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Fujinon GF 55mm F1.7 R WR Prime Lens Review | A New Favorite?
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Sep 29, 2023
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive definitive review of the flagship Fujifilm GFX100 II medium format camera. It this the one that will make people make the switch? | This video is sponsored by Fantom Wallet. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN15 to get 15% off | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the GFX100 II @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/46o7bI4 | Amazon https://amzn.to/45ZKv0M | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/48lpg | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3PQWfgH Purchase the VG-GFX100 II Grip @B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3ZqtLgV or Amazon https://amzn.to/450IvnH Purchase the GF 55mm F1.7 R WR @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3roC3cm | Amazon https://amzn.to/3ruuWPC | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/48lph | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3RBtkyf Check out the DA Merch here: https://bit.ly/TWIMerch | Become a Patron: https://www.patreon.com/dustinabbott | On the Web: http://dustinabbott.net/ | Sign up for my Newsletter: http://bit.ly/1RHvUNp | Instagram: http://bit.ly/DLAinsta | Facebook: http://on.fb.me/1nuUUeH | Flickr: http://bit.ly/1UcnC0B | 500px: http://bit.ly/1Sy2Ngu Follow Craig @ https://www.instagram.com/craigstoffersen/ Want to support this channel? Use these affiliate links to shop at: B&H Photo: http://bhpho.to/1TA0Xge Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Amazon: https://amzn.to/3HrY64d Amazon Canada: https://amzn.to/3qG1p18 Ebay: http://bit.ly/DustineBay Into the AM Clothing: https://bit.ly/intotheAMda and use code DUSTIN10 for 10% off Make a donation via Paypal: https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/dustinTWI ============================= Table of Contents: =============================
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott, and I'm here today to give you my review of the Fujianon GF 55mm F1.7, and this is the RWR
0:20
I just recently did my review of the new GFX 100 Mark 2, and it is a powerhouse of a medium format camera
0:27
but it isn't the only new thing coming from Fuji. There are several new lenses
0:31
including this 55 millimeter F1.7, and I have used it exclusively as a part of my review of the GFX 100 Mark 2
0:41
This is a really welcome addition. For one thing, I love this focal length
0:45
It is the full frame equivalent of 44 millimeters, so a slightly wider normal angle of view
0:50
which I really, really like. It also ties the largest maximum matcher available on the platform at F1.7
0:57
with the GF 80 millimeter F1.7. And overall, I would say this has probably been
1:03
one of my favorite GF lenses to review because, as I mentioned, I love the focal length
1:08
This has amazing optics. It has pretty good autofocus and the ability to produce really stunning images
1:14
when paired with this amazing camera that it's mounted on. So the question is, is it worth $2,300 U.S. dollars
1:21
Obviously not cheap. Well, we're going to explore that together today after a word from our sponsor
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to check out. So as noted, this is a 44 millimeter equivalent focal length. I find it to be a really
2:19
really versatile focal link for a lot of things, capturing everyday things for portraiture
2:23
you know, landscapes, just a huge variety of different things. As a walk-around lens, I will love
2:30
the focal length. I suspect that it's one that many people will find that they'll just leave it
2:35
on the camera because they can just do so much with it. Now, if you don't speak Fuji, the R
2:41
refers to the aperture ring, which is fairly ubiquitous on Fuji's offerings. And in this case
2:46
as per usable, it is a clicked aperture, and there are detents at the one-third stops throughout
2:53
with the full stop markings on there. You also have the ability to switch into an automatic mode
2:59
or even into a command mode and there is a lock here that allows you to switch in and out of those things
3:05
and keep you from inadvertently bumping into something else. That's pretty much it when it comes to the features
3:12
but more on that in just a moment. The other thing that this lens is, is that it does have WR or weather resistance
3:19
And so that starts with a gasket at the lens mount, internal seals and a fluorine coating on the front element, making this a thorough weather
3:27
sealing designed for professional use, which of course it is a professional-grade lens
3:32
So let's talk about the size of the lens for a moment. It is virtually identical in every detail
3:39
to the 80mm F1.7. Like that lens, this is 94.7 millimeters or 3.7 inches in diameter. It's 99.3
3:48
millimeters long or 3.9 inches and it is very very slightly lighter about 15 grams than the 80
