Fujinon GF 20-35mm F4 WR Definitive Review: Medium Format WA Zoom

Name: Fujinon GF 20-35mm F4 WR Definitive Review: Medium Format WA Zoom | Open Video
Uploaded: 2023-07-16T21:43:46+00:00
Duration: 20 min 14 s

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Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my definitive video review
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of the new Fujianon GF 20 to 35 millimeter F4WRR lens. This is for their medium format GFX system, and this is the widest focal link that we have ever seen on the GFX
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platform before, going all the way to 108 degrees angle of view, making this a really intriguing
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option for landscapes, also for architecture, for environmental portature, for cityscapes, and all kinds of things that use a wide angle of view
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This is the equivalent of a full frame 16 to 28 millimeter lens with a constant maximum
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aperture, making it an interesting and a unique lens like we have never seen on FujiGF platform before
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But does it hold up for real world use? Well, today we're going to break it down and take a look at the build quality
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We're going to look at the autofocus performance. And most importantly, at the image quality and see if it's worth the $2,500 U.S. bucks that Fuji is charging for it
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That's Ridge.com forward slash Dustin Abbott for up to 40% off. Let's take a look at the build and the handling here
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This obviously is not a tiny lens, but then again, no medium format lens is ever going to be
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due to the very fact that you've got a very wide lens mount
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And so that means that all the lenses start off fairly significant, at least in girth. In this case, however, for a medium format wide angle zoom, this really is
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only a moderately sized lens. And it is built to professional grade specifications. It's got 12
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different seal points, plus a flooring coating on the front element, which means that it's able
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to be used in adverse conditions. Always really important for a lens that will be used a lot for
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landscape purposes out in weather, you know, that kind of thing. The lens is 88 and a half
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millimeters in diameter or about 3.5 inches, but fortunately that does leave us a large but
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common 82 millimeter front filter thread. So I'm really glad that we're able to use traditional
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screw-on filters rather than having a bulbous front element that would require some other kind
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of filtering solution. The lens is also a hundred and twelve and a half millimeters or four point
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four two inches in length and it weighs in at 725 grams or about 25 and a half ounces. And so again
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you know, fairly significant, but not. not overly large and heavy. It is an internally zooming lens
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and I will say that the zoom action, of course, has that amazing smoothness
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like you really don't find in an externally zooming lens. So it's a real joy to use in that regard
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It also has the typical Fuji approach to aperture and that you have an aperture ring with one-third stop
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clicks, detents along the way. You also have a locking button that allows you to go
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either into an automatic or a command function to where you can control the
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aperture through various means from the camera itself. I always like Fuji's approach to
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aperture because I do prefer having a manual aperture ring as an option. What you don't have is any
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kind of switches on the lens barrel. All you have left is the focus ring itself near the front
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of the lens. And I will stay on the note of the focus ring. It moves smoothly enough, but
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it does, it's a little bit numb. There's a little bit of disconnect from the actual focus action
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And so it's not going to give you a top-notch manual focus experience. There is no optical image
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stabilization in the lens and so you're relying on the image stabilizer in the camera body if the
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camera is so equipped. Fortunately, the GFX 100S that I use was so equipped and I found that I was
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able to get really stable handheld results either for photos. For example, this 35 millimeter shot is at
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one eighth of a second, no problem, nice and clear, even at 102 megapixels, which is impressive
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And I also found that it was a very stable platform for shooting video as well, very easy to handhold
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results and so that obviously extends the usefulness of the lens What not so hot is the minimum focus distance which is only 35 centimeters leaving you a fairly low 0 times magnification So between a wide angle lens and a maximum aperture of F4 and not a very close minimum focus distance don plan on blurring out too many backgrounds in the future Not really
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the strength or the purpose of this lens. Auto focus here comes from a stepping motor and for
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whatever reason they decided to not include their premium linear focus motor. At the same time
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I found that autofocus was really about as good as what I've seen on the GF platform
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Overall, I found that focus was relatively quiet and smooth and under kind of normal, what I would say optimal conditions
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I really didn't notice autofocus all that much. There were a few times closer to minimum focus distance
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I had a hard time locking on to a close focus object
