“No way,” I said to our Fujifilm reps when they told me that the new Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro lens could focus super closely on my watch dial. What followed next was a very excited, mouth gaping wide-open smile on my face. Indeed, the Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro is capable of focusing extremely closely. And we think that for its $599 price point, lots of photographers are going to be incredibly excited at what it can do. More importantly, they’ll be happy with the photos they create.
We tested a pre-production Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro lens along with a bunch of other journalists. These images aren’t final, but they’re instead a good idea at how awesome these are going to possibly be.
Tech Specs
- 1:1
- Silent AF
- Weather resistant
- 10cm focusing MOD
- 1.2cm working distance
- $599.95 price point
Ergonomics
Here’s a closer look at the new Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro. As you can tell, it’s got one of those body styles like the smaller f2 primes from Fujifilm. By that, we mean that it’s thinner up top and more shapely around the lower regions. The two control rings are for aperture control and manual focusing.
The aperture ring, of course can be set to A mode to allow the camera to go into Program auto mode, shutter priority, or just give the camera body control of the rings.
Here’s the front element. Of course, this is a very small lens overall as you can tell.
Build Quality
Fujifilm’s lenses are built incredibly well. And the Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro doesn’t give us a reason to think otherwise. If you’ve seen a lot of Fuji’s smaller f2 lenses, then know that this has a similar design with a bigger area around the mount and a smaller, thinner area up top. Plus, this is weather resistant. We expect that you’ll be able to photograph macro photos with it in the rain with relative ease.
In the hand, this is a bit of an odd one. On the X Pro 3, it feels like an alright lens, but it doesn’t feel like a lens for that camera. On the XT5, it also feels pretty alright. In fact, it feels better there. I can imagine that this would feel best on the XH2 and XH2s for a variety of reasons. But overall, know that this lens feels pretty wonderful overall.
Ease of Use
Of course, there’s an aperture ring on this lens. So you have to keep that in mind when you’re shooting. But truthfully, this is a very simple lens to use. In my short time using the Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro, I set the camera to focus on a specific area of the scene using a small focusing point. After that, it was just fine. The autofocus took care of the rest. The focusing performance on my older X Pro 3 held up without a problem at all.
Focusing
If you want to simply just shoot around with this lens, then you don’t need to worry about focusing speed. This one is very quick. But if you want to do macro work, I really recommend either manually focusing or using a focusing point manually. Even when doing the latter method, it works out pretty easily. You’ll like it! We sure did!
Image Quality
The Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro lens we tested was a pre-production variant.
First Impressions
The Fujifilm 30mm f2.8 R WR Macro is so far shaping up to be an incredible lens. Not only is it very affordable but it also does full 1:1 macro at an insanely good price. On top of that, it’s also got weather resistance and fast autofocus. How do you beat that? We’re not sure yet, so we’ll see what happens later when our full review unit comes in. Stay tuned for that!
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