Nope, this is not a review of the lens, I just got it last week and haven't used it extensively. No, this is more of a reflection or first impression of the lens, and it's good.
Really good.
Build quality is great, like all the Fujinon lenses that I have (5 of them now). And the autofocus feels pretty fast and accurate on my X-T2, at least when I've tested it in daylight. And it also feels really sharp, though I need to shoot a lot more with it. People have been complaining that it's too big and heavy, and I mean, really? It's neither big or heavy. Sure, it's a little bit bigger and heavier than the XF 14mm f/2.8 R, but it's still not a big and heavy lens, far from it.
The cool thing though is the ability to shoot details and completely blow out the background and at the same time being not extremely, but still pretty wide. And it's able to focus really really close up, with a really shallow DOF which definitely opens up the possibility to make cool compositions.
And for me it was fun to shoot with it and shooting wider feels new, since lately I've been mostly shooting with the XF 56mm f/1.2 R, XF 90mm f/2 R LM WR and the XF 35mm f/1.4 with the last one obviously being the widest. I've used the XF 14mm f/2.8 R at a couple of occasions while doing portraits, but I think it'll definitely be replaced by the 16mm most of the time.
Those two millimeters that differ from 14 to 16 of course makes more difference than one would think, though I haven't compared them myself yet, I've seen others do it, but I feel that the 16mm would be fine and wide enough for most landscape shots.
What matters more is those two full stops from f/2.8 to f/1.4, they make a huge difference in the ability to create a really nice bokeh and totally blow out the background and isolate some detail if that is wanted. And since I like to do that, it's one of the reasons why I bought this lens, to be able to shoot both wide and shallow. I haven't tried it enough yet and I haven't tried it to shoot people, only just when walking around close to where I live.
It has made me think about shooting landscapes/seascapes again which I haven't felt like for a long time and it has made me look into the cost of getting a nice set of Lee Filters Sev5n. Turns out it'll cost as much as the lens itself, and then it's not even bought in Sweden with our ridiculous prices.
Here are a few shots with the X-T2 and XF 16mm f/1.4 R WR. They're not pixel peeper shots, not even particularly good shots, more just a few examples of how shallow DOF you can get with this lens, which I find pretty cool.