Alas, the 40mm pancake re-invented for digital, again. Fuji has done a nice job in having a 3rd party build a compact lens and f2.8 is nice. Besides being purpose-built for digital,the good thing about this lens is the same as every other pancake lens ever invented. Its a small lens that is good enough in most other aspects. Its a compromise, that is all. elements in 5 groups, a common double-Gauss variant extremely popular for normal lenses since about 1950. I had to make a singoe take video today for YouTube but didn't consider my expensive Fujifilm camera and lens. It was always going to be my phone for the ease of use, ease of sharing and IBIS. For Vloggers and other content creators the camera will be useful, but there aren't as many Vloggers out there as camera companies think imo. Most people just do selfie photos and videos for family and friends. The XE4 will overheat in minutes doing video so it would actually be a terrible buy for video. Unlike some of the competition, Fujifilm does not currently offer an 'Animal Eye AF' mode. No problem, we photographed Belvedere using a single point in AF-C.

But really, the X-E4 is a very attractive little camera. The faux leatherette looks and feels nice, the magnesium-alloy top plate is lovely and the camera body feels solid. The fold-flush rear screen is a real joy, and makes the X-E4 much easier to work with at high and low angles than its predecessor. A threaded shutter button is always a nice touch, and the dials have just the right amount of resistance. The Fujifilm X-E4 is a lightweight, rangefinder-styled camera built around a 26MP APS-C sized sensor that uses the company's X-mount lineup of lenses. Billed as a fun-to-use and compact photographic companion, the X-E4 is the smallest X-mount camera on the market, encouraging you to keep it around wherever you go. While 50mm equivalent lenses are often too long, and 35mm equivalent lenses often too short, "perfect normal" lenses —lenses equal to the diagonal of the image sensor —are the perfect normal focal length. At 41mm equivalent, this funny-sounding 27mm lens is actually the one normal lens you might need for everything. The 26MP sensor at the heart of the X-E4 is excellent, offering great dynamic range and fast readout speeds.The viewfinder is par for the course for this class of cameras, though not outstanding. The bigger issue is that, even though you'll want to press the Drive/Delete button with your left thumb, you'll almost certainly trigger the eye sensor to switch from the rear screen to using the EVF. It's a pain. And while the camera doesn't automatically switch to the EVF when you trigger the sensor with the screen tilted out, it does rotate the screen 180 degrees; the info display is flipped to seemingly prepare you for taking a selfie. On the other hand, the focus ring is pretty negligible. It’s just as slim as the focusing ring on the X100V, so it’s kind of hard to use comfortably with manual focus, but it turns smoothly and is nicely dampened. I would have liked to see a tab or lever or something that protrudes from the focus ring to help with manual focus, but most people are probably not utilizing manual focus with this lens unless absolutely necessary. (Side note: you can actually buy an external focusing tab attachment on Etsy that might make this more comfortable if you deem manual focus a necessity with this lens, or just want a more rangefinder-style experience.) There are no better lenses to use on the Fuji system at any price. Forget slumming with LEICA or other off-brand lenses and adapters; you can't get anything sharper and any other lens won't autofocus or autoexpose or log data or be optimized by the camera's DSP, and no other lens will have a diaphragm that opens and closes automatically as needed for focus and shooting. Mechanically the Fujinon 27mm is very solid. No serious issues with focus shifts, or field curvature. The front element does telescope out when as you get closer to the minimum focus range, so the lens does get a few degrees tighter when focusing closer. The lens glass is tiny and it could use a much smaller filter than it does. 39mm is a much larger filter than needed, but as the standard size for LEICA, Fuji chose to emulate LEICA and use the same size filter.

I think there is a higher chance you’ll be bringing your camera along for your travels. Fujifilm XF 27mm f2.8 on an X-T1 It’s considered one of Fuji’s sharpest lenses The X-E4 may not be an obvious choice for video work, given its rangefinder-style body, but it is actually quite capable. In terms of output, it can shoot oversampled DCI and UHD 4K video in 24 or 30 fps (30-minute cap on continuous capture). Full HD video can be captured at up to a whopping 240 fps. Nature, architecture, people – this lens is great for the wide variety of subjects you’ll encounter on your travels. The unique perspective of the 27mm offers an effortlessness that I have never experienced with any other lens. The ability to simply visualize a shot and capture it naturally exactly as you pictured is what makes this lens so special. The 27mm provides a full-frame equivalent of 40.5mm, which is as close to perfect normal as you’re going to get within the native Fujifilm ecosystem. In modern photography, the perfect normal focal length seems to be underappreciated—referenced in passing, but ultimately overshadowed by more common focal lengths. But the 27mm has the potential to rekindle consumer interest and bring the perfect normal lens out of the shadows. And I can personally confirm that the perfect normalness of this lens is part of what makes it unique compared to more widely used focal lengths like 35mm or 50mm.

