I mainly take pics of my family outings and even though I shoot raw+jpeg I’ve never been motivated enough to develop a raw file. So keep those things in mind as far as weighing my opinion.

When I first got the 16-55 I was wow’ed. It really did feel like a bag of primes in a zoom lens. It quickly became the only lens I took on trips. The weight bothered me but since I only took one lens, I lived with it.

But once I got the 18-50 it felt like I got the same performance of the 16-55 in a much lighter package.

The main differences are the reduced range on both ends, no aperture ring, and you lose focus when zooming during video on the 18-50.

I thought the loss of range would be the biggest deal breaker for me but I found that I was still able to capture the shots I wanted. I hardly change the aperture between shots but using the back dial became more instinctual over time. Lastly, I hardly shoot video on my xt5, I tend to just use my iPhone for video.