- Hey guys, today I
wanna do a quick review of one of Fuji's most affordable lenses. (jazz music) So this week, I'm coming
at you from San Francisco, I'm here all week, and
I'm excited to be here doing a lot of street photography, and one of the lenses that I'm shooting with me while I'm here is this guy, it's the 15-45mm 3.5 to 5.6 variable aperture XC lens. But before I dive into the review, I do want to thank a new
friend of the channel, that's photosavings.com,
they let us borrow this for a while from their inventory, but I would encourage
you to check them out if you're in the market for Fuji gear or other mirrorless or even DSLR gear, they've got quite the selection, but they are also offering you guys, anyone following the channel,
5% off your total order, so might be worth checking them out if you're in the market for some new gear. Okay guys, this is the first time I've ever tried anything but
Fuji's XF line of lenses. The XC line is cheaper, made of more affordable plastic materials from the Philippines rather than Japan. I have to admit that
I've never really taken the XC lenses seriously. I've never given them a chance, and someone called me out
on that in the comments, they said that I wasn't really being fair in my lens comparisons by not really taking into
account these lenses, and I have not given these
lenses a chance at all, I just kind of discounted them as, you know, cheap consumer stuff, not really for serious photographers, so here's me giving it a shot. Is this lens capable enough to service a prosumer, semi-pro, hobbyist-enthusiast, what have you, is it gonna be good enough for any of those folks if
they might be on a budget, can they still get extraordinary
photography with this? That's the question that I wanna answer. So let's start out with the good, and I think the overarching good thing to say about this lens is that while it is a quirky lens, and I'll get into the quirks, once I learned to work with
or around those quirks, not against them, I eventually found myself
not inhibited by it, and I was able to get shots
that I was extremely happy with that I'm not embarrassed or ashamed of, and this lens didn't get
in my way, eventually. At first, at first it
did, (car horn blares) but eventually I came around, and I didn't mind shooting with this lens. It's not a perfect lens, and I'd be lying if I said that there aren't other lenses that I would rather be shooting with, but for the price, it
offers very good value, and if I was on a budget,
I would not hesitate to use this lens at all. Coming in at about right
around 300 dollar USD mark, this lens comes kit standard for several bodies. The XA5, the X-T20, I
think in some versions, the XE3, and the X-T100, you can get this lens in a kit. And I'm actually a little
surprised by the focal length. It's an odd focal length, that 15 to 45, it's a little wider than most kit lenses you'd expect, all the way to the 45
rather than a 50 or a 55, it's a little different,
it's a little wider, but that might actually be a good thing for someone who's kind of moving up from smartphone photography, they want to start getting into an interchangeable lens system
and they start out with this, this is gonna be a
little bit more familiar, because it's wide, and it matches more of what people are used to on their phones, but it is kind of a strange focal length. Now, for me myself, I love that. This is the one of the things
that I love about this lens, is that 15mm, that really
wide angle is wonderful. I do love the 18 to 55
variable aperture lens, it's kind of the step up from this one, and I'll refer back to that lens, actually it's right here, I'll refer back to this lens quite a bit as kind of being the next rung up. While I do love this lens, what this kit lens gives me is that really wide field of view which is so fun in San
Francisco to shoot with, I like being able to
get architectural shots at that wide angle, and I also like to kind of get that hip
level, waist level viewfinder on the XC3, kinda flip that screen out and get that waist
level shot of passerbys. It gets that playful kind of view that I really love, so for that reason, it's pretty cool, but on the tele side, on the 45mm side, I did find myself, it
just didn't quite have the reach that I wanted, so not as flexible on the tele side, and I do think someone new to photography would find themselves missing that little extra reach that they can get with some of the other
Fuji lens offerings. I also really like the
weight of this lens. One of the biggest draws
to the Fuji system for me is the overall kit size. It's small and compact, this lens is no exception. They're very light. It is made of plastic materials, so it's gonna be light. That means that I'm more likely to have it all with me, and I'm not gonna be tired kind of carrying it with me all day. I'm not gonna be ready
to ditch it at the hotel, or I'm gonna be less likely to leave it at home at a family outing. It's more likely to be on me during the decisive moments, and that can make all the
difference in the world to a portfolio, especially where if your a photographer like me, you're limited in the
time you have to shoot. The other good thing about this lens is that it has optical
image stabilization, and that is extremely helpful on a lens that doesn't have the
widest aperture capability. So it's not a low-light lens, right? I mean, the 3.5 to 5.6 is not gonna let in a
lot of light at night. On the other hand, if you're kind of doing steady shots, handheld shots of scenery, something not moving, that OIS can help you to hand hold it at a slower shutter speed so you can get away with,
if you have steady hands, you can get away with, like, I don't know, 15th of a second, or maybe even a half a second? I don't know. I don't think I could, though, but maybe you could if you
