Fujinon XF 8mm F3.5 R WR Review: Ultra-Wide, Ultra-Challenging

Introduction

I’ve had a strained rela­tion­ship with ultra wide-angle lens­es. They’re dif­fi­cult to use well—their extreme angle of view pulls every­thing in, mak­ing it easy to cre­ate clut­tered, dis­tort­ed shots if you’re not care­ful. But I keep com­ing back to them because they offer nov­el, exag­ger­at­ed per­spec­tives that are tremen­dous­ly fun to play with. My first was a Sig­ma 10–20mm, bought just a month after get­ting my first DSLR, a Canon EOS 30D, in the sum­mer of 2006. Pre­dictably, I used it in ways I now know aren’t ideal—cramming every­thing into the frame in small spaces, attempt­ing awk­ward­ly close por­traits, cap­tur­ing too much sky, ceil­ing, or pave­ment, and gen­er­al­ly let­ting the lens’ width dic­tate the shot.

As I got bet­ter at com­pos­ing wide-angle shots, the Sigma’s opti­cal lim­i­ta­tions became hard­er to ignore. In the ear­ly 2010s, I upgrad­ed to Canon’s EF 16–35mm F2.8 L II on a full-frame set­up. It was a major improve­ment and saw reg­u­lar use, but in 2016, I switched from Canon DSLRs to Fujifilm’s com­pact X Series. For a while, I made do with Fujifilm’s excel­lent primes, but the ultra-wide temp­ta­tion struck again, and I picked up an XF 10–24mm F4. After a few trips and vaca­tions, I start­ed to neglect it, and it sat unused in my Nanuk 935 case—my least-used lens. I even­tu­al­ly sold it and decid­ed to go with­out an ultra-wide.

Then, ear­li­er this year, a friend asked me to pho­to­graph sev­er­al of his com­mer­cial properties—tight spots, strip malls, and indus­tri­al ware­hous­es that need­ed a wider per­spec­tive than any of my cur­rent gear could han­dle. That’s when I remem­bered Fuji­film released the Fuji­non XF 8mm F3.5 R WR a year pri­or. Its extreme width was fascinating—8mm on APS‑C is equiv­a­lent to 12mm on full frame, a per­spec­tive I’d nev­er expe­ri­enced. After five months of own­er­ship, I’m ready to dive into what this lens is like to use, how it per­forms, and whether this ultra-wide is worth con­sid­er­ing.


XF 8mm F3.5 R WR At-a-Glance

Strengths:

Great cen­tre and mid-frame sharp­ness

Tiny and light­weight

Love­ly aes­thet­ics

Great aper­ture ring detents

Accepts screw-in fil­ters

Min­i­mal focus breath­ing

Silent AF motor in AF‑C

Very fast AF

Nice sun­stars at ƒ/16 and ƒ/22

Good flare and ghost­ing con­trol

Weath­er-sealed

Weaknesses:

Incon­sis­tent aut­o­fo­cus, empha­siz­ing:

  • Cur­va­ture of field
  • Periph­er­al soft­ness

Periph­er­al CA

Strong uncor­rect­ed dis­tor­tions

IBIS-induced cor­ner soft­ness, espe­cial­ly in merid­ion­al details

Slight pat­ter­ing sound of iris move­ment in MF/AF‑S modes

Insuf­fi­cient focus ring damp­en­ing

Neutral/Missing:

Short focus throw with Lin­ear focus option (MFD to ∞ with min­i­mal rota­tion; adjust in Button/Dial Set­tings > Lens Zoom/Focus Set­ting > Focus Ring Oper­a­tion > Non­lin­ear)


XF 8mm F3.5 R WR – Build Quality & Design

Like most of Fujifilm’s XF lens­es, the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR fea­tures a most­ly met­al exte­ri­or. The aper­ture and focus rings, fil­ter mount­ing thread, and hood mount are all paint­ed met­al, lend­ing to its sol­id feel. The rear part of the bar­rel behind the aper­ture ring and the aper­ture ring lock release but­ton are the only plas­tic com­po­nents. The lens feels sub­stan­tial and well-built; there’s no jig­gling, rat­tling, or any oth­er noise when it’s shak­en. Addi­tion­al­ly, unlike some of Canon’s plas­tic-bar­reled L‑series lens­es, the XF 8mm F3.5 remains rigid under pres­sure with­out any com­pres­sion.

