Two photography publications reported quality issues with Fujifilm lenses leading to speculation there may be a quality assurance problem at the vaunted optics manufacturer.
The reports indicate new Fujifilm lenses arriving with “sizable dust specks, cracks, and excessive variations between copies,” a distressing thing indeed.
A report on January 3, 2018 in Photography Life detailed “multiple samples of a number of lenses” that contained debris between lens elements that could not be removed without a professional cleaning.
Nasim Mansurov writes: “While I am generally happy about lens variation of GF lenses and I am especially happy with their excellent performance, I am not a big fan of Fujifilm’s QA processes…It seems to me that Fuji is almost rushing with the medium format GF lenses, trying to deliver as many units as possible to try to match the demand, while paying less attention to its manufacturing processes.”
Mansurov claims the issues are particularly rife with Fujifilm GF lenses. One model, the GF 110mm f/2, required two different lenses before Mansurov found a clean version. The author further noted that there was an extremely wide variation in quality between cheaper lenses.
“Cheaper lenses like the GF 45mm f/2.8 and GF 63mm f/2.8 have shown more variation than I would like to see…The lens to watch out is the GF 32-64mm f/4. While it is a pretty solid performer overall, the samples I have tested so far had uneven corner to corner performance, indicating poor assembly / decentering issues.”
Photography Life’s discovery was seconded by Fujiaddict who had issues with a Fujinon GF 110mm f/2 that had specs and fuzz between lens elements and a crack in the lens hood.
Louis Ferreira at Fujiaddict commented, “I know there have been some reports of a speck here or there, but I have never seen a lens this bad from Fujifilm, nor have I ever purchased a lens that came in this shape…There was no damage to the shipping container or box and these lenses come very well packaged, so I have to presume this damage occurred entirely at Fujifilm.
Continuing, Ferreira writes: “The lint coating had to have happened at the factory because the lens comes tightly wrapped in plastic and the plastic and inside of the box were clean. The cracked hood also likely occurred at the factory before packaging and went unnoticed while packaging.”