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Also, when you get into kind of the margins at all, be it either in low light, or if I found just trying to track even slow action of Nala moving around, just walking, I wasn't really able to capture that
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I ended up with back focus results basically all the time. There still are some limitations when it comes to medium formats, auto focus
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And I do think that this lens is a step in the right direction and the overall quality of focus
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which felt, if not up to the normal of what I'm accustomed to
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It didn't feel like it was decades behind, which I've sometimes felt like with medium format
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And so I do think that there's progress in the right direction. Now on the video front, again, a bit of a mixed bag
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I actually felt like focus pools were smoother and quieter. than what I have often seen
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They, you know, weren't like painfully slow or anything. What I did notice is a little bit of pulsing
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before it settled on final focus. I also noted a bit of visible steps
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And when I did my hand test, we'll see that it was pretty common for it
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to focus beyond the hand and then come back to it. So just still not 100% confident in that regard
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So let's talk about the image quality. That's really the strength of medium format
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It's not autofocus. It's not being small and compact. But image quality is where medium format tends to set itself apart
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And I think that this is, you know, there's some debate sometimes whether the GF lenses are as good as the, you know, the great GFX sensors
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I think that this lens is a pretty good match. You can see from the MTF charts that it's delivering a really strong performance, particularly in the center and the midframe
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And as we'll see in the breakdown, it's got far more strengths than it does weaknesses
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Let's dive in and let's take a look. So first of all, this gives you a little bit. bit of an idea of the difference in the perspective from going from 20 millimeters to 35 millimeters
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So obviously when shooting interior spaces, that is a significant difference. And the difference
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will seem a little less pronounced in some landscape type settings, but obviously you've got a lot
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of flexibility on how to frame the subject. Now, it is impossible to fully defeat correction profiles
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in the camera, as far as I know. However, you can turn them off if you're shooting wrong
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in software. So if you're shooting JPEGs, everything is going to be corrected, basically
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no matter what. I'll also note here that all of my test charts are set up for the more typical
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3-2 ratio that you'll find on full frame and APSC bodies, whereas medium format uses a
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different ratio of 4-3, which, as you can see, just means that there's more, what we would call
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the short side is longer relative to the, you know, the 3-2. And so as a by-prose
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of that. I can't frame my test chart perfectly and just wanted you to be aware of that
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So here's what you would see at 20 millimeters in a raw image using the correction profile
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Now on the left, you have the uncorrected raw image. So if I turn that correction profile off
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it does show off that there is some pronounced barrel distortion and some heavy vignette
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Here I've done a manual correction of both of those things, and I was able to get a fairly
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clean correction out of that. Now, if I crop it all the way in to
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a frame it, you know, than the more typical format here, you're going to see that you can see a bit
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of a, you know, a mild mustache pattern that is left behind here. But if we take a look at my corrections
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I've used a plus 18, which is a significant amount, but it's not anywhere as extreme as what I've
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seen in some recent Sigma or Canon wide angle zooms where I've seen figures of 30 or even higher
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And Vignette is pretty close to maxed out at a plus 92 and midpoint slid all the way over. So definitely
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some heavy vignette and distortion over four stops of vignette in the far corners on this lens
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If we go to the other end of the spectrum at 35 millimeters, we have changed to some fairly
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strong pincushion distortion. So this is definitely a lens that does support some distortion
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throughout the zoom range with the least amount being in the center of that zoom range
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You can see here, though, that this correction is a little bit more linear in nature
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and it doesn't really leave any kind of awkward transition behind there, no mustache-type
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pattern or anything non-linear, it cleans up nicely. I dialed in a minus 13 so a little less in terms of percentage and then also a little bit less in terms of the vignette as well And so slightly less distortion slightly less vignette but it certainly present pretty much throughout the zoom range
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Here you can see an image that has just the normal correction on there
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and you can see that there's a tiny bit of stretching there towards the end
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but overall the look of the lines is fairly consistently good throughout here
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and there's obviously a huge amount of detail in these massive files
