Fujinon XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR Review: My Favourite Fujifilm Prime Lens

Introduction

The 35mm (full-frame equiv­a­lent) field of view is one I dis­cov­ered and fell in love with a cou­ple of years into my fledg­ling pho­tog­ra­phy hob­by. My first dig­i­tal inter­change­able lens cam­era was the Canon EOS 30D, an APS‑C mod­el. About 18 months after get­ting it, I took the plunge and ordered the Canon EF 35mm F1.4 L from an Amer­i­can retail­er. It was ear­ly Octo­ber 2007 and with the Cana­di­an dol­lar briefly worth more than the US dol­lar, that $1,100 USD price tag felt like a steal.

Not long after, I picked up a used Canon EOS Elan II film SLR and expe­ri­enced the lens at its nat­ur­al field of view for the first time. The com­bi­na­tion felt trans­for­ma­tive. That wide yet inti­mate per­spec­tive made it the per­fect “do-every­thing” focal length for me, whether I was shoot­ing por­traits, land­scapes, or street pho­tog­ra­phy. It also sparked my appre­ci­a­tion for prime lens­es, which has remained to this day. The restric­tion of a sin­gle focal length chal­lenges me to find new angles, explore the sub­ject and its space, and avoid the com­pla­cen­cy that some­times comes with zoom lens­es.

By the time I tran­si­tioned to full-frame dig­i­tal cam­eras like the Canon EOS 5D IV and lat­er the EOS 6D, the 35mm prime became a con­stant com­pan­ion, pro­duc­ing more of my favourite images than any oth­er lens in my kit.

When I moved to Fujifilm’s X‑series cam­eras in 2016, it was no sur­prise that I imme­di­ate­ly sought a replace­ment. The XF23mmF1.4 R—equivalent to 34.5mm on Fuji’s APS‑C sensors—quickly became a go-to lens for its ver­sa­til­i­ty. But over time, its short­com­ings began to show: jit­tery aut­o­fo­cus, coma smear­ing near the edges when shot wide open, and most frus­trat­ing­ly, a lack of weath­er seal­ing that lim­it­ed its use in, well, most of Canada’s weath­er.

So in August 2023, I treat­ed myself to a birth­day upgrade: the Fuji­non XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR. A “like-new, in-box” deal from Face­book Mar­ket­place brought this mod­ern replace­ment into my life, and it has bare­ly left my X‑H2S since. With its updat­ed opti­cal design, faster lin­ear motor aut­o­fo­cus, and weath­er seal­ing, it feels like the lens I always want­ed the orig­i­nal XF23mmF1.4 R to be.

Why do I love this lens so much? It deliv­ers con­sis­tent, beau­ti­ful results across gen­res. Whether I’m pho­tograph­ing friends, land­scapes, or street scenes, it nev­er feels like a com­pro­mise. Let’s explore what makes the XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR my favourite lens.

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XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR — Build quality and design

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR is solid­ly built, with a most­ly met­al con­struc­tion typ­i­cal of Fujifilm’s mod­ern XF lens­es. The aper­ture ring, focus ring, fil­ter thread, and hood mount are met­al, while the rear bar­rel sec­tion and lock release but­ton are plas­tic. At 375g, it’s 75g heav­ier than its pre­de­ces­sor, like­ly due to its upgrad­ed optics and weath­er seal­ing. It’s a notice­able dif­fer­ence, but the lens still feels man­age­able and well-bal­anced.

The “WR” in its name stands for weath­er resis­tance, and a black rub­ber gas­ket around the lens mount is the only vis­i­ble indi­ca­tor of this. In prac­tice, the lens has han­dled light rain and snow on my weath­er-sealed X‑H2S with­out issue, but I wouldn’t push it with a non-sealed body. Com­mon sense applies.

