Fujifilm XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR Review: Built to Last

Introduction

The Fuji­film XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR is the tele­pho­to piece of the tra­di­tion­al “holy trin­i­ty” of zoom lens­es, whose place on full-frame sys­tems is occu­pied by the 70–200mm f/2.8 zoom. True to Fujifilm’s design phi­los­o­phy, many of its lens­es have focal lengths that make sense when trans­lat­ed into full-frame equiv­a­lents, and this lens is no excep­tion, offer­ing an approx­i­mate 76–213mm range in 35mm terms. With its fast aper­ture, robust weath­er seal­ing, and high­ly effec­tive Opti­cal Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (OIS), it’s a ver­sa­tile lens that excels in demand­ing sit­u­a­tions, from por­traits to wildlife and sports pho­tog­ra­phy.

I bought my XF 50–140mm F2.8 in July 2016, short­ly after buy­ing my first Fuji­film cam­era, the X‑PRO2. Since then, it’s been a reli­able work­horse in my kit, used pro­fes­sion­al­ly for wed­dings and per­son­al­ly for trav­el and adven­ture, land­scapes and cityscapes, and por­traits of fam­i­ly, friends, and pets. Over these eight-plus years of own­er­ship, I’ve use it to cap­ture thou­sands of pho­tos under diverse, real-world con­di­tions. 

This review reflects my long-term expe­ri­ence with the XF 50–140mm F2.8 and explores whether it tru­ly deliv­ers as a depend­able, ver­sa­tile tool or if its lim­i­ta­tions hold it back.

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Features

Specifications:

• Focal Length Range: 50–140mm (approx­i­mate­ly 76–213mm equiv­a­lent on full-frame)
• Max­i­mum Aper­ture: Con­stant ƒ/2.8 (ƒ/4.2 equiv­a­lent on full-frame)
• Opti­cal Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (OIS): Rat­ed for up to five stops (six stops with IBIS)
• Lin­ear Motor Aut­o­fo­cus (LM): Fast, silent, inter­nal focus­ing mech­a­nism
• Weath­er-Resis­tance (WR): Dust- and mois­ture-resis­tant, freeze-proof down to ‑10°C
• Min­i­mum Focus Dis­tance: 1.0m stat­ed
• Weight: 995 g (~1110 g with tri­pod foot)

The XF50-140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR caters to high-end users with its fast max­i­mum aper­ture and ver­sa­tile focal range. In full-frame terms, it offers the equiv­a­lent field of view of a 76–213mm lens—slightly uncon­ven­tion­al com­pared to the tra­di­tion­al 70–200mm zoom but reflec­tive of Fujifilm’s approach of adapt­ing clas­sic focal lengths rather than repli­cat­ing them. A true 70–200mm full-frame equiv­a­lent on APS‑C would have required an awk­ward actu­al focal length range of 46–132mm, so this slight vari­a­tion feels like a prac­ti­cal choice.

The lens’s con­stant ƒ/2.8 aper­ture across its focal range qual­i­fies it as a “fast” zoom lens, offer­ing excel­lent light-gath­er­ing capa­bil­i­ties and low­er-light per­for­mance. How­ev­er, as this is an APS‑C lens, its depth of field at ƒ/2.8 is equiv­a­lent to a full-frame lens at ƒ/4.2. While it can’t achieve the same shal­low depth of field as full-frame ƒ/2.8 lens­es, it still pro­vides mean­ing­ful sub­ject sep­a­ra­tion and back­ground and fore­ground blur.

The inter­nal zoom­ing mech­a­nism ensures the lens main­tains a con­sis­tent length through­out the zoom range, which improves han­dling and enhances its weath­er resis­tance. Sim­i­lar­ly, the inter­nal focus­ing mech­a­nism pre­vents any exter­nal move­ment dur­ing focus changes, mak­ing it bet­ter suit­ed for dusty or wet envi­ron­ments and com­pat­i­ble with Fujifilm’s tele­con­vert­ers.