A black rub­ber gas­ket encir­cles the lens mount and cor­rob­o­rates the “WR” des­ig­na­tion in the name, which is Fujifilm’s short­hand for weath­er resis­tance. Weigh­ing just 215g and mea­sur­ing 52.8mm from the mount flange to the front, the lens is com­pact and high­ly portable. Despite its stur­dy build, it feels almost sur­pris­ing­ly light, as if there’s emp­ty space with­in its shell.

The aper­ture ring is well-craft­ed, fea­tur­ing dis­tinct, firm detents for one-third stop incre­ments. Except for ƒ/3.5, which rep­re­sents the max­i­mum aper­ture, the bar­rel only has mark­ings for the stan­dard full-stop f‑numbers, which are etched into the met­al and paint­ed white. The XF 8mm F3.5 R WR blends mod­ern sen­si­bil­i­ties with clas­sic, func­tion­al cues to make the lens dis­tinct­ly and rec­og­niz­ably a Fuji­film lens.

XF 8mm F3.5 R WR – Ergonomics and Handling

Thanks to its com­pact and light­weight design, the XF8mm F3.5 R WR bal­ances well on my Fuji­film X‑H2S, mak­ing it easy to car­ry for extend­ed peri­ods with­out feel­ing knuck­le strain. How­ev­er, the bar­rel is so short, I find the aper­ture ring is set clos­er to the cam­era body than I’d pre­fer. The fin­gers on my left hand nat­u­ral­ly rest clos­er to the focus­ing ring, requir­ing an adjust­ment in how I hold the cam­era when switch­ing to this lens.

The detents on the aper­ture are firm enough to avoid acci­den­tal shifts. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the focus­ing ring moves effort­less­ly and with­out much fric­tion. While this isn’t sig­nif­i­cant in AF‑S or AF‑C modes (unless you’ve enabled AF+MF on page 2 of AF/MF Set­ting), it becomes prob­lem­at­ic in MF mode—a neces­si­ty giv­en the lens’s incon­sis­tent aut­o­fo­cus per­for­mance, which I’ll dis­cuss lat­er.

The aper­ture ring fea­tures an Auto­mat­ic posi­tion for seam­less inte­gra­tion with Shut­ter Speed Pri­or­i­ty (S), Pro­gram AE ℗, or full auto modes. Engag­ing or dis­en­gag­ing this mode requires press­ing the aper­ture ring lock release but­ton while rotat­ing the ring in and out of the Auto­mat­ic posi­tion.

As a WR (weath­er-resis­tant) lens, I expect it to han­dle inclement weath­er with ease. I’ve used Fujifilm’s WR lens­es in rain and heavy snow­fall, and they’ve always come through unscathed. One advan­tage of this lens is its com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with thread­ed fil­ters, which is an uncom­mon fea­ture on ultra-wide lens­es. This lets you to use a clear fil­ter for added pro­tec­tion when work­ing in sandy or dusty con­di­tions. How­ev­er, in cold­er envi­ron­ments, using the lens with thick gloves can be tricky due to the close place­ment of the aper­ture and focus rings. The lim­it­ed space makes pre­cise adjust­ments more dif­fi­cult when your dex­ter­i­ty is reduced.

XF 8mm F3.5 R WR – Features

The mar­quee fea­ture of the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR is its ultra-wide angle of view—a full-frame equiv­a­lent of 12mm or 121° (diag­o­nal), 88.5° (ver­ti­cal), and 111.5° hor­i­zon­tal angle of view—squeezed into a com­pact and light­weight design. It’s an attrac­tive option for pho­tog­ra­phers look­ing for an ultra-wide lens that does­n’t com­pro­mise porta­bil­i­ty.

