Fujifilm XF 35mm F1.4 R — Review and Sample Photos

Introduction

The Fuji­non XF 35mm F1.4 R was one of three orig­i­nal fixed focal length lens­es that launched Fujifilm’s X Sys­tem in Jan­u­ary 2012, along­side their first mir­ror­less inter­change­able lens cam­era, the X‑PRO1. It’s a fast nor­mal prime lens—“fast” due to its large max­i­mum aper­ture of ƒ/1.4, which allows for faster shut­ter speeds in low light. It’s “nor­mal” because its focal length nei­ther dis­torts per­spec­tive like a wide-angle lens nor com­press­es dis­tances like a tele­pho­to. And as a prime lens, its focal length is fixed, so you’ll need to “zoom with your legs.”

The X System’s 1.52x crop fac­tor means the XF 35mm F1.4 R has a field of view and depth of field equiv­a­lent to a 53mm ƒ/2.1 lens on a full-frame cam­era. This places it square­ly in the “nifty fifty” category—a focal length known for its ver­sa­til­i­ty, offer­ing a nat­ur­al field of view suit­able for many sub­jects. Nor­mal lens­es are also sim­pler to design and man­u­fac­ture com­pared to wide-angle or tele­pho­to lens­es, which is why many are rel­a­tive­ly afford­able. How­ev­er, the XF 35mm F1.4 R launched with a pre­mi­um price point.

In 2025, the XF 35mm F1.4 R is 13 years old. While lens­es typ­i­cal­ly out­last dig­i­tal cam­eras, the steady improve­ments in Fujifilm’s APS‑C sensors—particularly in resolution—cast doubt on its abil­i­ty to deliv­er on mod­ern expec­ta­tions. Since its release, Fuji­film has intro­duced sev­er­al alter­na­tives in the same focal length range: the com­pact XF 35mm F2 R WR (and its bud­get sib­ling, the XC35mm F2), the pre­mi­um XF 33mm F1.4 R LM WR, and the XF 30mm F2.8 R LM WR Macro. And that’s just with­in Fujifilm’s lineup—third-party man­u­fac­tur­ers present even more options in this range.

The XF 33mm F1.4 R LM WR, in par­tic­u­lar, stands out as a direct com­peti­tor, with sig­nif­i­cant improve­ments in opti­cal qual­i­ty, aut­o­fo­cus per­for­mance, and build. Despite this, Fuji­film con­tin­ues to sell the XF 35mm F1.4 R at its orig­i­nal launch price of $799 plus tax—though infla­tion has effec­tive­ly made it about 30% more afford­able in Cana­da than when it first debuted.

Which brings me to the pur­pose of this review: does the XF 35mm F1.4 R still jus­ti­fy its place and present a good val­ue in 2025 and beyond?

---

---

Features

Specifications

• Lens con­struc­tion: 8 ele­ments in 6 groups (includes 1 aspher­i­cal ele­ment)

• Focal length: 35mm (equiv­a­lent to 53mm on full-frame)

• Angle of view: Diag­o­nal: 44.2°; Hor­i­zon­tal: 37.3°; Ver­ti­cal: 25.0°

• Num­ber of blades: 7 (round­ed diaphragm open­ing)

• Min­i­mum focus dis­tance: 28 cm (claimed), 27 cm (test­ed)

• Max­i­mum mag­ni­fi­ca­tion: 0.17×

• Weight: 187 g (exclud­ing caps and hood)

• Fil­ter size: ø52mm

• Man­u­fac­tur­ing ori­gin: Thai­land

Focus­ing can be achieved down to 27 cm, slight­ly clos­er than the claimed 28 cm in the specs. How­ev­er, this lens uses an exter­nal focus­ing mech­a­nism, so the front por­tion of the lens phys­i­cal­ly extends as you focus clos­er and retracts as you focus toward infin­i­ty. This can intro­duce poten­tial dust ingress and requires more care com­pared to inter­nal-focus­ing lens­es. Addi­tion­al­ly, an extend­ed focus­ing lens can be more prone to dam­age if the cam­era swings on your strap and the lens knocks against some­thing when you lean for­ward. Even light impacts that wouldn’t affect an inter­nal­ly focus­ing lens or the glass could cause dam­age to the step­ping motor over time.