3:56
millimeter at 780 grams or 1.7 pounds for the 55 millimeter lens. Up front we have 77 millimeter front
4:06
filter threads which is also identical with the 80 millimeter and is quite a common filter size
4:13
Outside of that there are no features on the lens itself and so we have no
4:18
declick aperture, which is unfortunate when you consider, particularly with this new GFX 100
4:24
Mark 2, how hard they've gone after the video side of things, I think that they also need to bring
4:30
some of that same philosophy to their lens design. So the ability to declick the aperture
4:34
maybe a few more features would be quite welcome here. What we do have is a nice big manual focus
4:40
ring that falls to hand very easily. It moves nicely. If you're just filling the ring
4:46
it moves nicely. If you're actually manual focusing, it's not quite as pretty a picture
4:51
There is a lot of obvious steps and quite a lot of motor noise that you hear as a part of
4:56
actually manual focusing, unfortunately. The included lens hood feels fairly nice, nothing exceptional, but feels fairly nice and it does have a locking mechanism on there
5:06
to make sure that it's not going to inadvertently come out of place once you have locked it
5:11
under place. Now, typically Fuji sticks to a fairly tried and true formula
5:16
for their lens designs, which as I've noted, I'd like to see them shake up a little bit. They have done one minor new thing here and that is that the aperture blade count has increased from 9 to 11 That a very welcome addition because while you know at wide open F1 the number of aperture blades isn going to change the quality of the
5:34
bocad because they're fully retracted. But when you stop the lens down, an 11-bladed aperture does
5:40
a better job of retaining a circular shape in this case than what the nine-bladed does. And so it
5:45
helps just with the quality of the bocad as you stop the lens down a little bit. Now, obviously
5:50
as noted, this is the largest maximum aperture that is currently available on Fuji's medium format. So that's very welcome on a lens like this
5:58
It just means that when the light gets dimmer, you have more options, you have more options
6:02
for depth of field. And it also, in my opinion, makes it a more interesting lens for
6:09
portrait work when you consider that you can still achieve a fairly shallow depth of field
6:13
even working at a little bit further a distance. And so I really like it for that. Also improved
6:19
here over the 80 millimeter is that we have the ability to focus down to 50
6:24
centimeters or 1.6 feet, but we have a higher magnification of 0.17 times, which is actually a little
6:31
bit above average for a 45 to 50 millimeter type lens. And so that is very welcome because it allows
6:38
you to get some really beautiful up-close work. And with this amazingly high resolution on this body
6:43
you can further crop it and make it look a little bit more macro-ish. So overall, pretty much what
6:49
you would expect, if you're familiar at all with Fuji's lens design on the GF system, with the
6:53
exception of getting a few more aperture blades in the iris itself, and so obviously that is
7:00
welcome. Now, one thing that I continue to find surprising, and I think a lot of people do, is that
7:05
rather than employing linear motors on this obviously premium lens, we instead have a DC focus
7:11
motor, which is an older, cruder technology, just like we saw on the 80-millimeter. I don't know
7:19
if Fuji has an issue in employing their linear motors on these really large maximum
7:24
mapture. You know, for example, they released a, in the last year and a half, a 50 millimeter
7:28
F1.0 lens for the XF mount. And that lens also employed a DC motor, though, you know, for the nicer
7:36
lenses on XF, almost all of them have linear motors. And so I think that in these really large
7:42
maximum aperture situations on these primes, for whatever reason, Fuji's running into an engineering
7:47
and challenge of employing linear motors. And I would love to see them take a note from Sony, for example
7:53
that on a lens like this would probably employ like four of their similar linear
7:59
motor type motors to make sure that focus is really quick and really quiet
8:04
That's not what we have got here. And so you'll definitely hear focus sounds during autofocus
8:09
It's kind of a scratchy sound as it goes back and forth
8:13
And as you can see here, autofocus speed is fairly good. It's not great, but it is fairly good
8:20
And overall, I found that focus actually was quite good. IEF worked really well for portrait sessions and it worked well for shooting animals
8:29
The one exception I will say to that is that if you're close enough to where depth of field starts to affect the eye
8:35
you discover that autofocus is actually more on the eyelash or the eyelid and not on the iris itself
8:42
