Playing with Fujinon XF55-200mm

Fujifilm X-E1 with Fujinon XF55-200mm F3.5-4.8 R LM OIS (left)
Olympus E-30 with ZUIKO 50-200mm F2.8-3.5 SWD (right)

Santa came a bit late this year but it did came, with a little help from CameraPro, a local camera shop here in Brisbane. Their price for Fujinon XF55-200mm was very tempting irresistible, and XC50-230mm was not listed in any local camera shops at that time. The XF55-200mm lens is brighter on the long end of the zoom range, and it not just depth of field but rather the amount of light going to the sensor, and this in theory may affect autofocus in some situations. Not many people posted their opinion on XC50-230mm, while XF55-200mm is a very popular choice, with extremely positive opinions from different people. The regular price for XF55-200mm is a bit steep for my liking, and it is very unlikely it would go down: Australian dollar is going down. Now I can say that I did my bit for support of the world economy :-) 

I like a moderate telephoto. ZUIKO 50-200mm SWD was my favourite lens on Olympus DSLRs, and it was the main reason for keeping Olympus E-30. Fujinon XF55-200mm is essentially made my 4/3 gear redundant, or completely obsolete. Fuji X-E1 with XF55-200mm is smaller and significantly lighter than the Olympus E-30 with ZUIKO 50-200mm. ZUIKO is a bit brighter, but Fuji X-E1 is less noisy, and its base iso is 200 compared to 100 on Olympus E-30. The major plus is an ability to use the mirrorless camera at arm length even with moderate telephoto lens. I don't know if this is due to lack of mirror slap or a very good optical image stabilisation system in the lens. It works very well for me even at 200mm, and I really like it. Initially I was a bit worried about the weight, but it turned out that the X-E1 / XF55-200mm combo is not heavy.

It seems that XF55-200mm has a very accurate autofocus at close distances to objects. It is also extremely fast on Fuji X-E1 compared to XF60mm Macro, but I used XF60mm with another (old) firmware. It seems that XF55-200mm gives a slightly higher magnification as XF18-55mm, but the main benefit is an ability to shoot at longer distance to objects, very handy for all sorts of bugs. Obviously, separation of the object and background is better with XF55-200mm. It is not a macro lens, by any means, but it still provides a decent magnification.