Months after rumor sites revealed that Fujifilm is working on a replacement kit lens for its X Series mirrorless camera, the company has finally made it official with a development announcement at this year's X-Summit in Tokyo.
We don’t have much on this new lens yet, with Fujifilm just dropping the key details of focal length and aperture – so we can expect the lens to be an XF 16-50mm f/2.8-4.8. The new lens will replace the now ten-year-old Fujifilm XF 18-55mm f/2.8-4 R LM OIS, which is considered by many (myself included) to be one of the best “budget” kit lenses for any system – so the 16-50mm lens has a high bar set for it.
The writing has been on the wall for the 18-55mm for some time, as it was left off Fujifilm’s list of lenses that could perfectly resolve all 40.2MP from the Fujifilm X-T5 and Fujifilm X-H2 sensors. With Fujifilm adding this sensor to more cameras, it now seems the time to update its lenses to provide a kit lens that can match growing resolutions.
The new 16-50mm lens differs a little from the current 18-55mm model with a slightly wider focal length – 2mm extra stretch at the wide end, which should help for landscapes, street scenes, and also vlogging. While at the top end, the focal length has been reduced by 5mm, which might be a bit disappointing to those who prefer to zoom than go wide.
Although we don’t have the details for exactly when the aperture changes in the new lens, the aperture has also been reduced from f/4 to f/4.8 at the top end of the zoom range. This will make it slightly less effective in low light and for background blur, but the new lens does manage to keep the wide f/2.8 aperture at 16mm.
These changes sound like quick fixes to make the lens smaller and more compact. There has been speculation that the lens will have an internal zoom which would be a big win for videographers who want to zoom without rebalancing their camera, and an internal zoom would make the whole package more compact and less conspicuous. Although, fingers crossed the design might well mean some more exciting things in store such as a new and improved OIS and even better quality.
As this is just a development announcement, there is not an official launch date for when this lens might make an appearance. But looking at the newly-released XF Lens Roadmap (above) it is at least confirmed for sometime in the next year. There have been rumors for some time of physical copies found out in the wild, and Fujifilm is keen to make the most of its 90th birthday year, so this hallmark lens would be a nice thing to add to the celebrations.
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