Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR ( Fujifilm ) Review

The Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR is an older design “recently” enhanced with weather-resistance (hence the WR) to keep the lens relevant. This is certainly a smart move because such pancake lenses are often used for street photography where weather can play a role. The field-of-view is equivalent to 41mm on full-format cameras, so it’s basically a standard prime lens. It retails for $449 USD, so while not cheap, it doesn’t cost a fortune.

Fujifilm knows how to produce lenses with a pleasant build quality, and that’s also the case here. While obviously small and extremely lightweight at just 84g, the 27mm f/2.8 R WR feels solid. Fujifilm even managed to incorporate a small aperture and focus ring. The inner lens tube extends a little during focusing operations. A tiny, dome-shaped lens hood is included.

The aspect that hasn’t been updated is the old DC AF motor. The motor is certainly not overly stressed by the tiny optical system. However, the linear extension system doesn’t make autofocusing particularly fast, and the DC motor is a bit noisy. There’s also some focus breathing, which is not ideal for videos.

Distortions

You may think that minimizing the optical system for a pancake lens results in crazy image distortions, but this is actually not the case. RAW images show a medium barrel distortion of just 2% which is almost unusually low these days. Autocorrection reduces this to a slight 0.5%. This isn’t really noticeable anymore.

CorrectedRAW

Vignetting

While image distortions aren’t a major issue, pancake lenses are prone to heavy vignetting. And a native light falloff of 2 EV (f-stops) exceeds our usual APS-C scale at f/2.8. Stopping down to f/4 cuts this down to 1 EV (f-stop) and it settles to an almost negligible 0.5 EV at f/8 and beyond.
Autocorrection reduces this to 0.8 EV at maximum aperture, and the light falloff is acceptable from f/4 already.

MTF (resolution) at 26 megapixels

The broader center is very sharp at f/2.8. There is a drop towards the borders/corners which still manage good quality here. However, in the real-world field curvature can soften the corners. The center quality peaks at f/4 although the best overall resolution is achieved at f/5.6 where the outer image field is very good. Diffraction impacts the results from f/8. f/11 sees some more visible softness.

Please note that the MTF results are not directly comparable across the different systems!
Below is a simplified summary of the formal findings. The chart shows line widths per picture height (LW/PH) which can be taken as a measure of sharpness. If you would like to know more about the MTF50 figures, you may check out the corresponding Imatest Explanations.

Chromatic Aberrations (CAs)

Lateral CAs are very low with an average CA pixel width of just 0.3-0.4px at the image borders.

Competition

There are a couple of lenses to consider as alternatives. There is, of course, Fujifilm’s own XF 23mm f/2.8 R WR, a newer design with a wider field-of-view. It’s optically a bit better. For a bit of extra speed, the XF 23mm f/2 R WR could be interesting. It’s still a small lens, although not a pancake lens anymore. If you are on a strict budget, the TTartisan AF 27mm f/2.8 has similar specs, but don’t expect a performance on the same level. The AstrHori AF 27mm f/2.8 is even cheaper. If you want a fancier option, there’s the Voigtlander Ultron 27mm f/2. That’s still a pancake despite the faster aperture. However, it’s pricier and has no AF.

Sample Images

Some pictures from rural Germany taken some years ago.

Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR

11 photos