This Colorful Zoom Is a Tank: Fujifilm 10-24mm F4 R OIS WR Review
Weather-sealing, stabilization, and a small size make the Fujifilm 10-24mm F4 R OIS WR a worthy contender.
Telephoto lenses tend to get all the love — and by love, I mean stabilization. Yet the new Fujifilm 10-24mm F4 R OIS WR packs a stabilization system into one of the widest zooms you can get without breeching fisheye territory. Pair it with the Fujifilm X-T4, and get 6.5 stops of stabilization.
But stabilization isn’t the only reason Fuji-lovers should consider this lens. The 10-24mm is nearly small enough to be a prime yet offers a sweet range of focal lengths. Exaggerate wide open spaces on the wide end, or offer a bit more compression on the long end. The lens is also weather-sealed — a major plus for optics made for landscapes, travel, and the outdoors.
That wide zoom range, however, does create more imperfections in the image than a prime. But are those imperfections a negative or a way to add character?
Pros and Cons
Pros
- Useful zoom range from ultra-wide to a standard wide-angle
- Weather sealed
- Stabilized to 3.5 stops, or 6.5 stops with the X-T4
- Compact and lightweight
- Great color and barrel distortion correction
- Full of character
Cons
- Soft edges, especially at 10mm and 24mm
- Would love to see a brighter aperture
What’s Innovative About This?
The 10-24mm zoom isn’t unheard of, and weather-sealed lenses are thankfully becoming more common. But what’s unique about this lens is the stabilization. Yes, there are plenty of stabilized lenses out there. But, those stabilization systems tend to go to the telephotos and mid-range focal lengths. Packing the stabilization into a wide-angle creates more opportunities for a walk-around lens for nighttime street photography or even shooting brief long exposures handheld. I was able to shoot a two-second exposure without a tripod.
Gear Used
I used the Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR with the Fujifilm X-T4.
Fujifilm 10-24mm F4 R OIS WR Tech Specs
These specs are taken from Lensrentals and our original news post on the lens:
- Angle of view 11 to 61.2 degrees
- 7 aperture blades
- 72mm filter size
- 14 elements in 10 groups
- 4 ED Elements
- 4 Aspherical elements
- Stabilization rated at 3.5 stops, 6.5 stops with the X-T4
- Minimum focusing distance 9.5 inches
- Weight .9 lbs.
Ergonomics
Taken from our First Impressions article:
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 to 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 not to experience it when you want to change the settings.
Build Quality
One of the biggest changes from the previous 10-24mm is the addition of weather sealing. We shot the pre-production lens in the rain and the final version in the snow and didn’t have any issues. The mix of focal lengths is excellent for landscapes and travel, two genres where photographers often run into inclement weather. Despite the added weather-sealing, the lens is almost an ounce lighter than the predecessor. You won’t feel such a slight difference, but it’s nice that this lens has stayed lightweight.
Weather-sealed lenses also tend to just feel better in the hands. This is no exception. The lens mount and filter ring are constructed from metal, but the plastic barrel feels almost metallic. The three different rings all have a slightly different texture to them, making them easier to feel for without pulling your eye from the viewfinder.
Autofocus
The autofocus motor on Fujifilm’s newest 10-24mm is nearly silent. Occasionally, after just powering the camera body on, there is a quiet click as the camera locks focus. But, if you want to use the lens in quiet venues or even for video, you won’t run into any noise from the focus motor.
The lens has a 9.5-inch minimum focusing distance. That’s about average for lenses at this focal length. It’s good enough to get some close-ups.
Paired with the X-T4, autofocus performance was on par with what I expected. The autofocus locked on quickly and slightly slower in low light. The autofocus did have trouble focusing at the corners. But, as I discuss in the image quality section, you’ll want to keep the subject away from the extreme edges of this lens.
Ease of Use
The Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR is quick to get started with. The only thing there really is to learn is switching the lens to auto aperture. There’s a small button to press as you turn the aperture ring to the A position to lock it there. Otherwise, working with this lens is pretty simple.
Unlike the previous version of the lens, the aperture ring is labeled. That makes the lens simpler to use if you want to adjust without looking through the viewfinder. It does, however, lack a focus distance scale. Switching to manual focus, you’ll need to use the scale inside the camera’s electronic viewfinder.