The lens offers an aper­ture range from ƒ/3.5 to ƒ/22, selec­table in 1/3‑stop incre­ments, pro­vid­ing a total expo­sure range of 5 and 1/3 stops. Set­ting the aper­ture ring to “A” allows aper­ture con­trol through a cam­er­a’s com­mand dial when shoot­ing in Man­u­al (M) or Aper­ture Pri­or­i­ty (A) modes. The aper­ture ring itself is non-func­tion­al in Shut­ter Speed Pri­or­i­ty and Pro­gram AE modes.

While weath­er resis­tance isn’t heav­i­ly mar­ket­ed, Fuji­film’s press release notes that the lens is sealed at 10 points along the bar­rel and can oper­ate in tem­per­a­tures as low as ‑10°C. Addi­tion­al­ly, the front ele­ment fea­tures a flu­o­rine coat­ing that repels water and resists smudges.

The XF 8mm F3.5 R WR focus­es inter­nal­ly, so the lens doesn’t extend or retract dur­ing oper­a­tions, which is always a pos­i­tive in my books. While Fuji­film doesn’t spec­i­fy the type of focus­ing motor it uses, it’s clear from the absence of a lin­ear motor (LM) des­ig­na­tion that it’s some­thing more con­ven­tion­al. Despite this, Fuji­film claims it can achieve focus in as lit­tle as 0.02 sec­onds. While I don’t pos­sess the means to ver­i­fy that fig­ure, I can con­firm the lens focus­es impres­sive­ly fast when pulling focus from infin­i­ty to MFD, and in reverse, too.

I espe­cial­ly wel­come the inclu­sion of a stan­dard 62mm thread­ed fil­ter mount. Unlike many ultra-wide lens­es that fea­ture bul­bous front ele­ments that make stan­dard fil­ters impos­si­ble to attach, the front of the XF 8mm F3.5 is small enough to accom­mo­date them direct­ly. This allows users to eas­i­ly use their favourite 62mm fil­ters with­out need­ing spe­cial­ized adapters, hold­ers, or gels. For exam­ple, an ND fil­ter can be a great addi­tion to this lens. How­ev­er, I’d cau­tion against using a polar­iz­er on ultra-wide lens­es, espe­cial­ly in scenes with large areas of the sky, as it can cre­ate uneven dark­en­ing.

A rift into space? A hole in the ozone lay­er? No, an ultra-wide lens with a polar­iz­ing fil­ter. This was shot at Toron­to’s Cher­ry Beach in August 2022 with my old XF10-24mm­F4 R OIS and Fuji­film X‑T2.

XF 8mm F3.5 R WR – Image Quality

Bokeh and Background Blur

Bokeh is the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty of the out-of-focus areas in a pho­to­graph, par­tic­u­lar­ly how the lens ren­ders them. It describes the shapes, smooth­ness, and over­all appear­ance of the defo­cused regions, as well as the tran­si­tion from sharp focus to blur. Bokeh is often an after­thought for choos­ing ultra-wide lens­es like the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR, as the max­i­mum achiev­able back­ground or fore­ground blur is min­i­mal, and typ­i­cal sub­jects often ben­e­fit from a large depth of field.

With that said, the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR pro­duces attrac­tive, smooth bokeh when focused at or near the MFD, and fea­tures inof­fen­sive tran­si­tions between sharp focus and blur. Keep in mind that images ren­dered by ultra-wide rec­ti­lin­ear lens­es exhib­it sig­nif­i­cant periph­er­al stretch­ing, which, in the con­text of bokeh, can make the edges and cor­ners of the frame appear blur­ri­er than the cen­tral region when every­thing is equal­ly out of focus. This effect can influ­ence how bokeh is per­ceived, so form your own impres­sions with my sam­ple pho­tos.

