Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 R WR Review – Test Results

Resolution

The lens produces excellent sharpness in the centre of the frame wide open at f/2, and continues to get sharper when the aperture is closed down by a few stops. There’s a jump in sharpness by stopping the lens down to f/2.8 and the centre of the frame remains consistently sharp up to f/8. The sweet spot of edge-to-edge sharpness is found at f/5.6 and it’s only when you begin to push beyond f/8 to f/11 and f/16 that diffraction gradually starts to have an affect on the level of sharpness.

Shading

Vignetting is apparent in images taken at f/2, with corners appearing approximately 0.9EV darker than the centre of the frame. Corner shading improves very quickly and by stopping the lens down to f/2.8 the edges appear less than 0.5EV darker than the centre, which I discovered to be barely noticeable in my real-world images. We’re currently still awaiting a lens profile to be made available by Adobe for Lightroom, Photoshop and Camera Raw.

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 R WR shading 35mm, f/2

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 R WR shading 35mm, f/2.8

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 R WR shading 35mm, f/4

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 R WR shading 35mm, f/5.6

Curvilinear distortion

A study of our distortion chart revealed the lens exhibits signs of pincushion distortion, whereby straight lines towards the edge of the frame bow inwards. This isn’t a major issue, though, as you’ll be hard pushed to notice it unless you go looking for it. Interestingly this is a different result to Fujifilm’s XF 35mm f/1.4 R lens, which produces a negligible amount of barrel distortion in its images.

Fujinon XF 35mm f/2 R WR distortion TV SMIA = -1.2%