While old­er Fuji­film lens­es often strug­gle with IBIS due to their small­er image cir­cles, the XF 35mm F1.4 R per­forms excep­tion­al­ly well. Its larg­er image cir­cle allows for more effec­tive IBIS cor­rec­tions. This makes it pairs well with IBIS-equipped bod­ies like your X‑H2S, espe­cial­ly for hand­held low-light shoot­ing.

The includ­ed acces­sories include front and rear caps, a black microfi­bre wrap­ping cloth, and a rec­tan­gu­lar met­al lens hood. Fuji­film also sup­plies a rub­ber hood cap, which helps com­pen­sate for how awk­ward a reg­u­lar lens cap is to attach when the hood is mount­ed. How­ev­er, the rub­ber cap doesn’t fit secure­ly and is prone to slip­ping off with minor con­tact. Worse, its soft mate­r­i­al means it can fall silent­ly, mak­ing it easy to lose. (Judg­ing by how sel­dom­ly used lens­es include the cap, I reck­on they’re fre­quent­ly lost.)

XF 35mm F1.4 R Design and Handing

Materials and Durability

Unlike the new­er Fuji­film lens­es I’ve reviewed, the XF 35mm F1.4 R fea­tures a ful­ly met­al exte­ri­or. From front to back—the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion ring, fil­ter thread, hood mount, focus ring, aper­ture ring, rear bar­rel, and lens mount—everything is met­al. The rec­tan­gu­lar lens hood is also large­ly met­al (the bay­o­net por­tion is plas­tic), with a pow­der-coat­ed fin­ish that match­es the bar­rel. This fin­ish strikes a bal­ance between glossy and mat­te, and has a sub­tle sheen. The inte­ri­or of the hood has a mat­te black coat­ing to reduce light reflec­tions.

One stand­out trait of Fujifilm’s met­al fin­ish is that it tends to age grace­ful­ly. Over time, the paint may wear down in areas where it comes in con­tact with rough or abra­sive sur­faces, reveal­ing the neu­tral met­al under­neath.

The XF 35mm F1.4 R looks and feels top-notch, with a design that’s rec­og­niz­ably Fuji­film. The bar­rel assem­bly doesn’t bow or flex when squeezed, giv­ing the impres­sion of a rigid con­struc­tion. How­ev­er, there’s no weath­er seal­ing, so don’t expect to get much use out of it in wet or dusty con­di­tions. Over time, dust will set­tle inside the lens.

The exter­nal focus­ing design means the front sec­tion of the lens phys­i­cal­ly extends and retracts as you focus. When extend­ed dur­ing close focus, the bar­rel has a small but notice­able amount of play.

More impor­tant­ly, such extend­ing focus mech­a­nisms are more vul­ner­a­ble to impacts. When the lens is extend­ed and your cam­era swings on a strap, even a light knock against a table or handrail can send all the force direct­ly into the focus­ing motor. I’ve learned this the hard way after dam­ag­ing not one but two Canon EF 50mm ƒ/1.4 USM lens­es, which had sim­i­lar exter­nal focus­ing designs. Thank­ful­ly, my XF 35mm F1.4 R has held up well so far—but I’m more cau­tious now and have mod­i­fied how I car­ry my cam­eras: I use Peak Design straps anchored at the base of the cam­era so they face down­ward instead of straight ahead. Since mak­ing that change, I haven’t expe­ri­enced any dam­age due to swing­ing impacts.

Handling and Comfort

At 187 g, the XF 35mm F1.4 R is light enough for extend­ed hand­held use with­out caus­ing wrist or knuck­le strain. (I some­times feel strain in my mid­dle knuck­le after pro­longed sin­gle-hand­ed car­ry­ing due to the for­ward rota­tion­al torque of heav­ier lens­es.) It bal­ances well on my Fuji­film X‑H2S, remain­ing com­fort­able for one-hand­ed shoot­ing over long peri­ods. I remem­ber it bal­anc­ing equal­ly well on my X‑T2 sev­er­al years ago.

How­ev­er, the lens’s short bar­rel places the aper­ture ring quite close to the cam­era body, requir­ing a slight grip adjust­ment to reach it com­fort­ably.

Aperture Ring

The aper­ture ring has detents at every 1/3‑stop between ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/16, although only the stan­dard full stops are indicated—etched into the met­al and filled with white paint. Sad­ly, the detents on the XF 35mm F1.4 R’s aper­ture ring are some of the weak­est and mushi­est I’ve encoun­tered, mak­ing it easy to unin­ten­tion­al­ly shift the f‑number while car­ry­ing the lens. Remem­ber to con­firm your selec­tion before tak­ing pic­tures.

