Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16-80 mm f/4 R OIS WR review - Distortion

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Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16-80 mm f/4 R OIS WR

15 December 2019

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

If you stick to JPEG files you won't notice any distortion at all. The results we got at 16, 23, 35, 50, and 80 mm were, respectively, +0.07%, +0.63%, +0.10%, −0.17% i −0.22%. All of them, apart from the value at 23 mm, amount to zero within the limits of measurment error.

Still the real Fujinon 16-80 mm distortion situation can be seen only after developing RAW files with an independent program like dcraw. We don't like the results at all – it is one of the weakest performances in this class of equipment we've witnessed so far.

At 16 mm you deal with a monstuous level of barrel distortion for a rectilinear lens, amounting to −6.39%. With the increase of the focal length that aberration decreases very quickly because by 23 mm you already get pincushion deformations of +0.85%, a value noticeable as well.

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Usually when the constructors give up on the shortest focal length letting barrel distortion loose, on the longer end of the focal spectrum you see some level of pincushion distortion but properly curbed. Unfortunately in the case of the Fujinon that rule doesn't work. Pincushion variation still brushes against record levels – at 35 mm you see +3.49%, at 50 mm its level is even higher, amounting to +3.66%, and at 80 mm it decreases to +3.06% which is still pretty high.

When constructors ease off in such a spectacular manner when it comes to one optical aberration they get more possibilities to correct better the rest of them. Users of such a lens might expect some extra performance in other categories. However, so far we haven't seen any trace of such 'bonus performance' in this test - the Fujinon 16-80 mm doesn't fare better than its direct rivals which at least tried to correct distortion (with different results but still).