I tested the XC 13-33mm in my home studio with Imatest and an SFRplus chart to check its resolving power, and took it out into the world for photos to get a handle on its character. The lens delivers typical performance for a starter zoom. It scores in the excellent range for a 26MP sensor (3,000-3,500 lines) at every focal length I tested it (13mm, 23mm, 33mm) using our standard center-weighted scoring. Edges and corners are soft at wide apertures. To get the uniformly crisp look that you’ll want for landscape and cityscape scenes, you’ll have to set the aperture to f/5.6-8 at 13mm and f/8-11 at 23mm and 33mm.
Fujifilm X-T30 III, 18mm, f/8, 1/110-second, ISO 160 (Credit: Jim Fisher)
The aperture narrows down through f/22, but it’s not worthwhile to use the lens at settings smaller than f/11 as diffraction cuts into picture quality, and there’s no real benefit as the optics don’t deliver good sunstars. On the plus side, flare is not an issue at any aperture. You can take photos directly into a bright light source without having to worry about losing contrast or creating ghosts of false color. That’s likely a consequence of the narrow aperture and small front element; brighter zooms and primes tend to have more issues with flare and ghost color.
Fujifilm X-T30 III, 13mm, f/4, 1/220-seocnd, ISO 160 (left); 33mm f/6.3, 1/640-second, ISO 160 (right) (Credit: Jim Fisher)
The zoom relies heavily on digital corrections to remove distortion and brighten its corners to match the center. If you’re using your camera for JPGs or video, or processing Raw images in-camera, the corrections are applied automatically and transparently. However, advanced-level creators who want to edit Raw images in a desktop app will want to use a correction profile to remove the barrel distortion the zoom shows at wide angles. Adobe Lightroom and Lightroom Classic apply the profile automatically when importing images, so it’s not a major hurdle, but you should check your preferred workflow application to ensure that it supports the lens if you don’t live in the Adobe ecosystem.
Fujifilm X-T30 III, 30mm, f/6.1, 1/100-second, ISO 320 (Credit: Jim Fisher)
You can coax some bokeh from the lens with effort, but the XC 13-33mm isn’t great at blurring backgrounds away into nothing in most situations. The wide angle and narrow maximum aperture are more prone to capturing photos with deep focus. You can get softer backdrops for close-ups, though, but unless you have a totally clean background behind your subject, as I found for the preceding macro image of a blue poppy flower, you’ll be unable to identify objects. If softened backgrounds are a priority, the Sigma 18-50mm F2.8 DC DN Contemporary, Fujifilm XF 16-50mm F2.8-4 R LM WR, or Tamron 17-70mm F2.8 Di III-A VC RXD are all better lenses to use.
Fujifilm X-T30 III, 14mm, f/3.7, 1/100-second, ISO 200 (Credit: Jim Fisher)