Beyond the f‑number mark­ings, the aper­ture ring fea­tures an Auto­mat­ic (A) posi­tion locat­ed just beyond ƒ/16, enabling seam­less switch­ing to Shut­ter Pri­or­i­ty (S), Pro­gram AE (P), or full-auto modes. As is typ­i­cal for Fujifilm’s ear­ly lens designs, there’s no lock but­ton to pre­vent acci­den­tal changes—notable giv­en how easy it is to bump this ring.

Focusing Ring

The focus ring rotates with incon­sis­tent smooth­ness, with a slight rough­ness that is felt on and off through­out its range. This issue isn’t due to wear or lack of weath­er seal­ing, as I’ve expe­ri­enced the same incon­sis­ten­cy in brand-new, just-unpacked ver­sions of this lens.

Image Quality

Sharpness

At nor­mal view­ing dis­tances, the XF 35mm F1.4 R deliv­ers good sharp­ness, even at ƒ/1.4. How­ev­er, the chief issue at this aper­ture is a lack of micro-con­trast across the frame, which dimin­ish­es the appear­ance of tex­tures and fine lines. Stop­ping down to ƒ/2 to ƒ/2.8 sig­nif­i­cant­ly improves con­trast and lifts details. In fact, the jump in cen­tre sharp­ness from ƒ/1.4 to ƒ/2 is more dra­mat­ic than the incre­men­tal gains when stop­ping down fur­ther to ƒ/4, where it peaks.

The mid­frame also shows notable haze at ƒ/1.4 but improves by ƒ/2 and sharp­ens con­sid­er­ably at ƒ/2.8. How­ev­er, peak mid­frame sharp­ness doesn’t arrive until ƒ/5.6 or ƒ/8, where acu­ity of details match­es the cen­tre and appears well-defined. The cor­ners exhib­it the most pro­nounced soft­ness and con­trast loss at ƒ/1.4. High con­trast edges appear to glow or bloom, with halos seep­ing into dark regions. They improve steadi­ly through ƒ/2.8 and sharp­en sig­nif­i­cant­ly at ƒ/4, reach­ing their best per­for­mance between ƒ/5.6 and ƒ/8. 

For most real-world uses and typ­i­cal prints, ƒ/4 offers sharp results across the frame, though the cor­ners still show some minor fring­ing around high con­trast edges. For crit­i­cal detail across the whole frame, ƒ/5.6–ƒ/8 is the opti­mal range. The dif­fer­ences between these aper­tures are sub­tle and most­ly aca­d­e­m­ic at nor­mal view­ing dis­tances. Dif­frac­tion begins to soft­en details across the frame at ƒ/11 and becomes promi­nent at ƒ/16. Below ƒ/2, you’ll see reduced con­trast and cor­ner soft­ness, though it may be worth the trade-off for sub­ject iso­la­tion and low-light per­for­mance.

Aberrations

The XF 35mm F1.4 R shows prac­ti­cal­ly no trans­verse chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tion (TCA). Stop­ping down doesn’t address trans­verse CA, but any faint traces that appear in the cor­ners are han­dled effec­tive­ly by Fujifilm’s in-cam­era pro­cess­ing or Lightroom’s lens pro­files, mak­ing it a non-issue in real-world use. How­ev­er, the lens exhibits notice­able pink fring­ing on high-con­trast edges through­out the frame. This effect is most pro­nounced at wide aper­tures and reduces sig­nif­i­cant­ly, becom­ing neg­li­gi­ble by ƒ/4.

Axi­al chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tion (ACA) is mod­er­ate at ƒ/1.4. Com­par­a­tive­ly, green fring­ing is far more promi­nent in the back­ground blur than magen­ta fring­ing is in the fore­ground. Stop­ping down sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduces this effect, with ACA becom­ing min­i­mal by ƒ/2.8.

Astig­ma­tism and coma are both evi­dent at ƒ/1.4, espe­cial­ly toward the edges of the frame. Astig­ma­tism man­i­fests as uneven sharp­ness between hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal details, while coma appears as comet-shaped smear­ing of small points of light, such as stars. Togeth­er, they con­tribute to a “glow” around high-con­trast edges and smeared high­lights near the periph­ery. For­tu­nate­ly, both issues are sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced by ƒ/2.0; astig­ma­tism is ful­ly elim­i­nat­ed by ƒ/2.8, with coma per­sist­ing until about ƒ/4.