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which, by the way, take a lot of computing power to operate and demonstrate for you here when I'm doing screen capture
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Now, when it comes to longitudinal chromatic aberrations, you can see that it is present here, primarily in the form of some blue-green fringing after the plane of focus
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And I was able to see that a couple of times in some real-world images
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And if we zoom in here to a pixel level, we find that, again, after the plane of focus, you see a little bit of
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of that kind of bluish fringing that is taking place there. At the same time, it is not pronounced enough that if you're not looking at it at a pixel level
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you're going to see it. So I don't know if it's going to affect you all that often
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mostly because this is not a lens that's going to produce a lot of shallow backgrounds
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so you're not going to run into it very often. More important is going to be the lateral chromatic aberration
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which shows up, you know, and it's the one that really affects wide angle lenses in particular
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But we can see here in these areas near the edge of the frame, with the Remove Chromatic Aborations button clicked off
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We can see that there is basically no fringing on either side of these transition areas
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So that is going to be a strength for this lens, definitely a positive. So obviously I am going to really torture test a lens like this
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in that I'm using an incredibly high resolution sensor 102 megapixels and looking at it at 200% magnification
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We can see that despite that torture test, the middle of the frame result looks fantastic
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great detail, great contrast. If I move over here towards the midframe
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the midframe also looks really fantastic, great amounts of detail and contrast there
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And it's only when we pop down into the corner that we see some of that great detail drop off
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though this is still acceptably sharp here in the corner, not terrible at all
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Stopping down to F5.6 produces only a mild improvement in the first areas we looked at
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And down here, you can see that Contrast is starting to improve
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Detail is looking better. But it's more at F8, where we see a little bit greater leap in terms of that corner contrast
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And so now we have a stronger result here with really great detail and contrast all across the frame
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I would say F8 is probably the preferred landscape aperture for that reason
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Now, our minimum aperture is F22. And in a really high-resolution body like this, diffraction is going to really set in and
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raw view of contrast in detail. And you can see comparing F4 to F22, there is a significant difference
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And so I would avoid the smallest apertures, if at all possible. At roughly 25 millimeters, we see a
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kind of similar profile in that we have really outstanding center of the frame performance
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a little bit better when stopped down. We have good mid-frame performance that only makes
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moderate improvements when stop further down. The corners are a little bit softer to start
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and don't quite sharpen up to the same degree, though not far behind when you stop down to F8
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At 30 millimeters, we continue to have very good detail as we look at various places on the frame
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that is holding up very nicely. This is quite a consistent performance across the frame
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and so we can look in varying places and find very, very good detail rendered
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despite these challenging conditions. And even down here into the corner, the corner looks a little bit better
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than what we did see at some of the other focal links that we've tested
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Now, this is, to me, kind of the astounding thing, just as a real-world look as we move on to 35 millimeters
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And so here, with the full image, you can see that, you know, the figures there in the woods are so distant as to, I mean
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you can barely make them out. But even at 100% magnification, if we zoom in here
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we can see really the perfect detail of the face of the mother
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and the little boy as they're looking up at something in the world. woods. And so that's the power of such high resolution that, you know, you can go so deep into an
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image like this and still find very sharply rendered details. Here's F5.6. Just going back to the
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chart for a moment, and we can see center of the frame performance looks outstanding. Mid-frame
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performance looks outstanding. And even down into the corners, we have a really strong result
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And so as a byproduct, this is a lens that maintains a really good standard of sharp
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sharpness throughout the zoom range. So another real world example, this is 35 millimeters
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and I cropped to the 16 here So this isn the full image but you can see that at 100 magnification if we look in the center of the frame this is at F8 35 millimeters the detail that is rendered there is really
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fabulous. And if we pan on towards the very edge of the frame, we can see that the detail continues
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to be really excellent. So much information is on screen. Now, the maximum magnification figure of