When I pur­chased this lens in 2016, I was using the non-IBIS Fuji­film X‑PRO2, and the XF 50–140mm F2.8’s Opti­cal Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (OIS) real­ly impressed me, notice­ably out­per­form­ing the Image Sta­bi­liza­tion (IS) on my Canon EF 70–200mm F2.8 L IS USM II, deliv­er­ing an almost sta­t­ic view through the viewfind­er at 140mm. Paired with my cur­rent X‑H2S, which has in-body image sta­bi­liza­tion (IBIS), the com­bined sys­tem offers even smoother sta­bi­liza­tion for hand­held shoot­ing.

Aut­o­fo­cus is pow­ered by Fujifilm’s lin­ear motor (LM) sys­tem, which is fast and qui­et. The inter­nal focus­ing design ensures no part of the lens, includ­ing the rear ele­ment, moves dur­ing focus­ing, enabling com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with Fujifilm’s tele­con­vert­ers for added ver­sa­til­i­ty.

Fuji­film’s weath­er seal­ing has proven its very reli­able. This lens has han­dled heavy rain, snow­storms, and extreme tem­per­a­tures with­out issue. I’ve used it in tough con­di­tions, includ­ing a shoot where it was cov­ered in snow, and it has nev­er fal­tered.

At 995 g, or 1110 g with the tri­pod foot attached, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 is rather heavy for an APS‑C lens. By com­par­i­son, new­er full-frame options like Canon’s RF 70–200mm F4 L IS USM weigh sig­nif­i­cant­ly less at 695 g. Released in 2014, the Fuji­non feels over­due for a refresh, espe­cial­ly giv­en Fujifilm’s recent Mark II update for the slight­ly younger XF 16–55mm F2.8.

The 1.0m min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance, while con­sis­tent across the zoom range, lim­its its max­i­mum mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, and makes it less suit­ed for small prod­uct pho­tog­ra­phy and oth­er close­up work. How­ev­er, as I’ve doc­u­ment­ed in my reviews of the XF 8mm F3.5 and the XF 10–24mm F4, the stat­ed min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance of the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR is short­er than stat­ed by Fuji­film. My mea­sure­ments indi­cate a min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance (MFD) of about 89cm at 50mm, increas­ing to about 95cm at 140mm. Fuji­film lists the MFD is 1.0m with­out spec­i­fy­ing the focal range. 

Design and Handling

Over my eight years of own­er­ship, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR has proven itself as a durable and reli­able lens. The con­struc­tion com­bines met­al, plas­tic, and rub­ber com­po­nents. The fil­ter thread, hood mount, focus and aper­ture rings, tri­pod col­lar, and tri­pod foot are all black-paint­ed met­al. The zoom ring is a black plas­tic base wrapped in a durable and very nice ribbed rub­ber ring; plas­tic is also used for the bar­rel sec­tions that sand­wich the tri­pod col­lar, the OIS on/off switch, and the Red “XF ZOOM” badge.

Imme­di­ate­ly, there’s a glar­ing flaw: the fan­cy Red Badge, which sig­ni­fies this as a pro­fes­sion­al zoom lens for Seri­ous Pho­tog­ra­phers, is tiny and vis­i­ble only from the left side of the lens. How will peo­ple to my right know I’m any good if they can’t see it? Canon gets it, they have red rings…

The lens has held up remark­ably well under reg­u­lar use. While the paint­ed met­al por­tions of the bar­rel have picked up a few scuffs, the over­all build remains resilient and hard­wear­ing. The zoom ring is impec­ca­ble, turn­ing smooth­ly with min­i­mal effort, and strik­ing a sol­id bal­ance between resis­tance and flu­id­i­ty. It shows no signs of wear or grit even after years of use. Four focal lengths—50, 70, 90, and 140mm—are clear­ly marked in white on the black plas­tic.

Even though it’s an inter­nal­ly zoom­ing lens, there is a change in bal­ance when adjust­ing focal lengths due to the inter­nal shift­ing of glass. The lens is most front-heavy at 50mm and most back-heavy at 140mm, although the shift is almost imper­cep­ti­ble.

