aezoss
New Member
Sorry for the essay. Purchased a used XF16-80 f/4 in excellent cosmetic condition from a local camera shop as a travel companion for my XT3.
I read the corners are generally soft and some copies are prone to slightly front/back focussing at 80mm but is a good all-rounder otherwise. The solution to the latter problem is to use a larger focus area to cover the entire subject.
The lens I have has an entirely different problem on the wide end. At 16-23mm AF-S is erratic at f/8, 1/200+ on large stationary subjects. Consecutive shots are consistently soft. Two issues: missing focus by a country mile and either the entire image is blurry or part of the frame is. Almost like the lens isn't square to the plane of focus. The mount looks fine. Reseated the lens, no change. Detailed info on the camera shows the focus point is at the intended location. There should be more than enough DOF for the subject to be in focus at 16-23mm @ f/8 at the distances I'm shooting at.
I put the camera on a tripod, 16mm on a large object with lots of contrast at ~1m away and repeatedly half pressed the shutter button. The AF distance meter was bouncing all over the place. from 0.5m all the way out to 2m. Photos were soft to complete unusable. 50-80 is was much better.
I normally shoot 18 1.4 WR LM, 23 1.4 R or 56 1.2 R primes. They rarely miss focus on common walk-around subjects (buildings, cars, trains, public art, flowers, etc) and are generally very sharp. The 16-80 is consistently soft on the wide end in similar conditions. It's mostly fine at 50-80mm. I expected my primes to be sharper than this zoom but I think the results are outside what's acceptable for a budget zoom. I don't think this is user error.
DP Review has a number of posts regarding similar issues with Fuji zooms in general. It seems to be intermittent, affecting a subset of users but sounds like most folks don't have a problem.
XT3 fw 4.40, 16-80 fw 1.20. I don't plan to upgrade the body to 5.11 since 4.40 works well with my primes. I don't want to upgrade the lens to 1.21 just yet.
To test, I made several changes: disabled OIS, set focus priority to focus (usually have it on release which is ok for the primes), set shutter button to meter only, configured back button instant-AF, set body switch to manual focus, and change shutter from MS (mechanical) to ES (electronic).
Initial tests on our dog look better. He was snoozing & the camera was on a small tripod. I need to test outside handheld with a variety of subjects to get a better idea how the lens behaves and enable features one by one to see which ones mess with the lens.
Has anyone experienced this before? Any suggestions on how to fix it in addition to the above changes? I'm not a pixel peeper but something's definitely off with these photos. Example below. Focus mask shows where focus landed. It's a weird but typical angle.
I'm not confident in the lens and plan to return it (hopefully the store will take back) but I would like to know if this is a single copy issue, a more wide spread Fuji problem or I suck at zooms.
Feedback appreciated, thanks.
1A. 22mm. Focus point on eye. Focused on carpet. Consecutive shots all focused on the carpet. This was taken using my typical settings (all those settings above reversed).
1B. Same photo as above, zoomed into 100%. Pup's eye is much softer than expected. At ISO 200 individual hairs should be sharper than this.
2A. 80mm. Better but still not tack sharp.
2B. Above photos 100%
I read the corners are generally soft and some copies are prone to slightly front/back focussing at 80mm but is a good all-rounder otherwise. The solution to the latter problem is to use a larger focus area to cover the entire subject.
The lens I have has an entirely different problem on the wide end. At 16-23mm AF-S is erratic at f/8, 1/200+ on large stationary subjects. Consecutive shots are consistently soft. Two issues: missing focus by a country mile and either the entire image is blurry or part of the frame is. Almost like the lens isn't square to the plane of focus. The mount looks fine. Reseated the lens, no change. Detailed info on the camera shows the focus point is at the intended location. There should be more than enough DOF for the subject to be in focus at 16-23mm @ f/8 at the distances I'm shooting at.
I put the camera on a tripod, 16mm on a large object with lots of contrast at ~1m away and repeatedly half pressed the shutter button. The AF distance meter was bouncing all over the place. from 0.5m all the way out to 2m. Photos were soft to complete unusable. 50-80 is was much better.
I normally shoot 18 1.4 WR LM, 23 1.4 R or 56 1.2 R primes. They rarely miss focus on common walk-around subjects (buildings, cars, trains, public art, flowers, etc) and are generally very sharp. The 16-80 is consistently soft on the wide end in similar conditions. It's mostly fine at 50-80mm. I expected my primes to be sharper than this zoom but I think the results are outside what's acceptable for a budget zoom. I don't think this is user error.
DP Review has a number of posts regarding similar issues with Fuji zooms in general. It seems to be intermittent, affecting a subset of users but sounds like most folks don't have a problem.
XT3 fw 4.40, 16-80 fw 1.20. I don't plan to upgrade the body to 5.11 since 4.40 works well with my primes. I don't want to upgrade the lens to 1.21 just yet.
To test, I made several changes: disabled OIS, set focus priority to focus (usually have it on release which is ok for the primes), set shutter button to meter only, configured back button instant-AF, set body switch to manual focus, and change shutter from MS (mechanical) to ES (electronic).
Initial tests on our dog look better. He was snoozing & the camera was on a small tripod. I need to test outside handheld with a variety of subjects to get a better idea how the lens behaves and enable features one by one to see which ones mess with the lens.
Has anyone experienced this before? Any suggestions on how to fix it in addition to the above changes? I'm not a pixel peeper but something's definitely off with these photos. Example below. Focus mask shows where focus landed. It's a weird but typical angle.
I'm not confident in the lens and plan to return it (hopefully the store will take back) but I would like to know if this is a single copy issue, a more wide spread Fuji problem or I suck at zooms.
Feedback appreciated, thanks.
1A. 22mm. Focus point on eye. Focused on carpet. Consecutive shots all focused on the carpet. This was taken using my typical settings (all those settings above reversed).
1B. Same photo as above, zoomed into 100%. Pup's eye is much softer than expected. At ISO 200 individual hairs should be sharper than this.
2A. 80mm. Better but still not tack sharp.
2B. Above photos 100%
