Fujinon 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS Review
The Fujinon 18-135mm OIS is Fujifilm's 'superzoom' for their X mount system. Love them or hate them, superzooms have a place in many photographers' bags because of their convenience and affordability. Weighing in at a little under 490g, this is one of the heavier Fujinon lenses, around 190g heavier than the 18-55mm f/2.8-4 OIS kit lens included with their X-E2 and X-T1 and certainly heavier than all of their primes, the heaviest of which is the 56mm f/1.2, weighing in at just under 400g. However, it does weigh less than the 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 OIS telephoto zoom, which comes in at 570g.
This lens is optically and mechanically excellent, as all Fujinon lenses are. Its image quality is great for a 'superzoom' and is more than sharp enough for day to day use. It's well built and contains lots of metal, the zoom ring is rubber covered plastic. It's also one of the few Fujinon lenses that are rated as WR - weather resistant. The only other lenses are the 16-55mm f/2.8 and 50-140mm f/2.8. So if you want to shoot in the rain and you don't want to pony up for one of those beasts, then this is your only option.
For an overview of the Fujifilm X system, see my Fujifilm X System Guide. For other reviews of Fujifilm X System gear, click here to see my complete list of Fujifilm gear reviews.
This lens is optically and mechanically excellent, as all Fujinon lenses are. Its image quality is great for a 'superzoom' and is more than sharp enough for day to day use. It's well built and contains lots of metal, the zoom ring is rubber covered plastic. It's also one of the few Fujinon lenses that are rated as WR - weather resistant. The only other lenses are the 16-55mm f/2.8 and 50-140mm f/2.8. So if you want to shoot in the rain and you don't want to pony up for one of those beasts, then this is your only option.
For an overview of the Fujifilm X system, see my Fujifilm X System Guide. For other reviews of Fujifilm X System gear, click here to see my complete list of Fujifilm gear reviews.
For daytime use, if I don't mind the weight, this 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS on my X-T1 paired with the 10-24mm f/4 OIS on my X-E2 make a killer combination, tackling anything I will come across on the streets or in the wilderness. Together, that entire combination weighs under 1.5kg, markedly less than a full-frame DSLR with a 24-70mm f/2.8 lens. Not bad for covering all the way from 10-135mm (15-200mm eq.), this is why I love the Fujifilm X system - you can carry more than you ever did with a full-sized DSLR kit, whilst actually carrying less weight.
Optically, this lens is excellent for what it is, even compared to the Fujinon 18-55mm and 55-200mm lenses. I prefer this lens to a combination of the excellent 18-55mm f/2.8-4 OIS and the 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 OIS because this lens is simply more convenient to use and is cheaper. It retails for just a little more than the 55-200mm OIS. You lose a bit of range at the long end, but 135mm to 200mm can be cropped and if the longest you've been is 200mm on a full-frame with your 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses, then 135mm on the Fuji's APS-C sensor (200mm eq.) is more than long enough. The trade-off is a small cost advantage and a large convenience advantage, you don't have to swap lenses.
Optically, this lens is excellent for what it is, even compared to the Fujinon 18-55mm and 55-200mm lenses. I prefer this lens to a combination of the excellent 18-55mm f/2.8-4 OIS and the 55-200mm f/3.5-4.8 OIS because this lens is simply more convenient to use and is cheaper. It retails for just a little more than the 55-200mm OIS. You lose a bit of range at the long end, but 135mm to 200mm can be cropped and if the longest you've been is 200mm on a full-frame with your 70-200mm f/2.8 lenses, then 135mm on the Fuji's APS-C sensor (200mm eq.) is more than long enough. The trade-off is a small cost advantage and a large convenience advantage, you don't have to swap lenses.
This Fuji 18-135mm lens has no competition. It's a very specific lens for which there is no real alternative, apart from the dual zoom setup - the 18-55mm and 55-200mm, but even then, that's not really competition. It comes down to whether you ever need the entire 18-135mm range in one lens. If you do, then this is the lens for you. Some people do - e.g. those who photograph in unseen conditions and have no idea how close or far they'll be from their subject and simply need to get the shots. This lens would be perfect. It's weather resistant too, so you're even prepared for the rain! For someone working in a studio or for a landscaper, where you have the time to change lenses and measure out your shot, this lens isn't the best. Sure it's sharp and excellent in its own right, but let's be practical - you're going to get better image quality from a prime than from a 'superzoom' such as this one. For a street photographer, again, this hulk of a lens, whilst small compared to DSLR lenses, is huge compared to the tiny 18mm f/2 and 27mm f/2.8 lenses on Fuji.
Specifications
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Samples
This lens is sharp, there's no question about it. This is what I love about Fuji's lineup of lenses, they're all optically great, they're sharp, they resolve fine details well, acuity is great and contrast is great. Optical imperfections such as distortion and diffraction at smaller apertures are all corrected in camera. Fuji's system is much better than older DSLRs because it's designed from the ground up to be a digital system. The lenses, sensor and firmware all work together to give better end pictures. Purists and those shooting test charts can shoot RAF (RAW) and get the files without all the camera corrections done, but I like to have the camera correct what it can for me, so I shoot JPG.