One minor annoy­ance is the sound of the lin­ear motors when the lens is pow­ered off. If you rotate or shake the lens (gen­tly or oth­er­wise), the motors clunk around inside. It doesn’t feel like it will break, and I’m con­fi­dent Fuji­film has account­ed for that loose­ness, but it’s 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.

At 77.8mm in length, the lens is slight­ly longer than its pre­de­ces­sor. The aper­ture ring offers firm detents in 1/3‑stop incre­ments and clicks into place reli­ably. Only the full f‑stops are marked on the ring, etched into the met­al and paint­ed white. A lock but­ton pre­vents acci­den­tal shifts into the “A” (Auto­mat­ic) posi­tion, which is use­ful in fast-paced sce­nar­ios.

Over­all, the lens feels stur­dy and depend­able. Its rel­a­tive­ly even girth through­out most of its length gives it a clean, bal­anced look.

XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR — Ergonomics and handling

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR bal­ances well on my Fuji­film X‑H2S. Despite its added weight and length com­pared to its pre­de­ces­sor, it doesn’t shift the cen­tre of grav­i­ty too far for­ward. I can com­fort­ably hold the cam­era one-hand­ed for extend­ed peri­ods with­out expe­ri­enc­ing strain or dis­com­fort in my mid­dle fin­ger knuck­le, which tends to bear the brunt of heav­ier setups. That said, your expe­ri­ence might vary if you’re using a small­er body like the X‑T50 or X‑M5.

The aper­ture ring is anoth­er strong point, effec­tive­ly bal­anc­ing detents that are firm enough to pre­vent acci­den­tal adjust­ments but not so stiff as to impede delib­er­ate changes. Its place­ment is ideal—close enough to the cam­era body to reach eas­i­ly with­out strain, yet far enough from the focus ring to avoid unin­ten­tion­al shifts, even when wear­ing gloves. I also appre­ci­ate the con­sis­tent rib­bing on Fujifilm’s aper­ture rings across XF lens­es, which makes them instant­ly rec­og­niz­able and intu­itive to use.

The focus ring feels equal­ly well-designed. It is gen­er­ous­ly wide and rotates smooth­ly, with just enough resis­tance to avoid unin­tend­ed move­ment. Its rib­bing is dis­tinct from the aper­ture ring, fur­ther help­ing to dif­fer­en­ti­ate the two con­trols by touch alone. For those who use Fujifilm’s Lin­ear focus mode (acces­si­ble under Button/Dial Set­tings > Lens Zoom/Focus Set­ting), the focus throw offers about 100–110° of rota­tion, ensur­ing smooth and accu­rate adjust­ments.

The includ­ed lens hood mounts eas­i­ly, with a firm snap con­firm­ing it’s locked in place. The addi­tion of a lock but­ton for the “A” (Auto­mat­ic) aper­ture posi­tion is anoth­er wel­come update. Acci­den­tal shifts between Auto and ƒ/16 can be frus­trat­ing, espe­cial­ly dur­ing fast-paced shoot­ing, and this small fea­ture elim­i­nates that risk.

XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR — Features

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR packs sev­er­al stand­out fea­tures, many of which are promi­nent­ly reflect­ed in its name. It offers a 23mm focal length (equiv­a­lent to 35mm on full-frame), a bright max­i­mum aper­ture of ƒ/1.4, a lin­ear motor aut­o­fo­cus sys­tem, and weath­er resis­tance.

Opti­cal­ly, the lens is designed with two aspher­i­cal and three extra-low dis­per­sion (ED) ele­ments to reduce var­i­ous aber­ra­tions, even when shoot­ing wide open. Fuji­film claims this improves over­all image sharp­ness and clar­i­ty, par­tic­u­lar­ly in high-con­trast scenes, and in prac­tice, it deliv­ers. The lens also fea­tures nine cir­cu­lar aper­ture blades, which con­tribute to smooth bokeh and 18-point sun­stars when stopped down to small­er aper­tures.

