Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16 mm f/2.8 R WR review - Distortion

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Fujifilm Fujinon XF 16 mm f/2.8 R WR

23 July 2019

Arkadiusz Olech

6. Distortion

Fujifilm optics constructors are hardly consistent when it comes to the distortion correction. In some lenses they correct it as it should be done, with the optics, and in some devices that aberration is simply left to be dealt with by the camera’s software. That second approach would be understandable if you dealt here with a small pancake lens. In such lenses there are always some compromises; giving up distortion correction in favour of a better correction of other optical aberration might be a good idea. Still the Fujinon XF 2.8/16 is not a pancake so I thought optics specialists would at least try to correct distortion just a bit with employing a proper optical system. I was wrong...

The effect is easy to perceive, especially if you try to develop RAW files with the help of independent software. A monstrous barrel distortion level amounting to −7.73% can hardly be missed. If you work with JPEG format or you develop RAW files with software of the producer you get perfectly corrected images with just traces of pincushion distortion which value we determined as +0.29%.

I suppose we don't have to add for umpteen time that such a correction of high distortion means a strong cropping of images and then 'pumping up' pixels in order to return to the 24 Mpix resolution.

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