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Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R WR (40MP Review): Worth the Premium Price?
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May 2, 2024
Photographer Dustin Abbott shares a deep dive review of the new Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R WR premium portrait lens for Fuji X-mount on the 40MP sensor. Is the premium option the best option? | This video is sponsored by Fantom Duffel. Visit https://store.fantomwallet.com and use code DUSTIN20 to get 20% off | Read the Text Review: | Visit the Image Gallery: | Purchase the Fuji 56mm F1.2 WR @ B&H Photo https://bhpho.to/3vZTKBC | Adorama https://howl.me/cl8OWGI4k1p | Nuzira https://tinyurl.com/BuyXF56mm | Amazon https://amzn.to/3JA10Hv | Camera Canada https://shrsl.com/4ib1v | Amazon Canada https://amzn.to/3UhHbcM | Amazon UK https://amzn.to/4bafoSm | Amazon Germany https://amzn.to/3Qpk4ff 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 Adorama: https://howl.me/cjU0LKdp3LN Camera Canada: http://bit.ly/DLACameraCan Sony Canada: https://www.thesonyshop.ca/?ref=abbott 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: ============================= 0:00 - Intro and Concept 1:47 - Fantom Duffel
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0:00
Hi, I'm Dustin Abbott and I'm here today to give you my review of the Fujinon XF 56mm
0:16
f1.2. This is the RWR edition. Now I did my review of the original 56mm f1.2R lens back
0:26
in 2019. It was four or five years old at that point and at that point I really lamented the
0:31
fact that there was areas where it just really wasn't competitive and lamented the fact that
0:36
at that time Fuji was a closed platform and as a byproduct the lens didn't really have any kind of
0:41
competition outside of other Fuji lenses and so as a byproduct I felt like there was areas where
0:46
Fuji wasn't being pushed in their development. Fast forward to 2024 and this particular lens
0:52
and now there's a plethora of 56mm options on Fuji. They've opened up their platform
0:57
and I did a quick count and came up with seven autofocusing 56mm lenses from third-party brands
1:04
now available in Fuji X-mount and that's not including the few options that are available
1:09
from Fuji themselves at this point. So clearly it's a very different market in 2024 which means
1:15
that this lens has to compete on its merit. Now the first thing that jumps out of you if you're
1:21
looking at this lens versus a number of these third-party alternatives is it is expensive. It's
1:26
a lot more expensive than any of those. So with that in mind why is it that I'm so desperate to
1:33
add one to my own kit after doing my review even though it is in some cases four or five times more
1:39
than what some of the very good competing lenses are? Well that's what I hope to explore with you
1:43
today as a part of this review which we'll dive into right after a word from our sponsor. Today's
1:48
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it out and use code Dustin20 for 20% off when you're ready to check out. So there's a reason
2:39
why there are so many new 56 millimeter lenses on the market and that is because 56 millimeters
2:44
with a 1.5 times crop factor as we've got on Fuji's X-mount cameras is about 84 millimeters
2:50
in full frame equivalency. So essentially an 85 millimeter perfect portrait lens and that remains
2:56
maybe the most popular portrait focal length that is out there. And so if you, portraits are a part
3:02
of what you're wanting to do or in this case because of some improved versatility the ability
3:06
just to have a multi-purpose lens that can really really give you subject separation can be a really
3:12
tempting thing. And so I think that is a big part of why this lens is so popular. Now one of the
3:17
things that I criticize on the previous edition lens is it was a thousand dollar premium lens that
3:22
did not have weather sealing whereas some of their much less expensive lenses, you know, three or
3:27
four hundred dollars did have weather sealing. It didn't make any sense to me. Obviously it didn't
3:32
make sense to Fuji either because they've now corrected that here. This is R which stands for
3:36
the aperture ring which is a pretty much a constant on Fuji lenses but it also has WR which points to
3:42
the fact that it has weather resistance. In this case that's not just a gasket at the lens mount
3:46
Fuji says there are nine different seal points throughout the lens itself plus a fluorine coating
3:51
on the front element making this a thoroughly professional grade lens that you can continue
3:57
to use even if the wind or the weather begins to turn a little bit foul on you. And of course I
4:01
live in Ontario, Canada. The weather often turns foul around here so it's a really handy feature
4:07
to have obviously. Now this lens has grown a bit and if you look at it, you know, kind of
4:12
depending on which direction you're comparing it with, if you compare it to say the recent f1.8 and
4:18
f1.7 56 millimeter lenses that I've reviewed, it looks pretty big. But if you compare it to
4:23
something like the, you know, Viltrox Pro AF 75 millimeter f1.2, well it looks quite a bit smaller
4:31
Truth of the matter is that the only kind of direct competitor is the Sirui Sniper 56 millimeter
4:37
f1.2 and it is actually, it's not quite as squat or wide as this lens but it is considerably longer