The aper­ture ring has crisp detents at every 1/3 stop, with clear mark­ings for full stops from ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/22, and the “A” for auto­mat­ic engraved in red. The focus ring turns smooth­ly but its damp­en­ing is too resis­tant to fast rota­tion, espe­cial­ly when the lens is cold, mak­ing man­u­al focus­ing a challenge—a point I’ll address in the focus­ing sec­tion.

Like many tele­pho­to zoom and prime lens­es, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR comes with a tri­pod col­lar and foot that allows the cam­era and lens to be mount­ed to a tri­pod clos­er to the system’s cen­tre of mass. Imag­ine hav­ing a big, heavy lens attached to your cam­era and mount­ing the whole set­up to the tri­pod using only the camera’s tri­pod sock­et. The cen­tre of bal­ance ends up far ahead of the tri­pod head, caus­ing the sys­tem to sag for­ward and mak­ing pre­cise com­po­si­tions difficult—especially with cheap ball-heads. A tri­pod col­lar and foot solve this by shift­ing the mount­ing point clos­er to the com­bined cen­tre of mass of the cam­era and lens, keep­ing both bal­anced almost direct­ly above the tri­pod head. The col­lar also lets you rotate the cam­era and lens between hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal ori­en­ta­tions with­out throw­ing off the bal­ance or need­ing to read­just the tri­pod head.

The tri­pod col­lar rotates smooth­ly after loos­en­ing the lock­ing screw. Two white marks on the col­lar indi­cate the hor­i­zon­tal and ver­ti­cal posi­tions, but they don’t fea­ture detents, so you’ll have to align them visu­al­ly. 

The tri­pod foot serves as a nat­ur­al han­dle when car­ry­ing the cam­era and lens, but it fea­tures a high pro­file, sit­ting fur­ther from the bar­rel than I would pre­fer. It’s uncom­fort­able when shoot­ing handheld—resting the foot on the palm of my left hand while manip­u­lat­ing the zoom ring is awk­ward due to the dis­tance my fin­gers must reach. The edges of the foot are also sharp, dig­ging into my flesh dur­ing extend­ed use. You can avoid such dis­com­fort by loos­en­ing the two mount­ing screws that secure the foot to the col­lar. How­ev­er, the process is some­what tedious and means the foot can no longer act as a han­dle. Instead, I pre­fer to rotate the foot out of the way. The ide­al posi­tion has the foot point­ing approx­i­mate­ly 45° to the top left; here, the foot doesn’t inter­fere with zoom­ing, and the col­lar lock­ing screw doesn’t impinge on my fin­gers hold­ing the cam­era grip.

Addi­tion­al­ly, the tri­pod foot is not Arca-Swiss com­pat­i­ble, like many Sig­ma and Tam­ron lens­es have fea­tured for years, and like Fujifilm’s own XF 150–600mm now includes. So you’ll have to attach a mount­ing plate to the foot for use with a tri­pod or mono­pod.

The plas­tic petal-style lens hood clicks into place secure­ly. Its satin exte­ri­or fin­ish shows wear quick­ly. The slid­ing access pan­el for manip­u­lat­ing cir­cu­lar polar­iz­er and vari­able neu­tral den­si­ty fil­ters is ter­ri­bly designed and prac­ti­cal­ly unusable—it’s dif­fi­cult to remove (espe­cial­ly with gloves), easy to lose, and the win­dow is too far ahead of where most CPL fil­ters sit, mean­ing you have to stretch your fin­gers over and back to reach the rotat­ing rim. It’s so point­less that I’ve stopped both­er­ing to try.

Weath­er seal­ing has per­formed admirably. The rub­ber gas­ket around the mount is intact and free of cracks or dete­ri­o­ra­tion, and the aper­ture, zoom, and focus rings remain smooth and free of grit despite fre­quent use in dusty envi­ron­ments. While the lens remains ful­ly func­tion­al, a flash­light test reveals inter­nal dust accu­mu­la­tion, serv­ing as a reminder that these lens­es are weath­er resis­tant but not weath­er­proof.