have super steady hands. But regardless, that kind of makes up for the fact that it doesn't
have a super wide aperture, at least with subjects
that are remaining still. It's also good for video, if you tend to do a little bit of video along with your photography, that OIS can kinda
smooth your footage out, and it works pretty well. One thing that really surprised me and that I really like about this lens is its close focus capability. It gives you a 4.175 reproduction ratio when shooting at the wide end of 15mm. What that means, is that objects that are about an inch wide will appear one fourth of an inch, or take up one fourth of
the width of the screen when using this lens on a Fuji device. A true macro lens will actually give you a one to one reproduction ratio, so again, one inch sized objects will appear edge-to-edge in the photo. So, just to compare, in
full Fuji lens lineup terms, this lens actually has the fourth largest reproduction ratio, even beating out the 16mm 1.4, which, those of you who know me will know that I love for its wide angle and close focus capability. In short, this lens focus is
close, and that's really cool. As far as focusing speeds, this lens performs right on par with other zoom lenses in the Fuji lineup. I use a shutter speed testing app to gauge how quickly lenses can focus from close focus to infinity and vice-versa, and this lens has similar speeds as
the 18-55mm on my X-T3. Finally, although it does
have a stepping motor rather than a linear motor, I noticed that I am not
able to really hear anything when I focus, unlike some
of the larger Fuji lenses that (laughs) really sound awful, and to me, that's actually
a really good thing when it comes to video shooting, where I might be using onboard or even hotshoe mounted audio. This lens is not gonna create
any noise and distraction. So I really wouldn't
hesitate to use this at all for vlogging for instance, it's probably a really
great vlogging lens. Alright, so those are the good things, so let's talk about some of the negatives, and the first couple
things I wanna talk about relate to usability. When you first pull this outta the package and slap it on your device, if you're like me, you may be surprised to learn that there's no obvious way to get this lens out
of auto aperture mode. It's kinda just stuck there, and it takes a little bit of digging to figure out how to turn that off, unless you don't mind
shooting in auto aperture. Now, I get it, this lens was created more for a
budget consumer in mind, a person who's less likely to want to have manual control over their aperture in the first place, that's totally fine. I also understand that
there's limited resources in ability to have a
aperture control on the lens. That's also fine. But what I wish Fuji would've given us is just a little toggle switch on the lens so that you could toggle between auto and manual aperture control, or, just thinking out of the box here, maybe a pop-up modal window on the device on the Fuji camera when this is detected, so you could select whether
you wanted aperture manual, and maybe tell you where to find it if you decide to change your mind later. Those are just ways
that they could improve that overall usability,
rather than creating a menu item that is only there
when this lens is attached, and you just don't know where it is without, you know, some serious digging. My next issue with this
lens is the power zoom. Now, I wanna be clear,
I don't actually have that big of a problem
with power zoom, because, unless I'm doing video,
that's another subject, if I'm doing stills though,
doesn't bother me too much, but the problem with this lens is that it's just a fiddly
solution to power zoom. There are some problems with it, it's not always reliable. For instance, one of the issues
that I have on the street is that, to save battery, if I want the battery to last all day, I do need to have sleep
mode enabled on my camera, I can't just have it awake the whole time, 'cause we all know the Fuji
batteries are not great. But at first, it would
throw me off every time, because I would zoom out to that 45, and have that ready in case
I wanted to shoot anything at sort of a distance, and then
my camera would go to sleep. I'd pull it up to my eye to wake it up and find that I was at the wide end, so it resets, and that was frustrating, I had to get used to that. So I had to kinda change my methodology, and that was that between shots, just to help my brain
get accustomed to that, I would zoom it out to
the 15mm in between shots so in my mind I knew where it was, even if the camera had gone to sleep, I know where it's gonna be. The other thing is that it seems to take a little longer to wake up to extend that lens out, so that caused me to miss shots at first. The other things is that the wider ring right here, that one is
kind of a twist and hold, and wait for it to zoom out or in. I noticed that sometimes,
every once in a while, that just didn't work, like I would turn it, and it
just didn't start turning, and it wasn't as reliable, whereas the small ring, that's more like a traditional zoom where you step through it, so you turn a little bit,
it zooms a little bit, and I find that that is more responsive, at least for me, that's been
my experience with this lens. So I just ended up using the small ring. Of course, that's not gonna
work if you manual focus, because if you put this in a manual mode, this becomes your focusing ring rather than a zoom ring. I don't think this is the lens you use if you want a manual focus, though. Just sayin'. Now, if you're a video shooter and you need to do some
pushing or pulling out, push in, whatever they call it, if you need to do some of that, this is not your lens. You're gonna be disappointed, it's not gonna be natural, it'll feel really robotic
what you need to do, an in-camera zoom or pull. I already talked about