Image Quality
The 10-24mm is a fun range of focal lengths to play with, particularly for landscapes and travel. The wider the lens, the more exaggerated distances are. Objects look farther apart. At the widest angle, the lens exaggerates those wide-open spaces. The 24mm end is there for a bit of compression while still capturing much of the scene. Overall, the lens delivered some surprising results for such a wide-angle and great color, but the edge sharpness is lacking.
Bokeh
A 10-24mm f4 lens isn’t made for bokeh. But, the 9.5-inch minimum focusing distance will squeeze out some nice soft backgrounds for close-ups. In this scenario, the background is nicely blurred with no hard edges. Points of light or bokeh balls are smooth and round, with no hard edges. The brightest points of light, such as Christmas lights, have a slight tendency to flare or starburst.
Sharpness
While the lens is almost as light and compact as a prime, the 10-24mm shows its true nature once you start examining sharpness at the edges. The center is impressively sharp throughout the zoom range, even wide open.
But, shooting at f4 at 10mm, the sharpness falls off towards the last quarter of the image and is particularly poor in the corners. F8 is much sharper, with only a bit of softness left on the corners. Shooting at 24mm is a similar story, with quite a bit of edge blur.
The middle focal lengths perform a bit better. At 14mm, the lens was only slightly soft at the corners, shooting wide open. 18mm had another sharp center and edges that were a bit softer than at 14mm, but better than the widest and narrowest focal lengths.
Flare and Chromatic Aberration
The Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR offers a good blend between controlling the flare and intentionally bringing the effect into an image. Shooting into the sun easily creates a soft starburst. From some angles, you’ll also get that dot flare look. But, adjusting the lens’s position lightly was enough to eliminate almost everything but the starburst over the sun. The flare is easy enough to manipulate to intentionally get that effect or adjust to achieve a more technically correct image.
The lens does occasionally create some light purple fringing closest to the light source when photographing backlit subjects. The fringing was detectable in RAW files but corrected in JPEGs. The imperfection was most evident with thin, out-of-focus subjects like tree branches when viewing the image at 100 percent. But, I don’t think it’s enough to create a noticeable effect, and I could eliminate most of it in Capture One.
Color Rendering
Determining which colors comes from the lens and which do not were tough to do, but I was happy with the colors in my shots. Colors are close to real life but a bit punchier and brighter. We were impressed with the colors in the pre-production unit of the lens we first tested, with deeper, richer colors, and that holds true with the production version of the lens.
Lens Character
Barrel distortion is one of the most noticeable distortions on wide-angle lenses. But, on the Fujifilm 10-24mm, distortion was surprisingly well controlled. Most of the bend I saw was simple perspective distortion. At 10mm, there’s some bend in straight objects at the very edge of the image. However, it’s not super distracting, and if you want to keep lines straight, 24mm corrects most of that slight bend seen at 10mm.
The lens does have a subtle vignette. RAW shooters can easily correct it in post or count it as a bit of extra character mixed in with that edge softness.
Additional Image Samples
All images are JPEGs shot in camera, reduced size for web viewing.
Conclusion
Likes
- I love the range of this lens — 10mm is excellent for exaggerating distances, while 24mm is still wide but with a bit less distortion.
- The stabilization is great — I could shoot two seconds handheld with care.
- The design is also excellent — it’s compact, light, and yet weather-sealed.
- The lens has good color and does well at reducing barrel distortion.
Dislikes
- The edges are soft. While that can add some character, if you are looking for an uber-sharp lens, this isn’t it.
- While uncommon for lenses this wide, I would love to see a brighter aperture.
The Fujifilm 10-24mm f4 R OIS WR is an excellent lens to walk around with all day. The 10-24mm is a blast to create with, yet it’s nearly as light as a prime lens. Weather-sealing means you can continue to shoot in the rain and snow. And as the sun goes down, stabilization will help keep you shooting too.
While I love the lens, it’s got a few technical imperfections. The edges are quite soft. At the widest and farthest focal lengths, the lens needs to step the aperture down quite a bit if you want to fight that softness, while the middle focal lengths perform a bit better. Of course, once you lose a bit of technical precision, you gain some character — just be sure you love the look of the corners before making that investment. The continuous f4 is good, but a wider aperture would be more innovative. While not as common for the widest angles, I wouldn’t mind seeing more wide angle, wider aperture options like the DSLR-mount Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 Art.
The Fujifilm 10-24mm f R OIS WR sells for about $1,000 and is available now.
I’m giving the Fujifilm 10-24mm F4 R OIS WR four out of five stars.