Introduction

Ease of Use

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS is a lightweight telephoto zoom lens, weighing a mere 375g. As you can see in the pictures below, it complements the rangefinder-style Fujifilm X-E2 camera quite well, although it looks a little incongruous when fully zoomed out.

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens attached to the Fujifilm X-E2 camera

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens attached to the Fujifilm X-E2 camera

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens zoomed out to 230mm

The overall build quality is good, rather than outstanding. The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens has a plastic mount and barrel, plastic focus and aperture rings, and a non-rotating 58mm filter thread. The zoom ring is fairly wide and has a ridged, rubberised grip band. Zooming is not internal, meaning the length of the lens changes while you zoom. As you'd expect, physically the lens is shortest at 50mm (11cms) and longest at the 230mm setting (18cms).

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens attached to the Fujifilm X-E2 camera

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens zoomed out to 230mm

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens alongside the X-E2 camera

Side of the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens

Both the zoom and the focus rings are smooth in action without being loose. Zoom creep is not an issue. The focus ring has no “hard stops” at either end of the focus range.

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens doesn't have a traditional aperture ring on the lens barrel. Instead the aperture is set via the camera body, so you may need to update your camera body's firmware to enable aperture adjustment via the camera's command dial.

Front of the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens

Rear of the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS has a built-in OIS (Optical Image Stabiliser), which is turned on and off via the camera's main menu system.

Front of the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens

Rear of the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens in-hand

Rear of the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens with the supplied lens hood fitted

In terms of accessories, the lens ships with lens and mount caps and a plastic bayonet hood.

Focal Range

At the 50mm end of the zoom range, the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens has a wide angle of view of 31.7 degrees.

Field of view at 50mm

At the 230mm end, the angle of view narrows to 7.1 degrees.

Field of view at 230mm

Distortion

At the wider end, the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS has some very slight barrel distortion, as you can see in the photo below.

Distortion at 50mm

Distortion at 230mm

Auto-Focusing

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens has a high-precision stepping motor. In practice, we found the auto-focus to be fast, very quiet and without too much hunting in low-light on the X-E2 body that we tested it with. The front of the lens does not rotate on focus, which is very good news for anyone looking to use the lens in conjunction with a polariser or graduated neutral density filter.

Chromatic Aberrations

Chromatic aberrations, typically seen as purple or blue fringes along contrasty edges, are not really a problem with the Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS lens, with some limited fringing apparent in areas of high contrast.

Macro

The Fujifilm XC 50-230mm F4.5-6.7 OIS is not a macro lens. The close-focus point is at 1.1m from the sensor plane, and the maximum magnification is 0.20x at full telephoto. The following example illustrates how close you can get to the subject, in this case a CompactFlash card.

Close-up performance

Bokeh

Bokeh is a word used for the out-of-focus areas of a photograph, and is usually described in qualitative terms, such as smooth / creamy / harsh etc. Fujifilm have paid attention to this aspect of lens use, employing a 7-segment diaphragm with rounded blades for more pleasing bokeh. In our view, their efforts have been fairly successful, but not brilliant - see the examples below.

Sharpness

In order to show you how sharp this lens is, we are providing 100% crops on the following pages.