aperture a little bit, but this is a big one for me. If you're not really sure what sort of environment
you're gonna be shooting in as far as light availability, or if you're like me, you shoot indoor and outdoor all the time, you're kind of moving back and forth, this will probably be
frustrating to you indoor, you'll have to shoot with ISOs past where you're probably gonna be okay, especially on those more budget
Fuji cameras and sensors, you're gonna get some really noisy photos, so I would say this is
probably not the lens to use if you're gonna be shooting
indoor quite a bit, unless it's stationary objects, and then like I said,
you can overcome that with that image
stabilization a little bit. As far as sharpness, this lens, it is fairly sharp, I mean, it's not up to the standards I'm used to from most Fuji lenses,
particularly the Primes, but it's fine, really, for most practical purposes. But less obvious than
some of these other issues I've been talking about so far, but to me, just sort of not alarming, but disconcerting, is
this lenses' propensity to have color fringing,
and ghosting, even. I noticed on shots that
I didn't nail exactly, not only were they soft because
I didn't nail the focus, but I also noticed that
there was some ghosting. This is particularly an issue
in woodland photography. Now, I didn't do any of that, but if I had, you would see that, that it's particularly bad
where you have edges of leaves and things like that, you're
gonna see a double image, and it can get really distracting, feel very jittery at
times in the background, the quality of bouquet will be affected by that ghosting that's gonna occur. I also noticed color fringing
is a problem with this lens, and where you kinda get
that green or purple edges, depending on the side, of
objects in the background, kind of blurred out objects, you'll notice that a little
bit in your photography, and I certainly did, this is not the lens to use if you plan to print things large, if you plan to do a lot of work with things that are busy backgrounds, stuff that has a lot of
busyness in the background, or backlit background,
this may not be a lens that you're gonna be overly happy with for those reasons. The next thing I dislike about this lens is its build quality. Now, it's to be expected
that it's a little cheaper, that it's plasticy, it's
made in the Philippines, I get that it needs to be cheaper material so that it can be affordable,
so it makes sense, but it's definitely a
negative about this lens. I would feel a little uncomfortable taking this lens out on some of the adventures I
like to take our lenses out in, it feels a little more fragile, like I need to baby it, whereas you look at, you know, some of those other XF lenses that are metal construction, they're just, they're built like tanks, they feel like they can take
a bit more of a beating, but this lens, it feels fragile. And like, for instance,
right now, it's raining, it has been raining today and
yesterday in San Francisco, and I haven't been able
to shoot with this lens, because it's not gonna do as well, obviously it's not weather sealed, it's not weather resistant
like some of the other lenses, but even beyond that, like, a lens like this, the 18-55, me personally, I'm okay with it getting a little teeny bit sprinkled on outside, you don't have to baby a lens like this, but this guy, ah, I wouldn't risk it. And I'm gonna sound terribly shallow by admitting this to you, but I don't mind admitting it. This lens is just ugly (laughs). It doesn't have the appeal that the Fuji system overall has, that aesthetic quality
that I like about Fuji. I like how the Fuji glass
and the Fuji bodies look, I like the appeal that they have, I like how I look when I shoot them, and I know that's shallow, and I get it that these are just tools
for many photographers, they couldn't care less about
the way their stuff looks, because, you know, they're
making money with it, it's just a tool to get the job done. I'm a little more shallow than them. I like how my gear looks. You can make fun of me in the comments. Okay, so, in conclusion, who is this lens for? Well, if you're a prosumer or a hobbyist, and you're in the market
for a fun, light lens that gets you a really cool zoom range, 15-45 is an interesting zoom range, and you don't take
yourself overly serious, or your photography overly serious. If it's mostly for social
media, for instance, and if you shoot in daylight situations or well-lit situations, there could be a place
for this in your kit. However, if you plan on
printing your photos large, if you're taking serious landscape
photography, for instance, if you've got busy backgrounds
and backlit subjects, you'll probably be disappointed with the image quality
coming out of this lens. So, if you've heard all that, and you feel like, well, maybe this isn't the lens for you, I might recommend, if you can shell out a few extra bucks, (laughs)
a few extra hundred bucks, the really phenomenal 18-55 (jazz music) F2.8 to F4 aperture lens, this also has image stabilization, but pretty much everything
that I was frustrated about with this lens, is overcome by this lens. It has the manual zoom ring, it does have (switch toggles)
a toggle switch for aperture, auto aperture, and non. You can turn off the image stabilization, it has better build quality
and looks really good, takes very sharp photos, you won't get that fringing
and sharpness issues unless you just get a bad copy. The only thing I'd prefer, the 15-45 over this one is, that 15mm wide angle photography. It's pretty cool, and I guess it's lighter. But either way guys, whatever you decide, I do wish you the very best
in your buying decisions, and most importantly, in your photography. Remember, kindness before cameras. We'll talk to you again real soon.