Bokeh

Bokeh refers to the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty of the out-of-focus areas in a pho­to­graph. It’s not about how much blur there is, but rather how pleas­ing that blur looks. Check out this arti­cle to learn more about bokeh in pho­tog­ra­phy.

The XF 35mm F1.4 R’s bokeh is, in a word, incon­sis­tent. At large aper­tures, with close sub­jects and rel­a­tive­ly uni­form or soft­ly blurred back­grounds, the bokeh is smooth and pleas­ing. High­lights in the cen­tre of the frame are ren­dered as soft, cir­cu­lar shapes with faint onion-ring pat­terns vis­i­ble upon close inspec­tion. How­ev­er, this changes as you move toward the edges, where high­lights begin to take on a cat’s‑eye shape, nar­row­ing fur­ther until they become slight­ly round­ed rec­tan­gles near the periph­ery. This uneven ren­der­ing cre­ates the illu­sion of a larg­er depth of field in the out­er regions of the frame, as if the effec­tive aper­ture is small­er there—and that’s because it is thanks to opti­cal vignetting at large aper­tures.

The XF 35mm F1.4 R strug­gles more with chal­leng­ing backgrounds—those filled with fine, high-con­trast details like branch­es or repeat­ing pat­terns. In these sit­u­a­tions, the bokeh can become busy and “ner­vous,” with blurred edges show­ing notice­able out­lin­ing. This out­lin­ing is most pro­nounced toward the edges, where the shape and blur qual­i­ty dete­ri­o­rate fur­ther.

Fore­ground blur fares worse than back­ground blur. High­lights in the back­ground blur appear soft­er and smoother, while fore­ground high­lights near the tran­si­tion zone from focus to blur are more heav­i­ly out­lined and less attrac­tive. This dif­fer­ence can be attrib­uted to spher­i­cal aber­ra­tion: under-cor­rec­tion in the back­ground pro­duces a soft­er blur, while over-cor­rec­tion in the fore­ground empha­sizes out­lin­ing.

Because bokeh is so sub­jec­tive, I’ve includ­ed a bokeh gallery to help you make your own assess­ment. (Click to enlarge pho­tos.)

Distortion

The XF 35mm F1.4 R shows neg­li­gi­ble bar­rel dis­tor­tion, which is well-con­trolled even with­out in-cam­era cor­rec­tions. Fujifilm’s manda­to­ry lens pro­files fur­ther elim­i­nate any traces of dis­tor­tion, ensur­ing straight lines remain straight in both raw and JPEG images. While the cor­rec­tion data is baked into the raw files and auto­mat­i­cal­ly applied by soft­ware like Light­room, tools like RawTher­a­pee reveal just how lit­tle dis­tor­tion there is in the uncor­rect­ed files. In real-world use, dis­tor­tion is effec­tive­ly a non-issue.

Below, I’ve includ­ed an exam­ple demon­strat­ing the lens’s dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tions. Hov­er over the image to see the uncor­rect­ed ver­sion.

Vignetting

The XF 35mm F1.4 R’s uncor­rect­ed vignetting is mod­er­ate at ƒ/1.4, with notice­able light fall-off in the cor­ners. It improves as you stop down, reach­ing its min­i­mum by ƒ/4, though it nev­er com­plete­ly dis­ap­pears. This lev­el of vignetting is typ­i­cal for fast primes in this focal length range, and Fujifilm’s lens pro­files do a fine job of reduc­ing its vis­i­bil­i­ty. How­ev­er, these cor­rec­tions work by bright­en­ing the dark­er edges, which increas­es noise in those areas—making lens­es with low­er inher­ent vignetting advan­ta­geous, as they require less cor­rec­tion and keep cor­ners clean­er at wide aper­tures.

In real-world use, the vignetting is rarely an issue. It can even enhance por­traits and close-ups, where the nat­ur­al shad­ing draws sub­tle atten­tion to the sub­ject.

The images below demon­strate these char­ac­ter­is­tics. The first pair com­pares uncor­rect­ed vignetting at ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/4 (hov­er over to see the lat­ter). The sec­ond pair shows uncor­rect­ed vignetting at ƒ/1.4 along­side Fujifilm’s embed­ded cor­rec­tions.

