Fujifilm XF 55-200 Long Term Review - Still Relevant?

[@EdRobles1]

Lego dude with his own Instagram page😂. Love it. True and timely video. I purchased this lens in an emergency while on vacation in Washington this summer. Got good results. I have a couple of shoots coming up and considered getting the 70-300 but have reservations about spending over $600/$700 for it. I can make what I have work, though the extra reach and other improvements would be nice. Patience….

[@marcowolfart1987]

Nice video man. Thanks for being realistic.

[@adventureaheadphoto]

No problem, and thank you for watching + commenting!

[@Aeroslash72]

The « infinitely spinning » aperture ring has nothing to do with the cheap lenses but is rather due to the variable aperture… How could you mark the aperture since it changes according to how zoomed-in or out the lens is? 😊

[@adventureaheadphoto]

Good point, I do believe that you’re correct. Though I think it’s really a bit of semantics, as lenses with variable apertures are almost always cheaply made inexpensive lenses anyway - so it does still indicate a cheap feeling lens in most cases.

[@Atokxn]

Thanks for this very qualitative review ! It's very nice to see good work like yours around.

[@adventureaheadphoto]

Thank you, I appreciate the kind words!

[@juxxcreative]

I purchased this lens and used it during a golf tournament yesterday. However, despite selecting the people or objects I wanted to focus on, the lens didn’t focus on the chosen area. Instead, it focused more on the areas behind the selected subject, blurring the object or person I wanted to capture. Am I possibly using it incorrectly? My camera is a FujiFilm X-T200, and I tried shooting in Aperture Priority and Shutter Speed Priority modes. I used Single Point Focus for the shots.

[@adventureaheadphoto]

I’ve never personally had that issue. It’s always possible that some degree of user error is to blame for something like that - I make mistakes all the time that ruin photos and only catch it after the fact. From where I’m sitting it sounds like you did everything correctly, but without seeing the photos it’s hard to held diagnose what happened - there’s potential for it to be an issue with the settings, but it’s also possible you got a bad/damaged copy of the lens. If you want you can send me over a couple of the photos and I’d be happy to try and troubleshoot it further. There are also some awesome places online to get help with these questions - I’m a long time member of some Facebook groups related to Fuji cameras as well as www.the photo forum.com, and both have helped me immensely with troubleshooting stuff like this through the years.

[@juxxcreative]

@@adventureaheadphoto thanks for your kind reply. I am also suspecting of user error, just could not spot the problem. I reset all the setups and tried different shooting modes. Some of the pix are ok but most of them losing focus. How can I send you the images? Could you provide me an e-mail address? Thanks for your help.

[@adventureaheadphoto]

Sure thing! [e-mail]

[@YannickKhong]

"comparing it to the Fujifilm 70-300" did you use it? I own and love the 55-200 but I somewhat expected some kind of hands on experience (or nice shots) with the compared lens. Also, to relate to those saying it's "soft at 200mm", this lens suffers from a multitude of unlucky QC issues where the elements gets decentered very easily from shocks and dinks. I assume the OIS motor fragility is to blame here. I've gone through 5 copies of it including 3 new buy/return instances over 6 months time (often waiting a month to make sure I get one from a new batch) before settingly on a well centered copy of it. Nevertheless, I really enjoy the way this lens renders and is still my to go lens for outdoor concert photography during music festival and such. The aperture makes it good enough over the 70-300. Thx for sharing your thoughts and gorgeous shots on the lens.

[@adventureaheadphoto]

I agree that a hands on comparison with the 70-300 would have been nice, but I couldn’t make it happen unfortunately, and ultimately the point of the video was that I’m so happy with the 55-200 that I haven’t felt compelled to spend the extra money anyway. I think the 70-300 is objectively the better lens, it’s just way more expensive. I’ve had two copies of the 55-200 (old the first and regretted it) and haven’t had any issues with either one of them - both have held up very well. I’m not a pixel peeper though, so maybe others would say mine is a “bad copy.” Thanks so much for watching the video and taking the time to leave your thoughts, I appreciate it!