A while back I treated myself to the Fuji XF 60mm macro. I found a second hand one at a decent price. It’s one of the older lenses in Fuji’s line up, but original reviews condemned it’s slow focus. With more recent cameras, it seems to have come into it’s own. I popped it on my X-T5 and set out to make a few close ups to test it’s performance for myself!
Kingston Lacy is our local National Trust property. It’s thought that Snow drops were introduced to the UK here, through the plant collectors of the day – as they are still just in flower, what better place to visit.
Digital photography certainly has it’s advantages. A tilting screen enabled me to see what was going on without having to kneel in the mud. I could take a few frames to get it right without it costing me, and I could playback there and then to see if I’d got what I wanted in focus. But I’m supposed to be writing about this specific lens!
Fuji describe it as “half macro” meaning that it goes down to 1:2 (half life size). It focuses down to 0.267m (less than 12″), so combined with the 60mm means that a 35mm film frame would nearly fill the frame. The Fuji X series are “cropped” sensors, meaning that any focal length should be multiplied by, in this case, 1.5x to get the regular “full frame” equivalent. In other words the 60mm behaves like a 90mm on 35mm film.
Fuji also make big play of the fact they use a nine bladed aperture, creating a circular “hole” thus giving attractive bokeh! The word that no-one really cared about until people started putting lenses designed for film cameras onto digital cameras, but I won’t get started on that again!! 🙂
At 215g it’s one of the lighter lenses I own, the widest aperture of f2.4 not the brightest, but shooting at 400iso shows no noise, and allowed me to shoot at f8, with a sensible shutter speed. I also wanted to see how it would perform, just as a 60mm lens for non-macro work, portraits, landscape etc.
I thought that it’s sharpness both close and far was excellent. It does, as reported by others “hunt” occasionally for focus. I’ve never used a macro that didn’t, including Canon’s! So I wouldn’t criticise it for that. Not that I make many portraits, but if I did, I think it would be perfect. All in all happy with my purchase – forward into Spring!
S.H.O.U.T. 