And about 80% of the time, that's where autofocus ends up. So unfortunately, that obviously isn't ideal, and I would love to see them refine that just a little bit further
8:52
It probably has more to do with the focus system in the camera than what it does, the lens itself, truth be told
8:58
Now, in terms of the focus speed, kind of a mixed bag there, I certainly did not find it was fast enough to keep up with Nala if she was moving towards me
9:06
You know, pull out a camera, they immediately start to come towards you. And so I would try to take pictures, and it just wasn't really all that successful
9:13
However, in a more controlled environment where I had my son run up to shoot layups, shooting basketball
9:20
I found that the tracking capability was fairly good with this lens and the GFX 100 Mark 2
9:27
I got about an 80% well-focused result, which is frankly better than what I've seen in times past
9:34
I also found that in most backlit situations, focus was pretty good
9:38
this photo of a friend golfing, very strong directional autumn sun, backlighting him
9:45
But you can see that once I brought up exposure, you can see that it's very well focused on his face, despite that in him being in motion
9:51
I also found that in a few of these backlit photos that I got good focus, in one case
9:58
it was just kind of pulsing and wouldn't lock on to a closer subject. So I did have to manually focus, but for the most part, I got pretty good results in those
10:06
situations. I also found that autofocus was good in low light situations, even shooting at
10:11
by necessity at ISO 12,800 at this bookshelf that was completely in the dark. I was able to
10:18
lock autofocus okay. So good there and obviously having that larger maximum aperture is useful
10:25
Now when it comes to the video side of things, it was a little bit rougher and you can see with
10:30
the focus pulls. There is some pulsing, there's some uncertainty, some settling. Unfortunately
10:35
only pretty much part for the course from what I expect on Fuji, and particularly the GF platform
10:40
but even the XF platform some as well. Even in just, you know, a video shot of just a landscape scene
10:47
you can see that initially there's some pulsing before focus settles down
10:51
When I did my hand test it was kind of a mixed bag It didn do too bad and I do find that Fuji focus system works better when it has an AI trackable object on frame And so it did better in
11:04
transitioning from my hand to my eye, but it didn't always go where it should have gone in
11:09
those situations, as you can see. And so overall, autofocus continues to be the kind of weakest
11:14
area of lens design here, either lens design or camera design, whatever the case may be. It's hard to parse out
11:22
the reality between those two things, but there's still room from improvement there
11:26
though I do think there is some improvement to what I saw on the 80 millimeter
11:31
Now, fortunately, I have no reservations when talking about the amazing image quality from this particular lens
11:37
It was a delight to shoot with, and I found that it had many of the strengths of the 80mm F1.7
11:42
but with fewer weaknesses, leaving it as a stronger overall candidate in my mind
11:48
We're going to dive in and we'll do a deep dive into the image quality performance together
11:52
So first of all, let's take a look at vignette and distortion. You can see that there is a mild amount of barrel distortion, but a much stronger amount of vignette
12:01
I was able to correct the distortion with just a plus five. You can see it's quite linear, no real issues with that
12:07
The vignette is much heavier at plus 86, which that's over three stops, the vignette in the corner
12:13
so it's going to require a significant amount of correction. No one area of definite strength is there's next to no longitudinal chromatic aberrations before or after the plane of foot
12:22
focus. You can see no real purple fringing before, very little green fringing afterward. Likewise
12:28
if we jump into a real world image here against a very kind of high key background, I typically
12:34
see a lot of fringing on old cameras and settings like this, but you can see that in these edges
12:39
near the transitions, everything is really, really well controlled. So great job there on the
12:45
longitudinal chromatic aberrations. Likewise here, you can see that we've got foreground and then
12:51
some background areas and you can see that number one detail is really really beautiful here
12:57
Foreground bouquet is really nice, but fringing is not showing up in any of the bocha circles here
13:03
either before or after the plane of focus. Likewise, if we look for lateral chromatic aberrations
13:08
which show up near the edge of the frame, you can see that the transitions from black to white
13:13
are really, really excellent. And so fringing is extremely well controlled on this lens
13:18