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0.14 times is not particularly high, as we've already noted. But, uh
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You know, as an advantage, you know, we've got fairly good detail and contrast here
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We've got a fairly flat plane of focus, which, of course, is helped by the fact that we're not all that close when we focus
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And so one advantage that does show up there. That relatively low amount of magnification and the fact that the maximum aperture isn't huge means that you're not going to have a ton of opportunities to really blow out backgrounds
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You know, this is about as good as what I got. And, you know, the quality of the background blur is okay
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It's not exceptional or mind-blowing in any of these images. But, you know, this is about as good as it's going to get as terms of blurring out your background
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Now, I had an opportunity to go out and shoot one morning when the colors of the sky were just really, really beautiful
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And so as you can see from these images, you're able to capture some incredible color with this lens
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There is a lot of nuance and gradations of things. And so that along with the fantastic detail just really allows you to capture some incredible
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images with this lens. I was also fairly impressed with the overall flare resistance
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and so as you can see, here's a few shots into some early morning sun. You can see basically
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no ghosting artifacts as the sun is just shining through. Here is a more like afternoon
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sun, and so here, this scene, I've had to brighten a little bit because it did expose a little
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bit darker, but you can see that even as I exposed it up, I didn't find any kind of ghosting
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artifacts lingering around. Here, very bright directional sun coming through, but you don't see any
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kind of ghosting artifacts, no real veiling taking place there. And in this particular image
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this is the only one I saw any kind of ghosting artifacts, and it is from a kind of a unique
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situation where I was shooting through my windshield. And so the sun was coming here very directly
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but then also bouncing off of my hood and kind of a double reflection. However
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kind of interesting is if we zoom right into the center of the image
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right into the traffic and the cars. We can see that at the very intensity of the sun
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where you could barely look at it, it is held up really, really quite well
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One final area of strength that I was impressed by is using this lens for astrophotography
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And so obviously it's an opportunity to get a huge amount of detail on screen
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which is fantastic, which means that you're going to be able to zoom in deeper as far as just the pixel level
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than you would typically with other smaller resolution systems. But you can see that star points
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are really, really crisp, and what impressed me most is that I move off towards the edge of the frame
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There is a little bit of stretching. You can see this taking place, but by and large, star points have kept a fairly circular
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shape and very little evidence of coma that is there. And so this is actually a really impressive lens to use for shooting astrophotography because
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it is able to just give you such a clean in result. And so obviously you're going to want to try to keep your ISO down as much as possible
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possible you can see here even at, I believe, 3,200. There's a little bit of blotchiness here in the darks
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because of the nature of the sensor, but, I mean, the lens itself is performing fantastic
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So overall, quite a strong optical performance outside of the distortion in vignette
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So at the end of the day, this is a lens, I think, that's going to be an intriguing addition to the GF catalog
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This lens, I think, is one that a lot of photographers have probably been looking for
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giving you a zoom lens that is competent and can go wider. allows you some flexibility in shooting the various types of photography that really are a strength
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for a camera system like this. And while the price tag of $2,500 US dollars is not cheap, neither is it
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so out of the realm of possibility that, you know, medium format photographers can't afford it
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So at the end of the day, I suspect that this is a lens that will be considered somewhat indispensable for the platform. And I'm glad to see them adding this type of lens to the kit
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I've enjoyed using it and I've really enjoyed the beautiful kind of images that you can get
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between a competent bit of glass in front of an amazing, amazing sensor
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And this lens knows what to do with 102 megapixels. You can't say that about every lens
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I'm Dustin Abbott, and if we look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review
19:46
also to an image gallery if you want to see more photos or see them more than a split second
19:51
And there's also some buying links there if you like to purchase for yourself. Linkage to follow myself or Craig on social media to become a patron to get channel merchandise
19:59
Please like and subscribe. Thanks for watching. Have a great day and let the light in

Fujinon GF 20-35mm F4 WR Definitive Review: Medium Format WA Zoom

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Fujinon GF 20-35mm F4 WR Definitive Review: Medium Format WA Zoom

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