Distortion

Opti­cal dis­tor­tions, like the bar­rel and pin­cush­ion vari­ety, make straight lines look curved in pho­tos. Fix­ing these keeps lines straight and makes the image look true to how you actu­al­ly expe­ri­ence the world. Despite Fujifilm’s press release boast­ing that the XF 8mm F3.5 incor­po­rates a med­ley of fan­cy glass ele­ments to con­trol dis­tor­tion, there is sig­nif­i­cant bar­rel dis­tor­tion when cor­rec­tion pro­files are dis­abled. With­out cor­rec­tion, this lens resem­bles a weak fish­eye lens. Thank­ful­ly, Fujifilm’s in-body cor­rec­tions are excep­tion­al and keep reality’s straight lines straight in the pic­ture. I cap­ture all pho­tos in raw for­mat (sor­ry, Ken Rock­well!) and process them in Light­room Clas­sic, which uses Adobe’s cus­tom pro­files that, regret­tably, aren’t as effec­tive as Fujifilm’s. Below, you’ll find com­par­isons show­ing Light­room cor­rec­tions, in-cam­era cor­rec­tions, and no cor­rec­tions at all.

Uncor­rect­ed opti­cal dis­tor­tions:

XF8mm F3.5 R WR. This is the extent of the uncor­rect­ed bar­rel dis­tor­tions, with vignetting removed so as not to dis­tract.

Opti­cal dis­tor­tions cor­rect­ed in-cam­era and Adobe Light­room Clas­sic v. 14.0.1:

This is a com­par­i­son of the effec­tive­ness of opti­cal dis­tor­tion lens pro­files as imple­ment­ed by my Fuji­film X‑H2S and Adobe Light­room Clas­sic 14.0.1.

Vignetting

Vignetting is prac­ti­cal­ly invis­i­ble when shoot­ing, thanks to Fujifilm’s in-body cor­rec­tions, which you can­not dis­able. How­ev­er, when ana­lyz­ing raw files with cor­rec­tions turned off, vignetting is mod­er­ate to strong at ƒ/3.5. Stop­ping down to ƒ/5.6 notice­ably reduces but does­n’t ful­ly elim­i­nate the shad­ing. It remains at a sim­i­lar lev­el from ƒ/5.6 to ƒ/22.

Below are sev­er­al real-world (i.e., not blank sur­faces) exam­ples of uncor­rect­ed vignetting and a com­par­i­son at dif­fer­ent aper­ture val­ues.

Fuji­non XF8mmF3.5 R WR at ƒ/3.5. These images illus­trate the effects of enabling and dis­abling Light­room cor­rec­tions for vignetting and opti­cal dis­tor­tions.

Two pho­tos com­par­ing the XF8mmF3.5 R WR shot at ƒ/3.5 to ƒ/5.6 with uncor­rect­ed vignetting but cor­rect­ed dis­tor­tions. Stop­ping down beyond ƒ/5.6 does not notice­ably improve the uncor­rect­ed vignetting in real-world images.

Lens cor­rec­tion pro­files are a divi­sive top­ic in pho­tog­ra­phy. While I’m frus­trat­ed by man­u­fac­tur­ers’ reliance on these dig­i­tal fixes—it feels like a short­cut on lens quality—I under­stand they allow engi­neers to focus on chal­lenges that can’t be addressed through pro­files, like res­o­lu­tion and com­pact design.

For gen­er­al use, the res­o­lu­tion loss and slight noise from cor­rec­tions are minor and often go unno­ticed. But with ultra-wide lens­es, espe­cial­ly in archi­tec­tur­al work where par­al­lel lines are cru­cial, these cor­rec­tions stretch already bur­dened out­ly­ing pix­els, reduc­ing def­i­n­i­tion and increas­ing the per­cep­tion of chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tion.

For vital work, a ded­i­cat­ed shift lens is ide­al. Fuji­film makes no shift lens­es for the X‑mount. Some third-par­ty lens adapters inte­grate shift move­ments. Laowa recent­ly stepped in with the 12–24mm f/5.6 Zoom Shift CF for X‑mount—a wel­come option for those need­ing opti­cal per­spec­tive con­trol.