So how about contrast and resolution? Well, here using the hundred 102 megapixel. This is the GFX 100 Mark 2 sensor, their newest camera. And showing the results at 200% magnification, we can see that even wide open at F1.7, extremely sharp and very high contrast in the center of the frame. If we look at the mid frame, just a stunning amount of detail there. It looks exceptional. And if we pop all the way down to the corners, we can see that detail is strong all the way into the corner
13:48
Now this last point is kind of the highest distinguishing wide open between the 55 millimeter and the 80 millimeter
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I will give the edge across the frame to the 55 millimeter. But you can see here as you get towards the corner that it is significantly better
14:04
There's a little bit of softness here and lower contrast towards the edge of the frame on the 80 millimeter
14:10
whereas the 55 millimeter stays really, really strong. Even if we move back to the mid frame, however, you can just see there's just so much more contrast and detail
14:18
on the 55 millimeter than what there is on the 80 millimeter lens
14:22
So in real world use, you can see, number one, that the combination of the sharpness in the bouquet from this lens
14:29
is really, really quite special. If we pop in and we take a look at a pixel level
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we can see that the amount of detail there is just extraordinarily good
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It's just incredibly special what this lens is capable of producing. Likewise, for a portrait shot here that if I punch into 100%
14:47
magnification. You can see that the amount of detail there and the eye that is in focus is just
14:54
incredibly crisp. I mean, the detail is just stunning, but everything else looks really good as well
15:00
The defocus, the fall off, it's all really, really special. Now, if we stop down to F2
15:06
we don't see a significant difference. You do see that there is a bit more contrast that is there
15:12
We are already at such a high level, but there is just a little bit of an improvement there
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you can see that a little less in the mid frame and a little bit more down in the corner
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which just has a little bit more brightness and thus a little bit more contrast. The difference from F2 to F2.8 is roughly the same
15:31
Then from F2.8 to F4, not a significant improvement. And of course, we're already at such a high level, but you can see just a little bit more contrast
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But everything, frankly, already looks really, really exceptional everywhere that I look in the frame
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So there isn't a huge amount of room for improvement. So sharpness probably peaks around F5.6, and even from F5.6 to F8, you can see just a very mild loss that comes from diffraction, starting to set in to where contrasts just isn't quite as intense as what we saw there at F5.6
16:08
If you carry that on to F11, 16, and then 22, you can see that by the minimum after of F22, diffraction
16:16
has really really taken away that contrast and that detail to where now everything looks a little bit mushy whereas at the larger apertures it looks just fabulous This allows for exceptional real results shooting at F5 here
16:33
You can see that all up into the trees that I've got just amazing detail and all of these things
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And then as we kind of move off towards the distance, even while contrast diminishes because
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of the atmospheric environments, you can see that the detail there is just fantastic
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Also, just special is the colors out of this lens. They're just really, really gorgeous
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It's something that Fuji does well, obviously, anyway, but you get into the GFX system and you pair it with good quality glass
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as we've got here. It just makes for really, really beautiful colors that are just
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they're a joy to edit because they're not oversaturated or overgarish. They're just really, really rich
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And the various gradations and these larger pixels are just really, really a joy to edit
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it. Now we saw before that our minimum focus distance is pretty decent, but let's take a look at
17:25
up close here. You can see that even at our minimum focus, that detail is really, really awesome
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And so that allows us to have even better performance for real world results in that you can
