35mm f/2 MF judder/chatter normal??

[Ektachrome]

Could owners of the 35 f/2 please confirm whether this is normal or just a fault this guy had on a batch of lenses, please?

 

 

I was going to buy this lens for fast, quiet AF and quieter smoother MF in video, so the above would obviously make it unusable for focus pulls for the latter use, it’s not so much the noise (although that’s not great on one of the new ‘silent’ lenses), but the very visible, horrid visual judder as focus is pulled...

Edited February 18, 2018 by Ektachrome

[mdm]

I've checked my 35f2 and 23f2 and can confirm that both of them behave exactly like the one on the video. Although the sound on the video was intentionally amplified but the nature of it is identical and you may feel some specific vibration under your fingers when focusing this lenses.

Edited February 18, 2018 by mdm

[Ektachrome]

Thanks for checking, much appreciated.

 

I have to say, if this is considered normal behaviour for the lenses, that’s unbelievable; this makes them totally unusable for MF in video (not to mention unpleasant for stills). If they are now pushing video hard for the X-H1, this needs sorting.

 

I did a little more digging and found that, apparently, the 35/2 lens did not behave this way initially; it happened after Firmware update 1.01 which was ‘to improve MF accuracy’. So it appears to be FW and not hardware related.

 

Time for another FW update to fix this, Fuji?

 

The 50mm f/2, which I thought used the same AF motors (?) doesn’t display this behaviour -

 

To be clear, the deal breaker here for video use isn’t the sound (although that’s definitely not good) but the visual judder while pulling focus.

Edited February 19, 2018 by Ektachrome

[lleo]

I've checked my 23mm f/2 and it has the same sound. Though is not like that, which is hugely amplified by the mic.

It's probably the motor inside. It makes the sound also when in AF. But you can hear it only if you put your ear next to the camera.

It's a thud like a "croc croc croc".

Nothing to bother about. Compared to the old Micro Nikkor 85mm it's as silent as the deepest silence.

[Ektachrome]

Thanks for confirming, yeah next to an 85mm micro Nikkor, a road digger would sound like a peaceful day at the beach!

 

To be clear, though, there are TWO issues here:

 

1. The noise. This is strange behaviour (especially when it apparently didn’t do this pre-firmware 1.01), but simply an irritation in stills shooting. For video, no noise is good noise.

 

2. The visual judder. Again, for stills, irritating and odd, but not maybe a deal-breaker. BUT for video absolutely 100% a deal breaker in MF. Imagine watching that visual choppiness in a video or film as you change focus, it would be distracting to the point of being unusable.

 

Seems weird that Fuji have put thought and effort into MF for their fly-by-wire lenses for video use in the X-H1 (you can switch MF for video into a linear mode so that you can repeat focus pullls manually even with their AF lenses) but then with two of their most silent primes, which potential users are most likely to choose for video for this reason, they’re unusable for this purpose.

 

Does anyone know where it’s possible to send feedback which would actually reach the developers to see if this can be sorted by another FW update?