Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16 mm f/1.4 R WR review - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16 mm f/1.4 R WR

12 August 2015

Arkadiusz Olech

5. Chromatic and spherical aberration

Chromatic aberration

Unfortunately the tested lens experiences a lot of problems connected to the longitudinal chromatic aberration correction. What’s more, even after stopping the aperture down to f/2.0, they still remain quite bothersome.

Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16 mm f/1.4 R WR - Chromatic and spherical aberration

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The situation concerning the lateral chromatic aberration is better – the graph below shows the performance of the lens depending on aperture values.

Results of 0.07% are nothing to worry about; such a level we consider low. It’s also worth noticing that near the maximum relative aperture we saw the same values on both sides of the frame. On stopping down the aperture to f/2.8 and more the aberration on the right side of the frame became a bit higher (about 0.10-0.11%) than on the left side, where it dropped to 0.04-0.05%. Those results, though, can be still called low enough not to cause any visible differences in resolution between both sides of the frame.

Fujifilm X-E1, f/1.4	Fujifilm X-E1, f/2.0

Spherical aberration

The tested lens doesn’t have any ‘focus shift’ effect but, when you pass from f/1.4 to f/2.0, you can notice a slight depth of field shift toward objects situated further away. Also the appearance of defocused images remains far from perfect. The circles of light practically show a textbook example of the influence of spherical aberration – on the one side of the focal plane the circle has soft edges, on the other side you see a noticeable rim. The Fujinon’s XF 1.4/16 correction of that aberration is certainly far from perfect.