDT
Click here to browse our Fujifilm XF 18mm f/1.4 Gallery
Back in April, Fujifilm announced a new super-fast, weather-sealed prime lens, the XF 18mm f/1.4 R WR. This bright 27mm-equivalent prime lens offers a versatile wide-angle view that's perfect for landscapes, travel and street photography. The wide f/1.4 aperture also makes it an ideal option for night sky photography and other low-light shooting situations. Plus, despite the bright aperture, the lens is surprisingly lightweight and compact, as well as robustly weather-sealed.
We had an early hands-on look with a pre-production sample of the lens back when it was first announced, but we weren't able to share images shot with the lens at that time. Fortunately, we have received a full production sample of the XF 18mm f/1.4 lens -- along with an X-T4 -- and now have an initial batch of real-world gallery images to share, ahead of our in-depth field testing treatment.
Based on an initial impression, the new Fuji XF 18mm f/1.4 lens offers excellent image quality performance, even when shot wide-open at f/1.4. Fine detail is excellent, CA is minimal, and the bright aperture offers a wonderful shallow depth of field and pleasing bokeh -- despite the wide-angle focal length. Even though the XF 18mm f/1.4 is rather wide and not a "portrait lens," the close-focusing performance is also quite impressive for this type of lens, further enhancing the shallow depth-of-field look and subject isolation potential. The lens can create striking images with close-up subjects and smooth out-of-focus areas.
Optically, the Fuji XF 18mm f/1.4 uses a total of 15 elements in nine groups, which is quite a bit of glass for such a compact lens. The lens utilizes three aspherical elements and one extra-low dispersion (ED) element in its optical layout, which helps ensure sharp performance and minimizes chromatic aberration and comatic aberration.
As mentioned, we're still in the process of testing the new Fuji XF 18mm f/1.4 R WR, but for an initial look at the lens's image quality while out in the field, check out our Fuji XF 18mm f/1.4 Gallery. As usual, the Sample Gallery has both untouched straight-from-camera JPEG images as well as RAW files for download and closer inspection and testing.