When I first pur­chased the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR in 2016, its reduced size and weight com­pared to my Canon EF 70–200mm F2.8 L IS USM II felt like a mas­sive unbur­den­ing. How­ev­er, as the years wore on, I came to recon­sid­er that assess­ment. New­er designs for full-frame cam­eras from Sony and Canon push the bound­aries of light­ness for ƒ/2.8 lens­es. For exam­ple, the Canon RF 70–200mm F2.8 L IS USM cap­tures over twice as much light to cov­er the full-frame for­mat yet weighs only 100 g more. In this con­text, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 no longer feels as light­weight or com­pact as it once did, despite Fujifilm’s mar­ket­ing mate­r­i­al con­tin­u­ing to pro­mote these mer­its.

The only phys­i­cal switch on the lens is for turn­ing OIS on and off—there’s no focus dis­tance lim­iter or OIS mode selec­tor (e.g., pan­ning vs full sta­bi­liza­tion). Still, we should count our bless­ings: Fujifilm’s XF 10–24mm F4 R OIS WR removed the OIS on/off switch, leav­ing the lens with no phys­i­cal switch­es and set­ting a new low bar for tac­tile func­tion­al­i­ty.

Like every Fuji­film lens fea­tur­ing a lin­ear motor, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 rat­tles if you shake it when pow­ered off. Lin­ear motors slide along rails, and the clunks you hear when shak­ing the lens are the motors hit­ting their stops. It doesn’t feel fragile—I’m con­fi­dent Fuji­film has account­ed for the looseness—but it’s about time man­u­fac­tur­ers addressed this by find­ing a way to park lin­ear motors in place when cam­eras are pow­ered off, if only to give pho­tog­ra­phers peace of mind. When pow­ered on, all rat­tling ceas­es as the motors engage, though their engage­ment swaps mechan­i­cal noise for a sub­tle elec­tron­ic whir that’s notice­able if you lis­ten close­ly.

Optical Performance

Over the years, my Fuji­film XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR has deliv­ered strong opti­cal per­for­mance across its range in real-world pho­tos of actu­al sub­jects.

Sharpness

The XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR is sharp across its zoom range.

At 50mm, cen­tre sharp­ness is excel­lent wide open at ƒ/2.8 and improves fur­ther at ƒ/4, which is the sweet spot for near-uni­form sharp­ness across the frame. The mid­frame and cor­ners are good at ƒ/2.8 but notice­ably sharp­er by ƒ/5.6. Dif­frac­tion begins creep­ing in around ƒ/11, with ƒ/16 and small­er aper­tures show­ing a clear reduc­tion in fine detail.

At 90mm, the cen­tre sharp­ness remains phe­nom­e­nal at ƒ/2.8, though the cor­ners are soft­er com­pared to 50mm. Stop­ping down from ƒ/4 to ƒ/5.6 bal­ances the frame nice­ly. By ƒ/11, dif­frac­tion soft­en­ing is vis­i­ble, and by ƒ/16, the sharp­ness drop is more pro­nounced, par­tic­u­lar­ly at the edges.

At 140mm, the cen­tre stays impres­sive­ly sharp at ƒ/2.8, though the mid­frame and cor­ners lag fur­ther behind. ƒ/5.6 is the sweet spot for over­all frame sharp­ness, though the cor­ners nev­er quite match the centre’s lev­el of def­i­n­i­tion. Stop­ping down fur­ther pro­vides dimin­ish­ing returns—while ƒ/8 is still accept­able, dif­frac­tion becomes notice­able at ƒ/11 and unac­cept­able at ƒ/16 and beyond.

A Note on Sharp­ness: Wor­ry­ing about edge-to-edge sharp­ness with fast tele­pho­to zooms is a niche con­cern. In most real-world sce­nar­ios, the cor­ners will be well out­side the depth of field and blurred. So unless you’re a cor­ner-to-cor­ner land­scape perfectionist—or peep­ing pix­els for a review—such con­cerns are large­ly aca­d­e­m­ic.

That said, I strong­ly advise avoid­ing aper­tures small­er than ƒ/11 unless you’re expe­ri­enced and know the com­pro­mise you’re mak­ing. Stop­ping down beyond that point results in a notice­able loss of fine detail and micro­con­trast due to dif­frac­tion, espe­cial­ly on Fuji­film’s 40 megapix­el cam­era bod­ies. For most users, stick­ing to ƒ/2.8 to ƒ/8 will deliv­er excep­tion­al sharp­ness with­out sac­ri­fic­ing detail.