Flare and Ghosting

Flare is con­trolled well and rarely over­whelms the frame, espe­cial­ly when stopped down to ƒ/5.6 or beyond. Ghosts can occur at odd angles, but they’re not scene-steal­ers. The lens per­forms admirably even in back­lit con­di­tions and main­tains good over­all con­trast with­out sig­nif­i­cant loss of con­trast.

Sunstars

The XF 8mm F3.5 R WR pro­duces beau­ti­ful, well-defined sun­stars at ƒ/16. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, shoot­ing at such small aper­tures dif­fracts light and impacts over­all image sharp­ness. Whether this com­pro­mise is accept­able depends on your needs. Just remem­ber to keep your sen­sor clean. The hor­i­zon­tal series below shows the pro­gres­sion of sun­stars from ƒ/3.5 to ƒ/22.

These pho­tos com­pare sun­stars at ƒ/16 and ƒ/22 against a dark­er back­ground.

Sharpness

The lens shows excel­lent cen­tre sharp­ness at its widest aper­tures, from ƒ/3.5 to ƒ/4. Clos­ing the aper­ture beyond this range doesn’t enhance cen­tre sharp­ness; in fact, dif­frac­tion starts to reduce clar­i­ty from ƒ/5.6 onwards. How­ev­er, you’d need to pix­el-peep spe­cif­ic sub­jects to notice it that ear­ly. The effect becomes more appar­ent under close inspec­tion at ƒ/8 and con­tin­ues to degrade pre­dictably at small­er aper­tures.

Edge and cor­ner sharp­ness steadi­ly improves until about ƒ/5.6, where it reach­es its peak—assuming it’s focused accu­rate­ly. But if it isn’t, peak sharp­ness is a toss-up between ƒ/5.6 and ƒ/8. On a high-res­o­lu­tion mon­i­tor, dif­frac­tion is notice­able at ƒ/11 in direct com­par­isons against shots tak­en at ƒ/5.6. By ƒ/16, dif­frac­tion is evi­dent with­out com­par­isons, and at ƒ/22, the image qual­i­ty becomes com­pa­ra­ble to that tak­en by a smudged smart­phone.

In sum­ma­ry, cen­tre sharp­ness is best at ƒ/3.5–4, cor­ner sharp­ness peaks at ƒ/5.6, and ƒ/8 is a good com­pro­mise for added depth of field. Giv­en the extreme field of view, the lens per­forms well for most pur­pos­es.

The com­par­i­son above was man­u­al­ly focused for each com­po­si­tion to avoid spoil­ing results due to aut­o­fo­cus inac­cu­ra­cies. The cen­tre and mid­frame columns depict a 300x300 pix­el region, and the cor­ner col­umn depicts a 300x600 pix­el region from the top right of the frame. Notice the airy disks vis­i­ble in the head­lights of the ƒ/16 and ƒ/22 cen­tre and mid­frame crops.

Aberrations

There are notice­able trans­verse chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions (CA) at the edges and cor­ners. These are reduced but not ful­ly elim­i­nat­ed by both in-cam­era and Adobe Light­room lens pro­files. Increas­ing the f‑number does­n’t mit­i­gate trans­verse CA. Coma is min­i­mal and appears only near the edges when pho­tograph­ing small points of light against dark back­grounds, such as city lights at night. With a max­i­mum aper­ture of ƒ/3.5, this isn’t an astropho­tog­ra­phy lens.

Field Curvature

The XF 8mm F3.5 has some field cur­va­ture, mean­ing the focal plane is not per­fect­ly flat but curves. This can result in the cor­ners appear­ing slight­ly blurred under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, even when the cen­tre looks sharp—not due to aber­ra­tions, but because they fall out­side the curved focal plane. Periph­er­al stretch­ing, a typ­i­cal effect in rec­ti­lin­ear ultra-wide lens­es, fur­ther empha­sizes this issue. As the lens projects a wide field of view onto a flat sen­sor, the edges appear pulled out­ward, mak­ing any slight focus errors at the periph­ery more notice­able com­pared to the cen­tre. (Remem­ber the pho­tos above illus­trat­ing max­i­mum defo­cus; notice how the spec­u­lar high­light near the bot­tom right cor­ner appears much larg­er than when it’s posi­tioned at the cen­ter of the frame. This high­lights how poor focus­ing is empha­sized towards the edges.)

