Fuji X-T1 with the Fantastic Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 pancake lens

When I bought my Fuji X-T1 a couple of weeks ago there was a double cashback offer available which meant I could pick up an additional lens and get a really good deal. There are several lenses I intend to buy at some point, but the first one I decided to get was the Fujinon xf 27mm f/2.8 pancake lens which I picked up at the same time as I bought the camera.

Today I had to go on a trip to Reading so I took the camera along with the 27mm fitted to see how it performed.

Pictures taken with the Fujinon XF 27mm f/2.8 pancake lens

My initial reaction when I imported the pictures into Lightroom was – WOW!

If the Fujinon xf 27mm had cost me £500 I think it would have been good value, but when I think it cost only a bit over £220 it really is a stunning performer. The detail seem fantastic right up to the corners without any fall off in performance and the colours and contrast really pop. I also found the X-T1 matrix metering was just about spot on for all these pictures, and the focusing performance was also really quick.

For all these pictures I kept the camera on program mode, set the ISO to adjust automatically between 200 and 6400 with a minimum speed of 1/125 and just let the camera make the choices. For a lens as wide as this (40mm full frame equivalent) it seemed as good to do that as to use aperture priority and set the aperture myself although with a longer lens that is probably the mode I would use.

Another aspect which really impressed me was the high ISO performance of the x-t1. If you look at the picture of Baker Street in the pictures above which was taken at ISO4000, it shows the really low noise the camera is capable of. After importing into Lightroom I did a small amount of correction to highlights and applied a bit of clarity and contrast boost, but I’ve applied no additional noise reduction to these pictures.