Chromatic Aberrations

The XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR man­ages chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions impres­sive­ly well. Trans­verse chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions are so minimal—even with cor­rec­tions disabled—that you sim­ply won’t notice them in real-world shots.

Sim­i­lar­ly, I couldn’t find any mean­ing­ful instances of axi­al chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions (the colour fring­ing found in the blur­ry region in front of and behind the focus plane). In short: noth­ing to see here, no sam­ples required. 

Bokeh

I find the bokeh pro­duced by the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR pleas­ing, though I’ll admit I’m not over­ly picky about bokeh to begin with. The tran­si­tion between blur­ry regions and sharp focus is smooth and unevent­ful, free of the dread­ed “ner­vous­ness” or hazi­ness that plagued the XF 16–55mm F2.8 R LM WR.

Out-of-focus high­lights appear as even discs, with minor out­lin­ing and no detectable onion ring­ing. As high­lights move toward the edges of the frame, they grad­u­al­ly shift from cir­cu­lar discs to cat’s‑eye shapes, rem­i­nis­cent of the var­i­ous phas­es of a gib­bous Moon or Amer­i­can foot­balls. Back­ground blur gen­er­al­ly has a smoother, more pleas­ing qual­i­ty than fore­ground blur, which tends to look slight­ly more fren­zied.

The image below demon­strates the dif­fer­ence between back­ground (ini­tial image) and fore­ground bokeh (hov­er cur­sor over the image) on the matryosh­ka doll in the cen­tre.

The next four images show the max­i­mum achiev­able back­ground blur when the lens is focused to the min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance and set to ƒ/2.8.

I’ve includ­ed sev­er­al exam­ples below to help you form your own opin­ion about the bokeh. All of the pho­tos were tak­en wide open at ƒ/2.8.

Distortion and Vignetting

Like most mir­ror­less sys­tems, Fuji­film’s X sys­tem relies on in-cam­era lens cor­rec­tion pro­files to address opti­cal issues like dis­tor­tion and vignetting. How­ev­er, Fujifilm’s approach is inflex­i­ble because these cor­rec­tions can’t be dis­abled in-cam­era and, with old­er cam­eras like my X‑PRO2 and X‑T2, are auto­mat­i­cal­ly applied to raw files in Adobe Light­room Clas­sic with no option to dis­able them.

New­er cam­eras, such as my X‑H2S, offer more flex­i­bil­i­ty in Light­room, allow­ing the cor­rec­tions to be turned off and reveal­ing the “naked” out­put. If you’re curi­ous about what’s hid­den, you can also use a raw edi­tor like RawTher­a­pee, which not only lets you dis­able the pro­files but also offers inde­pen­dent lens cor­rec­tions that often out­per­form Fujifilm’s own embed­ded ones.

I’m not a fan of rely­ing on soft­ware corrections—it feels like a crutch. Sig­nif­i­cant dis­tor­tion cor­rec­tions stretch pix­els and reduce sharp­ness in the areas being warped, while vignetting cor­rec­tions work by grad­u­al­ly bright­en­ing the dark areas, a process that adds noise.

For­tu­nate­ly, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR doesn’t need heavy cor­rec­tions like my Canon RF 28–70mm F2.8 IS STM. With­out pro­files, it shows only minor pin­cush­ion dis­tor­tion at 50mm, increas­ing to mod­er­ate lev­els at 140mm. If you leave the cor­rec­tions enabled in your raw edi­tor, you’ll see a dis­tor­tion-free image.

This pho­to is at 70mm. Pass your cur­sor over the pho­to to view the uncor­rect­ed dis­tor­tions.