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This lens has no Optical Image Stabilization (OIS, IS or VR (Vibration Reduction)), but it works great with cameras that have internal stabilization. Video-wise, the X-E4 is also highly capable with nicely detailed 4K output, including 8-bit Log capture internally and 10-bit Log capture to a dedicated capture device (via Micro-HDMI). Full HD video can be captured at up 240 fps, for all your super-slow motion needs. And you can plug in a microphone and headphones (the latter via USB-C to audio dongle). Arguably, the only important video-centric feature absent from the X-E4 is in-body image stabilization for hand-held shooting. What I’m trying to say is: this lens is sharp. Some people argue that this lens is the sharpest Fujifilm has in its lineup. Secret time: I think people say that about like every Fuji lens, but hey, it’s a good reputation to have. Manual focusing is entirely electronic; the manual focus ring isn't connected to anything other than a digital encoder. The Fuji X-Mount Lenses are all extraordinary. What most photographers don't realize is that Fuji has for many decades, just like Canon and Nikon, also made far more advanced optics, like binoculars for the military and for use in space, as well as lenses for motion pictures and television with six-figure price tags at discount. Unlike mud brands like Sigma and Tamron (or even LEICA), Fujinon has loads of experience actually supplying optics that cost more than some people's houses, and puts that same know-how into these lenses.

If the focal length fits your style and traveling lightweight is appealing to you it would be easy to make a strong argument for the XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR. In practice, we found the auto-focus to be quite fast and accurate, but it is noisy enough to be heard when recording video, making this lens best suited to stills photography.Comparing the results at different aperture settings, I was only able to see a very slight improvement in centre sharpness when switching from f/2.8 to f/8 when the images are sized to 100% on a computer screen. The difference is a little more apparent at the corners, but the XF 27mm F2.8 R WR by no means disgraces itself at f/2.8. Similarly, there’s a hint of the effect of diffraction at f/16, but I’d happily use any of the aperture settings. Light falloff is completely invisible even wide open at f/2.8, as shot on the X-T1 which is probably correcting it automatically.

I’ll show both situations, with it left turned on and with it turned of. Most people will never know what it looks like with the profile correction turned off and will think everything is performing fine. However, it’s still relevant to know the quality of the image the lens is actually producing. For example if the distortion is very bad, the image will be stretched and sometimes scaled to adjust for the distortion and pixels will be lost. Fujifilm kept the glass inside the new lens the same as the old one. There are seven elements in five groups with seven rounded blades. The minimum focus distance is a little more than 13 inches, which is decent enough but not great. The 27mm focal-length is 40.5mm full-frame equivalent, which is barely wide-angle, and is very close to “normal” on Fujifilm X cameras. The maximum aperture is f/2.8, which isn’t particularly fast, and the minimum aperture is f/16. The lens accepts 39mm threaded filters. The quad-core processor keeps everything moving pretty swiftly, and though you'll want the fastest memory card you can afford for those bursts, you won't gain any benefits from faster UHS-II compatible cards with the camera's UHS-I slot (it's still a good investment to get the fastest UHS-I card you can, though). The X-E4 also comes loaded with Fujifilm's latest film simulations, including Eterna, which is a favorite for video recording, as well as Classic Neg. And being able to re-process Raw files in-camera to try out the different film simulations is a fun way to find what looks you like best.As I was getting ready to write this article, I was looking around my gear cabinet for this lens and I couldn’t locate it. When I did find it, the lens was attached to my wife’s X-T4! It turns out that the Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 R WR is her favorite lens. It seems that whenever I want to use it, the lens is attached to her camera. This is the only lens that we fight over. The Fuji XF 27mm f/2.8 ASPH is optically close to perfect, tiny and focuses super fast. It's a great little lens. On the flipside, a lens with an angle that is too wide makes everything really tiny, especially if you can’t get close enough. Then suddenly a beautiful butterfly lands in front of you, but it looks so small through your lens that it’ll be indistinguishable. The Fujifilm XF 27mm F2.8 R WR lens has an internal focusing (IF) system that uses the same audible high-torque coreless DC motor as on the original lens.