Fujifilm has confirmed that the firmware update it released for its extremely popular XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR zoom lens came with a bug.
According to the company, the new firmware seems to affect the lens’s exposure consistency and has thus been suspended.
According to the camera and lens maker’s firmware support page, “In Ver. 1.30 released on January 22, 2024, it was confirmed that the exposure of images taken with certain focal length and aperture value combinations became abnormal. For this reason, the firmware download has been suspended,”
Fuji claims that it’s working on an emergency firmware update for the defective firmware update… and that this will be available as soon as possible for users who already installed v1.30.
The purpose of firmware update Version 1.30 was to improve exposure tracking during zoom when the XF 16-55mm f/2.8 lens is used with select Fuji camera models.
These cameras include the brand’s X-T3, X-S20, X-H2S, X-H2, X-T5, X-T4 and X-S10 devices.
Sample photo captured with Fuji’s XF 16-55mm f/2.8 lens
Previous to firmware update v1.30, Fuji had released update v1.20 for improved exposure tracking during video recording and certain zoom operations in the XF 16-55mm lens.
On the other hand, there was the case of an update for Fujifilm’s GF 50mm f/3.5 lens, which was released on April 23 of 2023.
That firmware package, version 1.10, also had to be suspended because it failed to improve exposure tracking. Since then, Fuji hasn’t released a fix for that particular firmware even though it suspended the original download on its site.
In that case, the company explained,
“It has been confirmed that there are some rare cases where the upgrade process fails with Ver. 1.10 released on April 27, 2023. For this reason, we have just removed the download button for this version here. We will resume the download button as soon as a fix is ready. Customers who have successfully upgraded this firmware can continue to use the product,”
As to what customers who did download and install v1.10 for the GF 50mm f/3.5 R LM WR lens were to do if the “rare” case of a failure affected their photography with that lens, there was no answer.
Hopefully, a fix for the defective update v1.30 for the otherwise excellent $1,100 XF 16-55mm f/2.8 will come much more quickly.
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