And the fol­low­ing pho­to is at 140mm:

Vignetting at ƒ/2.8 is quite notice­able across the focal range, espe­cial­ly against uni­form back­grounds. It’s great­ly reduced by ƒ/4, most­ly gone by ƒ/5.6, but only ful­ly elim­i­nat­ed at ƒ/11, even with in-cam­era pro­files. Despite Fuji­film’s heavy reliance on manda­to­ry lens cor­rec­tions, the sup­plied pro­files nev­er seem to ful­ly van­quish vignetting at any of the aper­ture stops. The two pairs of pho­tos below com­pare three dif­fer­ent raw pho­tos processed in RawTher­a­pee.

The first pair shows the dif­fer­ence between Fuji­film’s stan­dard cor­rec­tions against no cor­rec­tions (hov­er cur­sor over image to see the lat­ter).

And this pair shows the dif­fer­ence between Fuji­film’s stan­dard cor­rec­tions against RawTher­a­pee’s more com­plete cor­rec­tions (hov­er over image to see).

Flare and Sunstars

Every lens will flare under the right mix of con­di­tions. Flare occurs when stray light enters the lens and bounces off inter­nal ele­ments, cre­at­ing hazy, low-con­trast areas or streaks of light. Ghosts, how­ev­er, are different—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.

The XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR has a good han­dle on flare even with bright light sources in the frame. It’s even bet­ter at man­ag­ing ghosts—I’ve nev­er seen a sin­gle ghost­ly appari­tion in my library of thou­sands of pho­tos. For any­one sen­si­tive to flare, the sim­plest solu­tion is to avoid includ­ing the sun in your com­po­si­tions, which should be easy using a tele­pho­to zoom with a rel­a­tive­ly nar­row field of view.

The fol­low­ing is a gallery show­ing a vari­ety of hypo­thet­i­cal flare pos­si­bil­i­ties under unre­al­is­tic con­di­tions.

And here are the most extreme exam­ples I can find from my gallery of thou­sands of images.

Sun­stars are sharpest at ƒ/22, but dif­frac­tion soft­ens the rest of the image. At wider aper­tures, the results are gen­er­al­ly poor­ly defined and unim­pres­sive—except at ƒ/6.4. This aper­ture offers a beau­ti­ful com­pro­mise between main­tain­ing sharp detail across the frame and pro­duc­ing sun­stars with pleas­ing shape. While the spokes at ƒ/6.4 aren’t as sharply defined as at ƒ/22, they form a far more grace­ful star­burst than what you’d get at most oth­er aper­tures.

Focusing and Autofocus

The XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR is a nine-year-old design, yet its trio of lin­ear motors remains state-of-the-art in terms of speed and pre­ci­sion.

Autofocus Speed and Accuracy

In bright con­di­tions, aut­o­fo­cus is excep­tion­al­ly fast across all shoot­ing sit­u­a­tions, whether you’re cap­tur­ing por­traits, wildlife, or sports. Per­for­mance slows notice­ably in dim light­ing, but this reflects the lim­i­ta­tions of the camera’s aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem rather than the lens itself. The lin­ear motors have no trou­ble dri­ving the focus group into posi­tion quickly—it’s the cam­eras that strug­gle to keep up.

In terms of accu­ra­cy, the lens is high­ly reli­able for con­tin­u­ous focus (AF‑C) when track­ing sta­t­ic or pre­dictably mov­ing sub­jects with good con­trast. How­ev­er, Fujifilm’s aut­o­fo­cus per­for­mance for sub­ject track­ing and detec­tion lags behind com­peti­tors, which impacts the lens’s full poten­tial when track­ing errat­ic or fast-mov­ing sub­jects. In low light, the lens may hunt, but again, that’s more of a cam­era issue than a lens flaw.

Autofocus Noise

The lin­ear motors oper­ate almost silent­ly dur­ing focus changes. How­ev­er, the lens emits a faint but notice­able elec­tron­ic whine when­ev­er the cam­era is pow­ered on—even if you’re not active­ly focus­ing or tak­ing a shot. This noise like­ly comes from the elec­tron­ics main­tain­ing the motors in their ready state.

