Meike 55mm F1.8 Pro
Meike have garnered a reputation through my previous reviews as being excellent “for the money” especially factoring in street pricing over RRP. They aren’t perfect, but they deliver IQ.
The 55mm F1.8 Pro is the first lens from Meike that I can truthfully say, is good. Not for the money, but good. It’s not a surprise, that mid-50mm focal length is practically an optical cheat code. Regardless of why, it performs. The body is the same plastic as the 85mm F1.8 Pro, if you have read my Fuji X Passion review of that lens just know the same applies. I wouldn’t trust it in the rain or snow, but dusty fields and shooting mid 30’s centigrade in the sun, no problem. I like how its light and its plastic carapace is more resistant to wear, if less impervious than metal. It makes you more confident to use it instead of baby it, a common mistake many new photographers make. You shouldn’t be scared to use your gear and Meike gives you just enough headroom to feel that comfort. Whilst the optics in the 85mm were fantastic, the usability of 85mm on Fujifilm’s APS-C bodies brought caveats, namely in needing a steady hand and high shutter speed. The 55mm does not have such limitations. And to go one further, I think capping it to F1.8 was the best choice Meike could have made. At F1.4 or even F1.2 inconsistencies in focus would have shown, and I think the context that F1.8 delivers is also more suited to the market segment this lens is offered at. As it stands, the focus is good, and depth of field wide enough to compensate for slight misses. A critique I have for Fuji glass, the 56mm F1.2 is magical but if the camera misses focus just a touch it becomes damning. Well done to Meike for the restraint.
I use my lenses wide open, stopped down you lose the personality of the lens and personality is what I want. The bokeh of the Meike is interesting without being distracting, there’s no strange distortions at the edge of the frame, allowing you to compose however you want. At 55mm it is in that perfect range where compression directly correlates to image depth, not flattening of the image. The Meike has good three-dimensionality to it, and works well with monochrome. There’s no over abundance of digital sharpness and a fair amount of micro contrast for fine detail rendering. Even at the 40mp (and more importantly the pixel density) of the X-T5 sensor, it does not show strain. No muddying or blurring, bokeh is clearly bokeh and the focus plane is clearly the focus plane. Whilst the Fujifilm ecosystem may lead you to believe this would be a portrait lens, I think that is an under-sell for this focal range. Even on the APS-C sensors, with it’s field of view crop. That’s because whilst you do lose some of that diagonal field of view, it is still very much a 55mm and retains that “MSG” magic.
Please see below for the full sample gallery shot during my time with this lens. If you would like to hear about one of my test days, and what goes into these reviews you can visit my Substack and optionally subscribe to keep updated as I post. Perfect if you want more of the why and less of the how.