XF 8mm F3.5 R WR – Focusing & Autofocus

My expe­ri­ence with aut­o­fo­cus on the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR has been incon­sis­tent, which, unfor­tu­nate­ly, exac­er­bates the prob­lems cre­at­ed by the field cur­va­ture out­lined above. Using this lens on my Fuji­film X‑H2S has been frus­trat­ing.

The aut­o­fo­cus incon­sis­ten­cy is most appar­ent when repeat­ed­ly focus­ing on fixed sub­jects at large dis­tances. Instead of con­sis­tent­ly focus­ing on infin­i­ty, the lens focus­es on dis­tances between approx­i­mate­ly 2m and infin­i­ty, and some­times beyond infin­i­ty. This errat­ic behav­iour is evi­dent in the MF/AF dis­tance indi­ca­tor, which shows the focus dis­tance shift­ing with almost every press of the AF-ON but­ton, despite no shifts in the sub­ject or select­ed focus point. It would be easy to blame my cam­era, espe­cial­ly since the X‑H2S has had its share of aut­o­fo­cus issues. How­ev­er, those prob­lems are most­ly relat­ed to unre­li­able sub­ject detec­tion. Plus, if it were the camera’s fault, I’d see the same behav­iour with all my lens­es. Yet, my XF 10–24mm F4 R OIS WR focus­es con­sis­tent­ly under iden­ti­cal con­di­tions.

Autofocus Speed and Noise

Despite these incon­sis­ten­cies, the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR boasts impres­sive aut­o­fo­cus speed, even with­out a lin­ear motor. Giv­en it’s an ultra-wide lens with incred­i­ble depth of field and a short focus throw, fast focus­ing is expect­ed. Noise lev­els dur­ing focus­ing vary by mode. In AF‑C mode, the lens is near­ly silent. How­ev­er, in AF‑S and MF modes, focus­ing trig­gers a soft pat­ter­ing sound from the iris diaphragm, which flut­ters as it stops down to the select­ed aper­ture dur­ing focus­ing. This hap­pens even when set to the max­i­mum aper­ture (🤷🏻‍♂️).

Manual Focus Experience, Close Focus, and Focus Indicator

Due to the incon­sis­tent aut­o­fo­cus, I rec­om­mend using MF or AF‑S with full-time man­u­al over­ride (Enable AF+MF on page 2 of AF/MF Set­ting) via the focus ring to achieve more con­sis­tent sharp­ness across the frame, espe­cial­ly at edges and cor­ners. The focus ring on the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR is smooth and sen­si­tive to adjust­ments, so chang­ing the camera’s focus ring sen­si­tiv­i­ty to “Non­lin­ear” is rec­om­mend­ed for bet­ter pre­ci­sion. The “Lin­ear” set­ting pro­vides too short a throw between MFD and infin­i­ty, mak­ing fine adjust­ments dif­fi­cult. For accu­ra­cy, I sug­gest using the stan­dard mag­ni­fied MF assist fea­ture.

The lens has a gen­er­ous close focus that Fuji­film claims is 18cm, but I’ve been able to focus down to about 14.5 to 15 cm from the focal plane indi­ca­tor, which pro­vides extra flex­i­bil­i­ty for unique per­spec­tives. The lens is focus-by-wire and does not fea­ture a phys­i­cal focus dis­tance scale, but this infor­ma­tion is avail­able elec­tron­i­cal­ly in the viewfind­er or on the LCD. Enable it for pre­cise man­u­al focus­ing or to spot aut­o­fo­cus errors before tak­ing the shot.

Focus Breathing

The XF 8mm F3.5 R WR shows a minus­cule amount of focus breath­ing, where the field of view becomes wider when focus­ing clos­er. While notice­able, this effect is minor and should not impact most pho­tog­ra­phers, although it may be worth con­sid­er­ing for video work that requires con­sis­tent fram­ing dur­ing focus shifts.