The aper­ture ring allows for 1/3‑stop adjust­ments across a range of ƒ/1.4 to ƒ/16, offer­ing a total expo­sure range of sev­en stops. It also includes an “A” (Auto­mat­ic) posi­tion, which locks into place with a but­ton to pre­vent unin­ten­tion­al shifts. This design is par­tic­u­lar­ly use­ful for switch­ing between man­u­al and auto­mat­ic aper­ture con­trol on the fly.

The lens’s lin­ear motor sys­tem ensures fast and near­ly silent aut­o­fo­cus. As not­ed ear­li­er, the motor does make a clunk­ing sound when pow­ered off due to the lack of an inter­nal lock­ing mech­a­nism. Aut­o­fo­cus is ful­ly inter­nal, mean­ing the lens doesn’t change length dur­ing operation—a fea­ture that con­tributes to dura­bil­i­ty. The 58mm fil­ter thread is a prac­ti­cal choice, ensur­ing com­pat­i­bil­i­ty with a wide range of ND, UV, and polar­iz­ing fil­ters.

Weath­er seal­ing at 11 points along the bar­rel pro­tects the lens from dust and mois­ture and ensures oper­a­tion at tem­per­a­tures as low as ‑10°C. I’ve used it in cold­er con­di­tions with­out issues, so it seems func­tion­al below that as well. While Fuji­film doesn’t pro­vide an offi­cial IP rat­ing, this lens has proven reli­able in light rain and snow on my weath­er-sealed X‑H2S.

Acces­sories include front and rear lens caps, a microfi­bre pouch, and a light­weight plas­tic petal hood. Appar­ent­ly, Fuji­film couldn’t afford to include the much nicer LH-XF23 II met­al hood, which is sold sep­a­rate­ly.

XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR — Image Quality

Sharpness

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR deliv­ers excel­lent sharp­ness across the frame on my 26-megapix­el Fuji­film X‑H2S, even when shoot­ing wide open at ƒ/1.4. In real-world use, the cen­tre sharp­ness is great at ƒ/1.4, improves notice­ably by ƒ/2, and peaks at ƒ/2.8–ƒ/4. Cor­ner sharp­ness fol­lows a sim­i­lar trend, reach­ing its best per­for­mance around ƒ/4. From ƒ/5.6–ƒ/8 onwards, dif­frac­tion begins to sub­tly soft­en details, becom­ing more appar­ent at ƒ/11 and ƒ/16. While these small­er aper­tures remain usable for some pur­pos­es, they’re not ide­al for large prints if detail preser­va­tion is your pri­or­i­ty.

In sum­ma­ry, if you’re after peak per­for­mance, stick to ƒ/2.8–ƒ/4 for land­scapes and detail-rich scenes, unless you need the extra depth of field, or ƒ/1.4 for sub­ject iso­la­tion. And if you’re not pix­el-peep­ing, you’ll be hap­py with the results at any aper­ture between ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/8.

Bokeh

Bokeh—the aes­thet­ic qual­i­ty of out-of-focus areas—is anoth­er strength of this lens. The tran­si­tions from sharp focus to blur are smooth and nat­ur­al. Out-of-focus high­lights show a faint onion ring pattern—caused by the inclu­sion of aspher­i­cal lens elements—and sub­tle out­lin­ing, although both are neg­li­gi­ble in nor­mal pho­tog­ra­phy. The nine-blad­ed aper­ture ensures pleas­ing cir­cu­lar high­lights, even as you stop down. While bokeh is sub­jec­tive, I find the XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR’s ren­der­ing excel­lent for envi­ron­men­tal por­traits and close-ups alike. That said, out-of-focus high­lights will take on a cat’s‑eye appear­ance at larg­er aper­tures due to mechan­i­cal vignetting—normal for most fast lens­es.

The next two images show the max­i­mum achiev­able back­ground blur when the lens is focused to MFD at ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/2.8.

The next two exam­ples show the extent of back­ground blur when the lens is focused to 1 metre at ƒ/1.4 and ƒ/2.8.