Flare and Ghosting

Every lens will flare under the right mix of con­di­tions. Flare hap­pens when stray light enters the lens and bounces off inter­nal ele­ments, cre­at­ing hazy, low-con­trast areas or streaks of light. Ghosts, how­ev­er, are distinct—they’re faint, mir­ror-image reflec­tions of bright objects, like the sun or lamps, that appear on the oppo­site side of the frame, flipped both ver­ti­cal­ly and hor­i­zon­tal­ly. Both flare and ghost­ing are con­trolled by lens mak­ers using var­i­ous types of coat­ings. In this case, the XF 35mm F1.4 R fea­tures Fujinon’s “Super EBC” coat­ing. Its effec­tive­ness is a mixed bag.

The XF 35mm F1.4 R is prone to sig­nif­i­cant flare when shoot­ing with bright light sources, such as the sun, with­in the frame or just out­side it. The flare typ­i­cal­ly man­i­fests as a veil, reduc­ing con­trast and par­tial­ly obscur­ing sub­jects near the offend­ing light source. It also projects colour­ful orbs across the frame along the lens axis. That said, find­ing real-world exam­ples in my pho­tos took some effort. Flare is easy to man­age by using the includ­ed lens hood and keep­ing the sun out of the frame.

On the oth­er hand, ghost­ing seems to be a non-issue. Despite my best efforts, I haven’t been able to find a sin­gle instance of ghosts in my images, sug­gest­ing they’re effec­tive­ly sup­pressed, if not entire­ly absent.

Check the flare exam­ples (both real-world and con­trived) below.

Sunstars

The 14-point sun­stars pro­duced by the XF 35mm F1.4 R’s 7‑round­ed-blade diaphragm are pret­ty mun­dane. To be fair, sun­star qual­i­ty isn’t typ­i­cal­ly a con­cern for nor­mal or tele­pho­to focal lengths—it’s more of a pri­or­i­ty for wide-angle lens­es. Still, if you’re deter­mined to pro­duce sun­stars with this lens, the best-defined spokes appear at ƒ/16.

There might be a usable pat­tern emerg­ing as ear­ly as ƒ/2.8, but it’s hard­ly unique and pales in com­par­i­son to the “secret” ƒ/6.4 sun­stars I dis­cov­ered dur­ing my review of the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR. On the XF 35mm F1.4 R, the ƒ/2.8 sun­stars don’t hold a can­dle to those at ƒ/16. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, achiev­ing those well-defined sun­bursts at ƒ/16 comes with the trade-off of sig­nif­i­cant dif­frac­tion, which soft­ens the over­all sharp­ness of your image.

If you’re after dra­mat­ic sun­stars, this lens isn’t like­ly to be your go-to.

Focusing & Autofocus

The focus­ing motor on the XF 35mm F1.4 R is one of its most dis­ap­point­ing qual­i­ties. As men­tioned ear­li­er, it suf­fers from an out­dat­ed exter­nal design, where the front of the bar­rel extends out­ward when focus­ing on clos­er sub­jects.

Autofocus Speed and Sound

The aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem deliv­ers rel­a­tive­ly quick, accu­rate, and con­sis­tent performance—provided the cam­era doesn’t get con­fused by a fea­ture­less sur­face beneath your active focus area. When con­fu­sion strikes, the lens begins to hunt, first by waver­ing back and forth with­in a nar­row range, and then expand­ing its search to cov­er the entire focus range. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, once this process starts, there’s no way to inter­rupt it, and it takes about 2.5 sec­onds in MF and AF‑S modes or 3 sec­onds in AF‑C mode to com­plete, assum­ing no focus is found. This expand­ed hunt­ing can mean the dif­fer­ence between cap­tur­ing a fleet­ing moment or miss­ing it entire­ly.

For­tu­nate­ly, these issues are rare and avoid­able if you steer your focus area clear of fea­ture­less objects like blank walls, blue skies, or deep shad­ows. In good light, with plen­ty of tex­ture, the lens focus­es rel­a­tive­ly quickly—taking about 0.7 sec­onds to pull focus from infin­i­ty to its min­i­mum focus dis­tance, and short­er focus pulls are faster still.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the lens is far from silent. It’s eas­i­ly one of the loud­est lens­es I’ve ever owned. The focus­ing process pro­duces a cacoph­o­ny of sounds: high-pitched clicks from the aper­ture diaphragm’s con­trac­tions, buzzing and whirring from the focus motor, light knocks as the focus group hits its range lim­its, and the slid­ing of the inner bar­rel. The hol­low met­al enclo­sure ampli­fies these sounds, but you can also feel them through the cam­era body. All that clat­ter becomes irri­tat­ing quick­ly and can spoil can­did shots in qui­et envi­ron­ments, as sub­jects will hear the lens long before the pho­to is tak­en.