Manual Focusing

Like most aut­o­fo­cus mir­ror­less lens­es, the XF 50–140mm F2.8 uses focus-by-wire, where the focus ring elec­tron­i­cal­ly instructs the motor to move the glass rather than being mechan­i­cal­ly cou­pled to the focus­ing group of ele­ments. Lin­ear motor lens­es are always focus-by-wire. While man­u­fac­tur­ers like Canon man­age to sim­u­late a smooth, tac­tile man­u­al focus expe­ri­ence, Fujifilm’s imple­men­ta­tion is among the worst.

The focus ring on this lens is par­tic­u­lar­ly frus­trat­ing: it’s heav­i­ly damp­ened, mak­ing it unnec­es­sar­i­ly resis­tant to quick turns and changes, and the fric­tion increas­es even more in cold weath­er. Addi­tion­al­ly, the focus throw—the dis­tance you need to turn the ring to shift from min­i­mum focus to infinity—is inex­plic­a­bly long, requir­ing mul­ti­ple turns for even mod­er­ate adjust­ments. This makes pre­cise man­u­al focus­ing a slow, cum­ber­some process.

Fuji­film cam­eras offer two focus ring sen­si­tiv­i­ty set­tings: “Lin­ear” and “Non-Lin­ear.” Lin­ear mode is sup­posed to mim­ic the behav­iour of a man­u­al focus lens, where the degree of rota­tion direct­ly cor­re­sponds to how much focus changes. Non-Lin­ear mode varies focus speed based on how fast you turn the ring. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, nei­ther mode improves the expe­ri­ence enough to make man­u­al focus feel nat­ur­al. In prac­tice, the lens is almost unus­able for man­u­al focus tasks, par­tic­u­lar­ly in harsh con­di­tions. I had a dread­ful time pho­tograph­ing the sharp­ness tests above in ‑2°C weath­er.

Focus Breathing

The lens exhibits notice­able focus breath­ing across its focal range, with more pro­nounced breath­ing at the longer end. When focused at clos­er dis­tances, the lens pro­duces a slight­ly wider field of view com­pared to when focused at infin­i­ty. The exam­ples below show the extent of focus breath­ing from infin­i­ty (ini­tial image) to min­i­mum focus­ing dis­tance (hov­er image).

50mm:

90mm:

140mm:

Compatibility with Teleconverters

The XF 50–140mm is com­pat­i­ble with Fujifilm’s 1.4x and 2.0x tele­con­vert­ers. How­ev­er, I don’t own either and can’t com­ment on how the lens per­forms when paired with them.

Conclusion

The XF 50–140mm F2.8 R LM OIS WR has served me well over the past eight years, deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al per­for­mance and remark­able tough­ness across count­less shoots since I bought it in 2016. Unlike cam­eras, lens­es don’t need fre­quent updates—their func­tion­al­i­ty has much more stay­ing power—and this lens remains a reli­able work­horse.

That said, it’s dif­fi­cult to rec­om­mend at full, and rather inflat­ed, retail price in 2025. The lens’s weight and size feel less impres­sive com­pared to more com­pact full-frame equiv­a­lents released in recent years. Its opti­cal per­for­mance at the long end of the focal range soft­ens slight­ly and shows notice­able vignetting wide open. The tri­pod foot has too much flex, lacks Arca-Swiss com­pat­i­bil­i­ty and falling short in hand­held ergonom­ics, and the over­all col­lar design feels out­dat­ed. Com­pound­ing this, the lens is priced with the halo of a fast ƒ/2.8 zoom, but its real-world depth of field equivalence—closer to a 70–200mm ƒ/4.2 on a full-frame system—places it in a class that typ­i­cal­ly doesn’t com­mand the same pre­mi­um.

How­ev­er, if you can find a good used sam­ple, you’re in luck. In the Greater Toron­to Area, list­ings on Face­book Mar­ket­place and Kiji­ji reg­u­lar­ly sell for 60–80% of the pre-tax retail price, and it’s an espe­cial­ly good deal at the low­er end of that range. At that price, this lens becomes an excel­lent val­ue for what it offers, espe­cial­ly if you need a fast tele­pho­to zoom for por­traits, events, or wildlife.

If you’re con­sid­er­ing buy­ing used, be sure to read my guide on what to check when buy­ing a used lens in per­son to ensure you walk away with a reli­able copy.

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Sample Photos