Next, are sev­er­al nor­mal pho­tos demon­strat­ing the shal­low depth of field and focus tran­si­tions. There are many more sam­ple pho­tos at the end.

Aberrations

Chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tions, both axi­al and trans­verse, are well-con­trolled. Axi­al chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tion (colour fring­ing in front of and behind the plane of focus) is vis­i­ble at ƒ/1.4 when pho­tos are viewed at high mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, but it’s sig­nif­i­cant­ly reduced by ƒ/2 and prac­ti­cal­ly gone by ƒ/2.8.

Trans­verse chro­mat­ic aber­ra­tion (colour fring­ing along high-con­trast edges) is near­ly invis­i­ble under most con­di­tions and dif­fi­cult to spot even at 200% mag­ni­fi­ca­tion, and the lens pro­files take care of it any­way. Take a look at the exam­ples below.

Distortion and vignetting

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR is a tale of two lens­es when it comes to dis­tor­tion. Out-of-cam­era JPEGs and processed raw files with lens pro­files enabled show min­i­mal dis­tor­tion, thanks to Fujifilm’s soft­ware cor­rec­tions. How­ev­er, if you dis­able these pro­files, bar­rel dis­tor­tion becomes notice­able, espe­cial­ly along straight lines at the frame edges. This is a step back from the orig­i­nal XF23mmF1.4 R, which had vir­tu­al­ly imper­cep­ti­ble dis­tor­tion even with­out pro­files enabled.

Pass your cur­sor over the next pho­to to see the sever­i­ty of the dis­tor­tions when lens cor­rec­tions are dis­abled. It’s cor­rect­ed using the pro­file includ­ed with Adobe Lightroom—practically iden­ti­cal to Fuji­film’s in-cam­era cor­rec­tions, which was­n’t the case in my review of the XF8mmF3.5 R WR.

Uncor­rect­ed vignetting is mod­er­ate to strong at ƒ/1.4 but grad­u­al­ly improves as you stop down. By ƒ/8, it’s as low as it gets, but not gone alto­geth­er. Most super­fast primes in this focal length range exhib­it some degree of vignetting, so it’s not a unique prob­lem. How­ev­er, cor­rec­tions work by grad­u­al­ly bright­en­ing the periph­ery, and the con­se­quence is increased noise in these areas. In most real-world sce­nar­ios, vignetting is neg­li­gi­ble and can even add a sub­tle sense of depth to por­traits and close-ups. The next two images show vignetting cor­rect­ed by lens pro­files. The first image is at ƒ/1.4 and the sec­ond at ƒ/5.6.

Hov­er your cur­sor over each pho­to to see the vignetting cor­rec­tions dis­abled.

Flare and ghosting

Flare and ghost­ing are well-con­trolled for the most part, but no lens is immune. Point the XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR at the sun or anoth­er bright light source, and you’ll see the usu­al colour­ful orbs and streaks. Stop­ping down reduces their size and inten­si­ty, but they don’t com­plete­ly dis­ap­pear. The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR han­dles flare rea­son­ably well, and the arti­facts are mild enough to add some char­ac­ter with­out becom­ing over­ly dis­tract­ing. That said, vir­tu­al­ly every lens will flare if you push it hard enough. Sim­ply don’t shoot direct­ly into bright lights if you wish to avoid them.

Sunstars

The nine-blad­ed aper­ture pro­duces 18-point sun­stars when stopped down between ƒ/11 and ƒ/16. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, these are nei­ther crisp nor par­tic­u­lar­ly well-defined. The round­ed aper­ture blades result in mushy spokes with uneven thick­ness, which might not sat­is­fy those expect­ing clean, geo­met­ric star­bursts. While they can add some artis­tic flair to cer­tain scenes, they fall short com­pared to what lens­es with straight-blad­ed diaphragms can achieve. And remem­ber, obtain­ing usable sun­stars means accept­ing dif­frac­tion. Pho­tog­ra­phy is the art of com­pro­mise.

XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR – Focusing and autofocus

Autofocus speed and noise

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR deliv­ers quick, accu­rate, and con­sis­tent aut­o­fo­cus per­for­mance. Based on my mea­sure­ments, it focus­es from infin­i­ty to its min­i­mum focus dis­tance (MFD) in about 0.5–0.6 sec­onds. To test this, I record­ed a video of the focus­ing action and count­ed the num­ber of frames it took to con­firm focus.

The lin­ear motors oper­ate qui­et­ly enough for most envi­ron­ments, but in very qui­et settings—like my home office at 2 a.m.—two dis­tinct sounds become notice­able. The first is a faint elec­tron­ic whine when the lens tilts up or down, even when it isn’t active­ly focus­ing. The sec­ond is a sub­dued, abrupt shift­ing noise as the focus sys­tem moves. While these sounds are unlike­ly to be heard in typ­i­cal shoot­ing sce­nar­ios, they are worth not­ing.

Manual focus experience and close focus

The man­u­al focus­ing expe­ri­ence is ful­ly elec­tron­ic, or focus-by-wire, mean­ing the focus­ing ring isn’t mechan­i­cal­ly linked to the lens ele­ments. Instead, rotat­ing the focus ring sends elec­tron­ic sig­nals to the lin­ear motors, which adjust the focus ele­ments. Fuji­film offers two modes for focus ring behav­iour: lin­ear and non­lin­ear, acces­si­ble via Wrench > Button/Dial Set­ting > Lens Zoom/Focus Set­ting > Focus Ring Oper­a­tion. I pre­fer the Lin­ear mode for its pre­dictabil­i­ty dur­ing long focus pulls and ade­quate gran­u­lar­i­ty for pre­cise adjust­ments.

The lens achieves a min­i­mum focus dis­tance of 19cm and a max­i­mum mag­ni­fi­ca­tion of 0.2x. While it doesn’t have a phys­i­cal dis­tance scale, this infor­ma­tion is eas­i­ly acces­si­ble in the viewfind­er or LCD.

Focus breathing

Focus breath­ing, or the change in angle of view dur­ing focus­ing, can be a con­cern for video work or focus stack­ing. Thank­ful­ly, the XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR exhibits prac­ti­cal­ly no focus breath­ing, mak­ing it an excel­lent choice for these appli­ca­tions. Pass your cur­sor over the image below to see an exam­ple at ƒ/1.4.

Conclusion and recommendations

There’s a rea­son the 35mm full-frame equiv­a­lent is so revered: it’s the Goldilocks of lenses—versatile enough for street pho­tog­ra­phy, envi­ron­men­tal por­traits, trav­el, and every­thing in between. For Fuji­film X cam­eras, the XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR is the best ver­sion of that focal length.

The lens deliv­ers stel­lar sharp­ness, smooth and nat­ur­al bokeh, reli­able aut­o­fo­cus, weath­er resis­tance, and min­i­mal focus breath­ing. But no lens is per­fect. The sun­stars pro­duced by its round­ed aper­ture are nei­ther crisp nor well-defined, and it’s too reliant on lens pro­files for dis­tor­tion and vignetting cor­rec­tions. It’s also not cheap, which makes it a hard­er sell if you already own its pre­de­ces­sor or the ƒ/2 ver­sion. That’s why I couldn’t jus­ti­fy buy­ing it new, but find­ing a used one in near-mint con­di­tion made it an easy deci­sion.

The XF23mmF1.4 R LM WR is my favourite lens in Fujifilm’s line­up. If I were pre­sent­ed with the chal­lenge of pick­ing a sin­gle focal length to use for the rest of my life, this 23mm would be my choice. I high­ly rec­om­mend it to any­one look­ing for the ulti­mate 35mm-equiv­a­lent for Fuji­film X cam­eras.

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Sample photos