Fuji 50-140mm f2.8 review

Build quality and handling #

The lens itself is well built, weather resistant and feels solid. The Fuji 50-140mm was tested in rain, snow and cold conditions and didn’t miss a beat. The accessories though do not inspire the same confidence. The tripod collar on the test sample was wobbly, no matter how much it was tightened. The collar screws felt as though they were threaded wrong. When attached to the body, there was a little more movement at the mount than usual.

Handling

The operation of the zoom, aperture and focus rings is very smooth. The Fuji 50-140mm doesn’t extend when zooming which makes it compact and after carrying it for multiple hours and miles the weight (995g) was noticeable but not excessive. The OIS is noticeably noisy, and when not in use makes audible clunking noises.

Autofocus #

The Triple Linear Motor is as advertised…fast, silent and accurate. Coupled with the new wide tracking mode of the X-T4 I achieved a very good rate of acceptably sharp images in a variety of challenging situations. Face-detection with the Fuji 50-140mm worked equally as well as any other LM lens from Fujifilm.

Autofocus issues

One repeatable issue seems to occur when focusing on closer (1–5m) objects at 140mm’s. The autofocus pulses, whether in single or continuous and fails to lock on. Zooming out by as little as two or three millimetres fixes the issue, with the lens instantly acquiring focus. This issue was reduced after updating the lens and body firmware but does still persist in some circumstances.

Image quality #

There’s a visible vignette throughout the zoom range when shooting wide open. This is easily corrected and disappears by f/5.6. Center sharpness is very good throughout the entire range. Corner sharpness is pretty good wide open and very good when stopped down to f/8. The right edge of the lens tested was soft wide-open, suggesting some level of decentering.

Minimum focus distance

The Fuji 50-140mm f/2.8 has a minimum close-focusing distance of 1 meter (3.3 feet).

Focal range

The Fuji 50-140mm has a very useful focal range with an angle of view of 31.7-11.6º (similar to the popular 70-200mm lens on 35mm format).

Fuji 50-140mm image samples #

All Fuji 50-140mm image samples shot on the X-T4 and processed in Capture One (with default manufacturer profile). 

Summary #

To many photographers a lens like this is indispensable for sports, events and portrait work. For those people, this is really their only native option within the X-Mount system and is therefore an easy choice. You could compare it to the XF 55-200mm but the price and feature set are very different between the two lenses. So, If you need a lens like the Fuji 50-140mm you may not have a lot of options but what you do have is a high quality and dependable one.

Pros:

• Build quality
• Very fast AF
• Good performance wide open and throughout focal range

Cons:

• Tripod collar
• Price (fairly expensive)