The $150 Pancake Lens That Gets You 90% of the Fujifilm X100VI Experience

The Fujifilm X100VI has a cult following for good reason: it packs an optical viewfinder, IBIS, a built-in ND filter, and a fast fixed lens into a body small enough to carry anywhere. The catch is the price, and increasingly, the availability.

Coming to you from Pit Haupert, this hands-on video puts the SG Image 25mm f/1.8 pancake lens through its paces on the Fujifilm X-T5, asking whether a $150 lens on an interchangeable-mount Fuji body can genuinely replace the X100VI. Haupert points out that Fuji's existing pancake options, the Fujifilm XF 23mm f/2.8 and the Fujifilm XF 27mm f/2.8, both top out at f/2.8, so nothing on the market matched the X100VI's f/2 aperture in a slim profile until this lens appeared. Build quality impressed him enough that he initially mistook it for an all-metal construction, though on closer inspection only the mount and manual focus ring are metal, with the rest being dense plastic. There's no aperture ring, which will bother Fuji shooters used to that control, and the rubber weather-sealing gasket around the rear element is present but thin enough that Haupert questions how much real-world protection it actually provides.

On sharpness, the center of the frame is genuinely sharp wide open, which matters most for portrait work. The mid-frame drops off noticeably, and the corners stay soft until around f/8. In practice, Haupert found those tradeoffs rarely cost him a usable shot, since wide-open shooting usually means subject isolation anyway, and stopping down to f/5.6 cleans up most of the frame for landscape or street work. Chromatic aberration is surprisingly well controlled for a lens at this price. Bokeh is not a strength, but Haupert notes the X100 series has never been known for smooth out-of-focus rendering either, so the SG Image fits right in with that expectation.

The area where the lens genuinely struggles is flare, specifically wide open. Strong light sources, backlit scenes, and specular highlights like streetlights can produce distracting patterns that even confuse the autofocus system. Stop down to f/2.8 and the problem becomes manageable. Haupert also makes a compelling case that autofocus accuracy matters more than raw speed for most shooting situations, and on Fuji bodies at least, this lens delivers well on accuracy even if it isn't the fastest motor around.

Check out the video above for Haupert's full side-by-side comparison between the SG Image and the X100VI, including his gallery of mixed shots from both cameras and his take on who should actually buy an X100 in the first place.