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The good news is that it feels like a prime lens. Yes, that’s right. The prototype Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR we’ve been playing with is incredible. It gives Fujifilm users everything they want for the most part. Landscape photographers, city dwellers, and even travelers will call this lens their soulmate. Well, not really, but we really do like this lens just that much. As an update to the previous version, this new lens boasts solid enhancements. It’s weather sealed for starters, which is incredibly important these days. Plus, it’s a lighter lens. What’s more, it’s almost a fully internal zooming lens. For what it is, Fuji is hitting the ball out of the park. But personally speaking, I think they can go even further.
Tech Specs
Specs are taken from our news post. But be sure to also try it out at LensRentals.:
- Weather-resistant design
- 14 elements in 10 groups
- 4 ED elements
- 4 Aspherical elements
- Constant f4 aperture throughout the range
- The F-Stop scale on the aperture
- This lens weighs 0.9 lbs
- 7 aperture blades
- 72mm filter thread
- Minimum focus of 9.5 inches
- $999.95 price point
- 3.5 stops of image stabilization
- With the XT-4, you’ll get 6.5 stops.
- Available for purchase November 2020
Ergonomics
The Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR is a pretty much internally zooming lens. The front filter thread is a 72mm size beast. But despite that, the lens isn’t much taller than some Chapstick. It’s also about as thick as a tub of Vicks Vapo Rub. When zooming in and out, this element will move just a little bit. But not all that much, and it will never seem like it’s externally moving.
The lens is otherwise characterized by these rings. The aperture ring is closest to the mount. Then there’s a zoom ring. And in the front is the focus ring. The zoom ring has a textured rubber area to it.
On the side of the aperture ring is a red button that can lock it in place to the A mode. This can put the lens in shutter priority, program mode, or let the camera control the aperture. Personally speaking, you buy the Fujifilm system to use something like the aperture ring. It’s a waste to not experience it when you want to change the settings.
Build Quality
We took the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR out into the rain. With a weather sealed camera, you’ll be hard-pressed to find a fault with this lens. It’s well balanced on both the X Pro 3 and the X-H1. In hand, it feels like a prime lens. That’s important for X Pro 3 users since that camera is basically designed for primes. Since it’s an f4 aperture, you might not even bother with the aperture adjustments anyway. But those are easily done through the aperture ring. I can’t really hate on the build quality of this lens; it’s solid through and through.
Ease of Use
The Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR is a simple lens to use. Mount it to your camera, point, focus, and shoot. That’s all you need to do! It’s a wide-angle zoom lens, and there is no clutch focusing mechanism in the focus ring. But that would have been a wonderful addition to this lens. Otherwise, the feeling of this lens is like that of a prime: point, shoot, and have fun. The other cool thing is that this lens has OIS. So you can shoot at super slow shutter speeds with this and the X-H1 or the X-T4.
Here’s a shot at 0.1 seconds long. I was still able to get Kevin pretty sharp when using the X Pro 3. It’s impressive and still usable for sure. Below is a happy accident. I didn’t realize that the camera was shooting at such a slow shutter speed, so I moved. But it gave this cool blur effect. Still, I can handhold to over a second even without image stabilization. And this lens is capable of doing that at the wide end with little problems. We just encourage you to check out our post on how to manage camera shake.
Autofocus
This is a wide-angle lens, and we’re very impressed with the autofocus. But, quite honestly, that’s not saying much as the laws of physics give the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR an advantage. Couple that with an APS-C sensor, and you’re pretty golden in 2020. On both the X-H1 and the X Pro 3, the autofocus wasn’t anything to worry about. Even in low light, this lens nailed its mark. In fact, in the hundreds of photos I shot with it, it never missed its mark. And that’s very impressive.
Image Quality
Just to remind you folks, the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR we tested is a pre-production unit. We’ll have our final review thoughts to come. Here are a bunch of images shot with the lens. They all seemed more saturated than I’ve seen with previous Fujifilm lenses. Mind you, most of the color from Fujifilm cameras and lenses comes from the Film Simulation. But even in the Velvia mode, it just seemed like the colors were deeper and richer than they are with some of my primes. However, I want to discuss the distortion a bit. There’s this method I use to create painterly images using a longer exposure. And by doing that, I’ve found the distortion.
The photo above is at 10mm, and the photo below is at 24mm. It’s much more controlled in the bottom image. With that said, you don’t really see a ton of distortion when looking at the photos themselves shot normally. But know that you might need to do some work in post-production anyway.
First Impressions
I really like the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR. It’s small, lightweight, and feels like a prime. This is exactly what the Fujifilm system needs as an option. The addition of weather sealing is huge. We believe that every lens should be weather-sealed these days. Best of all, this lens performs just like we’d expect it to. Paired with the Fujifilm 16-80mm f4 R WR OIS, you’ve got two zoom lenses that can do nearly everything.
Personally speaking, I think it’s time for every single brand to start pulling out all the stops. Fujifilm should be making f1.8 zoom lenses or f2 zoom lenses. They should all be weather sealed. Further, all those lenses don’t need to be large. Just having a few of them in your camera bag will suffice. I’m still inspired by Sigma’s 18-35mm f1.8 Art lens, which was designed for DSLRs. There’s also their 24-35mm f2 lens for DSLRs. Why hasn’t Fujifilm done something similar? And if they can’t, then maybe it’s time to start supporting the manufacturers who can do this for the lens mount. We need optics that no one else has, and that can give us even better quality. I believe Fujifilm can totally do this.
Stay tuned for a full review of the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR to come.