Focus Breathing

The XF 35mm F1.4 R exhibits promi­nent focus breath­ing. Focus­ing to infin­i­ty pro­duces a wider field of view, while focus­ing clos­er nar­rows it—a behav­iour that’s the reverse of what’s typ­i­cal­ly encoun­tered, where close focus­ing often results in a wider angle of view. This makes the lens large­ly unsuit­able for focus stack­ing, where con­sis­tent fram­ing across focus planes is cru­cial. The exam­ple below demon­strates a focus pull from infin­i­ty to the min­i­mum focus dis­tance at ƒ/8 (hov­er cur­sor over image to see the effect).

Manual Experience and Close Focus

The man­u­al focus expe­ri­ence on the XF 35mm F1.4 R is, like most Fuji­film X series lens­es, lack­lus­tre. The focus ring oper­ates via a ful­ly elec­tron­ic focus-by-wire sys­tem, mean­ing it isn’t mechan­i­cal­ly linked to the lens ele­ments. Turn­ing the ring sends elec­tron­ic sig­nals to the motor, which adjusts focus. Fuji­film offers two modes for focus ring behav­iour: lin­ear and non­lin­ear, acces­si­ble via Wrench > Button/Dial Set­ting > Lens Zoom/Focus Set­ting > Focus Ring Oper­a­tion.

Lin­ear mode is painful­ly slow, requir­ing about 2.5 full rota­tions of the ring to trav­el from min­i­mum focus to infin­i­ty. Worse, it isn’t tru­ly lin­ear, espe­cial­ly when turn­ing the ring either too quick­ly or too slow­ly. Non­lin­ear mode is only mar­gin­al­ly bet­ter, as it allows faster long focus pulls, but it’s still frus­trat­ing­ly slow com­pared to well-imple­ment­ed focus-by-wire sys­tems.

The lone pos­i­tive note is the min­i­mum focus dis­tance, spec­i­fied at 28 cm but mea­sured clos­er to 27 cm in prac­tice. This enables a close-up mag­ni­fi­ca­tion ratio of approx­i­mate­ly 0.17×. While the lens lacks a phys­i­cal dis­tance scale, this infor­ma­tion is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble in the viewfind­er or LCD.

Conclusion

Fujifilm’s deci­sion to con­tin­ue sell­ing the XF 35mm F1.4 R at its orig­i­nal MSRP is, in a way, pret­ty auda­cious. Even with the infla­tion-induced “dis­count,” the price feels unjus­ti­fi­able giv­en the lens’s age and sig­nif­i­cant flaws: loud and slug­gish aut­o­fo­cus, a mushy aper­ture dial, lack of weath­er seal­ing, dis­ap­point­ing flare resis­tance, and poor micro­con­trast, fring­ing, and cor­ner astig­ma­tism below ƒ/2.0. While it has some redeem­ing qualities—handsome aes­thet­ics, a good size and weight, prac­ti­cal­ly no dis­tor­tion, and sol­id image qual­i­ty from ƒ/2.8 onward in the cen­tre (and frame-wide from ƒ/4 to ƒ/8)—the com­pro­mis­es tip the scale towards its weak­ness­es. Frankly, it’s strengths aren’t even that com­pelling, as I could describe most nor­mal primes I’ve ever owned with sim­i­lar or bet­ter praise.

Ulti­mate­ly, at its cur­rent retail price, the Fuji­film XF 35mm F1.4 R presents a poor val­ue, and I strong­ly rec­om­mend against pur­chas­ing it new. How­ev­er, buy­ing it used might be worth­while if you’re look­ing for its so-called “char­ac­ter,” espe­cial­ly if you can find it for 50–60% of its tax-includ­ed retail price. If you’re buy­ing it in per­son, check out my arti­cle on how to eval­u­ate a used lens to ensure you’re get­ting a qual­i­ty copy.

---

Sample Photos