I don't know where to take this lens out and use it, to be perfectly honest. I don't even know if it really has a place in my kit, but I've pulled it out for a few shots in my garden over the weekend and it's performed admirably well. Acuity is excellent and finer details are resolved extremely well - showing that not only is this lens optically great, but that the Fuji X-Trans sensor is also great at resolving details compared to a more traditional Bayer sensor.
With each of the images, because they're more test shots rather than real-life shots, I'll provide 100% crops on the point of focus for you to check the sharpness of the lens for yourself. Don't take my word on it! But Fuji's lenses are actually excellent. Some people have asked me why I don't do corner or edge crops - that's because for a lens such as this one, it's really quite irrelevant. For wide-angle lenses where you're shooting landscapes at infinity, then perhaps it's important to have sharp corners, but nobody looks at the corners of an image unless they're a photographer - so for the pure sake of creating great pictures, sharp corners aren't as important as many people think. For a normal to telephoto lens such as this one, corners are largely irrelevant because unless you're shooting flat subjects (i.e. brick walls), then your corners are likely out of focus and you always have your subject in the middle of the frame, so you want your corners to not be sharp!
Autofocus with this lens on the wider end is extremely fast, that's expected as you have a larger depth of field. On the telephoto end, it's a little slower, but in decent light it's fast. In lower light, it takes a little longer, but doesn't hunt. Autofocus is silent. If you're used to pro DSLR lenses, it will be slower, but it's more than plenty fast enough for almost all uses. Because the autofocus sensors of the X-T1 are on the sensor rather than on a separate module, it does not suffer from missing focus the way a DSLR can. Focus is not as fast as a DSLR, but in terms of accuracy, when the focus is found and locked, the pictures always turn out tack sharp because of how well the focus has locked and how accurate the on sensor phase-detect autofocus system is. The key point stopping many from achieving sharp images, provided they have decent technique and equipment is missed focus. The Fuji mirrorless system definitely helps here.
I don't know where to take this lens out and use it, to be perfectly honest. I don't even know if it really has a place in my kit, but I've pulled it out for a few shots in my garden over the weekend and it's performed admirably well. Acuity is excellent and finer details are resolved extremely well - showing that not only is this lens optically great, but that the Fuji X-Trans sensor is also great at resolving details compared to a more traditional Bayer sensor.
With each of the images, because they're more test shots rather than real-life shots, I'll provide 100% crops on the point of focus for you to check the sharpness of the lens for yourself. Don't take my word on it! But Fuji's lenses are actually excellent. Some people have asked me why I don't do corner or edge crops - that's because for a lens such as this one, it's really quite irrelevant. For wide-angle lenses where you're shooting landscapes at infinity, then perhaps it's important to have sharp corners, but nobody looks at the corners of an image unless they're a photographer - so for the pure sake of creating great pictures, sharp corners aren't as important as many people think. For a normal to telephoto lens such as this one, corners are largely irrelevant because unless you're shooting flat subjects (i.e. brick walls), then your corners are likely out of focus and you always have your subject in the middle of the frame, so you want your corners to not be sharp!
Autofocus with this lens on the wider end is extremely fast, that's expected as you have a larger depth of field. On the telephoto end, it's a little slower, but in decent light it's fast. In lower light, it takes a little longer, but doesn't hunt. Autofocus is silent. If you're used to pro DSLR lenses, it will be slower, but it's more than plenty fast enough for almost all uses. Because the autofocus sensors of the X-T1 are on the sensor rather than on a separate module, it does not suffer from missing focus the way a DSLR can. Focus is not as fast as a DSLR, but in terms of accuracy, when the focus is found and locked, the pictures always turn out tack sharp because of how well the focus has locked and how accurate the on sensor phase-detect autofocus system is. The key point stopping many from achieving sharp images, provided they have decent technique and equipment is missed focus. The Fuji mirrorless system definitely helps here.
As we can see from this final image, at 135mm f/5.6, the bokeh is excellent. This is expected due to the 135mm long focal length. Even though we often associate great bokeh with large apertures, longer focal lengths allow us to 'blow up' the background, thus, making the background blend into lushes of blur.
Compared to 18-55mm + 55-200mm
A genuine contender to this 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS is a combination of the 18-55mm f/2.8-4 OIS and 55-200 f/3.5-4.8 OIS. I think we can look at this from three different angles - convenience/weight, image quality and price, perhaps already in descending order of importance. There will be people who view image quality as the most important - but I doubt that there is a significant image quality difference to the point of us actually being able to notice it at most reasonable viewing sizes. If you are doing mural sized prints for exhibitions in a gallery - you won't be using any of these three lenses in the first place.
Construction quality and mechanical quality between the 18-55mm + 55-200mm and the 18-135mm is around about equal. However, the 18-135mm is weather resistant, so it's technically able to be shot in the rain whereas the 18-55mm and 55-200mm aren't. Mechanically they feel very similar.
On the issue of convenience, it really comes down to a balancing act - what's more important to you, having the entire 18-135mm range on one lens, or having an added 135-200mm length at the long end, but spread across two lenses. For most people, I would say that it's better to have an 18-135mm on one lens rather than to have up to 200mm, but spread across two lenses.