XF 8mm F3.5 R WR and IBIS

When I first received the lens, I noticed that some shots, par­tic­u­lar­ly those tak­en at shut­ter speeds below about 1/125s, showed periph­er­al smear­ing that appeared more like motion blur than typ­i­cal cor­ner soft­ness. After some exper­i­men­ta­tion, I real­ized the cause was the IBIS on my X‑H2S. Like most IBIS sys­tems, Fujifilm’s imple­men­ta­tion cen­ters its cor­rec­tions around the mid­dle of the frame rather than the active focus point. This does not jive well with ultra-wide lens­es, whose wide field of view turns minor move­ments of the cam­era into big­ger shifts at the edges than in the cen­tre of the frame. IBIS is bet­ter suit­ed for stan­dard and tele­pho­to lens­es, where cam­era shake affects the frame more even­ly.

Conclusion & Recommendations

The XF 8mm F3.5 R WR is a beau­ti­ful­ly designed, com­pact, and opti­cal­ly capa­ble ultra­w­ide lens, but its true poten­tial is com­pro­mised by errat­ic aut­o­fo­cus­ing that accen­tu­ates its field cur­va­ture. No lens is per­fect, but togeth­er, these imper­fec­tions achieve a per­fect­ly frus­trat­ing com­bo.

Wide-angle lens­es are typ­i­cal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with land­scape and archi­tec­tur­al pho­tog­ra­phy. The XF 8mm F3.5 can fit well as the ultra­w­ide com­po­nent in a light­weight trav­el and land­scape kit—far more portable than the hefty XF 8–16mm F2.8, which weighs near­ly four times as much. How­ev­er, I can’t rec­om­mend it for archi­tec­tur­al work requir­ing pre­ci­sion and edge-to-edge sharp­ness.

Beyond those tra­di­tion­al appli­ca­tions, ultra-wide lens­es invite cre­ative exper­i­men­ta­tion with per­spec­tive, which can trans­form every­day scenes by empha­siz­ing shapes and play­ing with size and scale. This unique field of view encour­ages pho­tog­ra­phers to explore nov­el com­po­si­tions and see the world with a fresh set of eyes.

If you’re intrigued by the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR and want to give it a shot, con­sid­er these tips to max­i­mize its poten­tial:

  • Set focus man­u­al­ly using the focus­ing ring, and for more pre­cise con­trol, choose Non­lin­ear in the focus ring oper­a­tion set­tings under Button/Dial Set­tings > Lens Zoom/Focus Set­ting.
  • Use the stan­dard focus assist set to max­i­mum mag­ni­fi­ca­tion to ensure crit­i­cal focus.
  • Enable the dig­i­tal depth of field scale set to the pix­el lev­el and avoid over­shoot­ing infin­i­ty focus (unless it’s the sharpest dis­tance).
  • For opti­mal cor­ner and edge sharp­ness, focus on those areas instead of the frame’s cen­tre. Your pri­ma­ry sub­ject should remain with­in the depth of field so long as it’s at the same dis­tance.
  • Dis­able IBIS for fast expo­sures to pre­vent cor­ner blur­ring, and always turn off IBIS when using a tri­pod.

Ulti­mate­ly, the XF 8mm F3.5 R WR can be a reward­ing com­pan­ion for those will­ing to slow down, focus man­u­al­ly, and work around its quirks. If you’re pre­pared to adapt your approach, this lens can be a fun, light­weight addi­tion for trav­ellers, trekkers, and street pho­tog­ra­phers.

The Fuji­non XF 8mm F3.5 R WR has been out for over a year so it should read­i­ly be avail­able on Face­book Mar­ket­place, and it’s def­i­nite­ly on eBay. So get it used to save some mon­ey. If you’re set on buy­ing new and found this review help­ful, con­sid­er using the affil­i­ate links below. It won’t change your price, but it does give me a small com­mis­sion to help keep these reviews com­ing. Thanks for read­ing!


XF 8mm F3.5 R WR – Sample Photos

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