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start with an image like this, which isn't quite macro level, but the ability to deeply crop
17:43
on such a high resolution body and then to see that kind of detail obviously allows you a lot
17:49
of versatility in getting macro type lens images even from a lens it only has so-so magnification
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Another shot here you can see that if you punch into the detail, the plane of focus on this
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image, you can see that the detail is just really, really good and contrast holds up really well
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I also find that the combination of sharpness and then transition to softness is really great
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The fall off on this lens for light, for color, but then also for sharpness
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sharpness is just really, really well done. And so you can see we're super sharp here in the
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very narrow plane of focus around this eye. But as we transition away that even as we get towards
18:29
the back of the ear, for example, it's falling out of focus. But then the background just really
18:34
really melts away in a beautiful fashion. And here, what makes this really special is the ability
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to shoot at F1.7, even though obviously we're not crushing this background, you can see that the
18:45
foreground blur is very nice. The background blur is nice. The background blur is And then we've got this really sharp place of focus here where the subject stands out really nicely
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And in that zone, there's great, great sharpness on the actual subject herself
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And then looking towards the background, everything just blurs away really nicely
19:05
That allowed me to put things in the foreground and really blur them out. This is like pine boughs in front of here
19:11
But I can use that as kind of a natural vignette or frame. And then if I look in at the detail on the subject, it is just fantastic
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And so I'm really, really impressed with that aspect of design. Likewise, when it comes to flare resistance, not too bad
19:26
There's a little bit of ghosting artifacts here at wide open. Then as we stop on down, we get kind of this prismatic pattern
19:33
And just a little bit of a ghosting blob here, but nothing particularly negative
19:38
So finally looking at our coma performance, obviously having an F1.7 aperture makes this a little more intriguing for shooting the night sky
19:45
And we can see that it has the ability to pull in lots of star
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and of course at 102 megapixels, you get a lot of great detail there
19:54
There is some coma smears. You get towards the corner, and so the stars start to look like birds or flying insects
20:01
and gain wings here towards the corners. And here we've got, you know, maybe some UFOs
20:08
But point being is that it's not perfectly controlled from comatic aberrations
20:13
but you can also see looking at images as a whole that it looks pretty decent, pretty compelling there
20:19
So in conclusion, this is easily one of my favorite GF lenses to date
20:23
I love the focal length, I love the large maximum aperture, I love the images I can get with it
20:29
I am ready to see some evolution in the features and that end of the design
20:34
to see them just progress a little bit more and what they're including in these premium lenses
20:39
I also think it's high time for them to discover a way to make linear motors work in an application like this
20:45
to where the great optics of this lens can be unleashed in
20:49
It's autofocus performance as well. This is an expensive lens at $2,300 US dollars
20:55
but at the same time, it is no more expensive than the premium prime lenses on full frame platforms
21:01
And so I don't think that that is necessarily the hurdle to overcome here
21:06
People that get into medium format typically do so with the understanding it's going to be expensive, but the trade-off is that the image quality
21:13
is unique and unmatched with any other smaller format system. And so at the end of the day, this lens is really attractive, and I will say this, that if I were to dive into owning Fuji's medium format, this lens would be pretty much at the top of my list
21:30
I really, really enjoyed it. It's a lens that I could use frequently and be very happy to use
21:35
I'm Dustin Abbott, and if you look in the description down below, you can find linkage to my full text review, to the image gallery
21:41
Please like and subscribe if you haven't already. Thanks for watching. Have a great day
21:46
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