There are two reasons I say this. Firstly, you can always crop in from 135mm to 200mm, it's not much, only a 40% crop or so, but you can't do anything if you end up with the wrong lens on your body when you need to make a shot. The less you have to fiddle around with changing lenses, the more you're going to shoot. The second reason is 200mm on the Fuji's APS-C sized sensor is equivalent to 300mm on full-frame. When we shot full-frame (either digital or 35mm film format), we didn't go to 300mm very often. Most of us maxed out at 200mm on our 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms, so 135mm is more than sufficient enough for most of us who have only ever been to 200mm on full-frame.
When considering weight, the 18-135mm is lighter than the 55-200mm already, so once you add an 18-55mm to the mix as well, it's really no competition, with the 18-135mm weighting in at a little over half the weight of the two lens combo.
Image quality is a wash. The image quality you get from both the 18-55mm and the 55-200mm lenses are outstanding. Compared side by side, I can tell the difference between them and the 18-135mm, just ever so slightly, at 100% crops. Can I do that at normal viewing sizes? Of course not! So it doesn't really matter does it? For my use case and for most people, we can consider the combination as equally sharp.
What some users might also notice is that the combination of the 18-55mm + 55-200mm is slightly faster than the 18-135mm. The 18-55mm is f/2.8 at 18mm, the 18-135mm is f/3.5. That's around half a stop faster. Same with the 55-200 vs. 18-135mm at the long end. It'll barely make a difference.
Cost is actually interesting, the 18-135mm, where I live, costs around $1,000, with the 18-55mm lens available for $400 in a kit and the 55-200mm selling for $700. So in total, they add up to be pretty much quite even, with the slight advantage going to the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS.
To be honest, you need to make the decision yourself, but I went with the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS for a reason and that's the fact that if I'm going to be using a zoom, I want convenience and for me, the king of convenience is the 18-135mm OIS. Some people hate superzooms for emotional reasons, that's fine, buy what makes you happy, you'll make better photos - being happy with your gear is much more important than how it performs in a lab because happiness leads to better pictures.
Construction quality and mechanical quality between the 18-55mm + 55-200mm and the 18-135mm is around about equal. However, the 18-135mm is weather resistant, so it's technically able to be shot in the rain whereas the 18-55mm and 55-200mm aren't. Mechanically they feel very similar.
On the issue of convenience, it really comes down to a balancing act - what's more important to you, having the entire 18-135mm range on one lens, or having an added 135-200mm length at the long end, but spread across two lenses. For most people, I would say that it's better to have an 18-135mm on one lens rather than to have up to 200mm, but spread across two lenses.
There are two reasons I say this. Firstly, you can always crop in from 135mm to 200mm, it's not much, only a 40% crop or so, but you can't do anything if you end up with the wrong lens on your body when you need to make a shot. The less you have to fiddle around with changing lenses, the more you're going to shoot. The second reason is 200mm on the Fuji's APS-C sized sensor is equivalent to 300mm on full-frame. When we shot full-frame (either digital or 35mm film format), we didn't go to 300mm very often. Most of us maxed out at 200mm on our 70-200mm f/2.8 zooms, so 135mm is more than sufficient enough for most of us who have only ever been to 200mm on full-frame.
When considering weight, the 18-135mm is lighter than the 55-200mm already, so once you add an 18-55mm to the mix as well, it's really no competition, with the 18-135mm weighting in at a little over half the weight of the two lens combo.
Image quality is a wash. The image quality you get from both the 18-55mm and the 55-200mm lenses are outstanding. Compared side by side, I can tell the difference between them and the 18-135mm, just ever so slightly, at 100% crops. Can I do that at normal viewing sizes? Of course not! So it doesn't really matter does it? For my use case and for most people, we can consider the combination as equally sharp.
What some users might also notice is that the combination of the 18-55mm + 55-200mm is slightly faster than the 18-135mm. The 18-55mm is f/2.8 at 18mm, the 18-135mm is f/3.5. That's around half a stop faster. Same with the 55-200 vs. 18-135mm at the long end. It'll barely make a difference.
Cost is actually interesting, the 18-135mm, where I live, costs around $1,000, with the 18-55mm lens available for $400 in a kit and the 55-200mm selling for $700. So in total, they add up to be pretty much quite even, with the slight advantage going to the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS.
To be honest, you need to make the decision yourself, but I went with the 18-135mm f/3.5-5.6 OIS for a reason and that's the fact that if I'm going to be using a zoom, I want convenience and for me, the king of convenience is the 18-135mm OIS. Some people hate superzooms for emotional reasons, that's fine, buy what makes you happy, you'll make better photos - being happy with your gear is much more important than how it performs in a lab because happiness leads to better pictures.
Compared to Primes
There's really no need to ask this - this type of 'superzoom' and primes are completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Primes are fast, light, optically superior and eschew convenience for their superior performance. This superzoom, instead, eschews speed, light-weightness and optical performance for an all-in-one package that you'll never need to take off your camera. They're different lenses for different purposes and are not comparable.