While the Fujinon MK18-55 T2.9 Cine Lens isn’t overly interesting for X shooters yet, it’s place on the official Fujifilm X road map does open some interesting possibilities. Fujifilm is getting increasingly competitive in the DSLR style cinematography/documentry market with two fast well designed lenses that are comparatively affordable coming soon. Newsroom shooter and Cinema 5D were very impressed with this lens except for some distortion they found.
Unfortunately, here’s where the FUJINON MK18-55mm T2.9 exhibits its biggest weakness in this test, whereas the Zeiss really shines due in part to its different focal range. There is barrel distortion evident at wider angles of the FUJINON, which turns into pincushion distortion starting at 33mm. Like most photo zoom lenses, distortion is apparent, which can be a problem in situations where you have straight lines in the frame, such as in architectural images. We see a similar, slightly weaker distortion on the Canon EF-S 17-55mm F2.8 lens.
We wish the distortion on the FUJINON MK18-55mm T2.9 was less, but let’s be realistic: a lens with edge-to-edge sharpness at 4K resolution with minimal chromatic aberration and a lightweight design has to have some kind of tradeoff too.
Newsroom shooter Cinima 5D have some excellent technical coverage (Announcement/Hands-on & Footage/Technical Review) about this lens if you’re interested. Maybe the Fujifilm X-T2 will see internal Log by the time this lens is available in X-mount and some updated video features. If it does I might pick one up. We could also see a FS style camera from Fujifilm in the future since they are getting serious about video.
DPReview also has coverage of the new MK1-55mm. Their coverage is less technical, but still worth checking out if you like their style. You can find it here.
