Review: Fujinon XF 200mm f/2 R LM OIS WR
I was fortunate enough to strike a deal with Fujifilm North America to be able to utilize the mighty XF 200mm f/2 R LM OIS WR for the entire 2019 NFL Seahawk season, a few UW Husky football games, the MLS Cup located in Seattle, and even some outings into the beautiful landscapes of Washington. After putting this lens through its paces, it’s safe to say that I have been totally blown away by the performance and quality (as you should be for $5,999.95!) Everything about this product just oozes craftsmanship and attention to detail. The beautiful pearl coating, the enormous front element, the insane focusing speeds, and the absolutely marvelous image quality.
Build
This is quite possibly the best lens I have ever held in regards to build quality, and it is easily the nicest XF series lens I have had the pleasure of using. The lens is huge, but it is surprisingly lightweight, and I managed to handhold without a monopod for the entire time I used it on the Fujifilm X-T3 with the battery grip. With a smooth focusing ring, and just the right amount of resistance and click on the aperture ring, the functionality is on point.
Further, it has some pretty cool features built in that I found really useful. Near the front element on the frontmost portion of the barrel are located 4 buttons. These serve as “focus control buttons”, and they act as a half-press on your shutter release. While I generally utilize back button focus on the camera, these came in handy when I needed to use my right hand to quickly shift settings on my dials like shutter speed and iso, while still allowing me to autofocus with my left hand. Also, the 5 stop image stabilization is superb, with intelligent parameters that recognize shooting conditions to optimally apply the proper image stabilization control. I found that it is still useable to get steady shots at 1/50s!
Image Quality
Previously for shooting professional sports I had relied on a mixture of Fuji’s 16-55mm f/2.8, 50-140mm f/2.8, and their 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6 to cover all my bases, so shooting with a 200mm prime was definitely a bit of an adjustment period as finding the sweet spots on the field where the lens functions the best is a bit of a learning curve. But once I dialed in those sweet spots, and began to instinctively know where the lens shines, it became almost difficult to take a bad photo at f/2. The falloff and bokeh at its widest aperture is in a league of its own, and the ability to pull a subject out of a bustling crowd is incredible. Silky smooth from edge to edge, this lens easily has the best bokeh of any XF lens currently in production.
The sharpness delivered is also on another level. Paired with the 26mp X-Trans CMOS 4 sensor of the Fujifilm X-T3, the amount of detail edge to edge is pretty staggering.
Also, just a quick word on the inclusion of the XF1.4X TC f/2 teleconverter. While I didn’t actually end up using this much for sports as the 200mm reach seemed to be plenty for my applications, and I didn’t want to lose f/2 aperture, I did use it enough to note that there is in my experience, basically zero loss of quality or autofocus speed. This lens and this TC were definitely crafted together with symbiosis in mind!
Samples
Lastly, I would just like to include some more sample images for your viewing pleasure. All photos were shot in RAW format and edited in Lightroom. If you are interested in this lens, and on the fence about it, I highly encourage you to rent it and take it for a spin, as it is well worth the investment if you are primarily a Fuji shooter and are looking for the top quality for sports and action photography. Thanks for reading!