4:44
and it weighs basically in the same within about 20 grams. And so this lens has grown some but
4:50
it's certainly not unreasonably large for an f1.2 lens. So this lens is 79.4 millimeters in diameter
4:58
and a little bit less 76 millimeters in overall length. That's 3.1 inches by
5:04
three inches. It weighs in at 445 grams, just right under a pound. It's grown from 62 to 67
5:12
millimeter front filter threads. To me that's a welcome change unless of course you're upgrading
5:16
from the previous edition lens and already have filters for it because 67 millimeter filters are
5:21
far more common than what 62 millimeter filters are. The end result of the changes here is that
5:27
the lens has a profile that's a little bit more squat. It flares out a little bit more and frankly
5:32
it's the kind of lens that I think actually looks really great on a camera. Your mileage may vary
5:36
obviously but it's one of my favorite lens profiles to have on a lens that nice squat prime
5:42
lens looks that looks like you're a, you know, serious photographer. Now there is only that one
5:48
f1.2 alternative. There's lots of 56 millimeter lenses now. A few of them are f1.4 but only one
5:54
other f1.2 and that's the CRI sniper 56 millimeter that I refer to already. We'll see on our image
6:00
quality breakdown but this lens destroys that sniper lens. If you're interested in optical
6:06
quality there's just no comparison here. This lens is far far better. Now I do have a critique in that
6:13
you know 10 years have passed since the launch of the first lens and really in terms of the external
6:19
features on the lens itself we have nothing new. I don't like seeing kind of that stagnancy in
6:25
Fuji's lens development. We do have the aperture ring as we had before but there's no new options
6:30
with it. You know during that time cameras have become much more hybrid focused. You know Fuji's
6:35
own cameras, you know, I'm shooting on the X-H2. It's a great video body with options up to 8k video
6:41
but we have no concessions to the fact that people might want to do aperture racking for example
6:46
No features like that, no custom buttons on here that would allow you to program different functions
6:52
and to make the lens a little bit more versatile. No, we've got that aperture ring and that's it
6:58
And so I do have to knock them on that because what I see from a bunch of other brands at this
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point is a whole lot more development in terms of the feature sets that available on them
7:08
Now one feature that is improved here is that this is the first XF mount lens to grow from
7:14
a total of 9 aperture blades up to 11 aperture blades and it is a beautiful aperture here
7:20
Stays very circular as you can see from the aperture itself and that plays out really
7:24
nicely because at f1.2 there is a little bit of that cat eye deformation towards the edges of
7:29
the frame. You stop the lens down a little bit and because that aperture is so round the specular
7:34
highlights are just beautifully round all across the frame as you can see here with these raindrops
7:38
at f2 and then f2.8 it looks really fabulous so kudos to them for making that improvement there
7:45
It does come with the lens hood here and as you can see it is a big lens hood so you know the only
7:52
kind of downside here is that it really does add in it's basically about two-thirds of the length
7:57
of the overall lens itself which means that the lens link grows considerably when you have that
8:02
lens hood attached. So you may prefer to use it but there may be a lot of situations where you
8:06
prefer not to use it and to keep the lens more in its bare shape. Now the manual focus ring is a
8:13
bit of a contradiction. It's a contradiction in the fact that the lens or the ring itself feels
8:18
fine has nice damping to it but unfortunately as we're going to see in just a second the focus
8:23
motor here is still rather primitive and unfortunately that plays a big part in the
8:28
actual manual focus experience as well since mirrorless lenses are what's called focus by wire
8:33
so the focus input from the focus ring you'll note that there's no mechanical hard stops you
8:37
just rotate it endlessly because when the lens is powered down that focus ring is doing nothing
8:42
When the camera is powered up it means that that input here is going to be running through
8:47
the camera and then to the actual focus motor that makes those minute adjustments
8:51
and so as a byproduct because the auto focus motor is kind of rough you can really feel pulses
9:00
and it makes noise as you're moving it and so you're by no means you're going to think that
9:04
you're actually using a manual focus lens here the focus simulation is rather on the poor side
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and unfortunately the far less expensive TT Artisan 56 millimeter f1.8 that I reviewed a few weeks ago
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has a much nicer manual focus emulation than what this lens does which is a shame since this is the
9:22
premium lens in the class. Now one final thing that is improved is that the previous version of
9:31
the lens had a rather dismal 70 centimeter minimum focus distance and a very low 0.09 times
9:40
magnification level. This lens is much improved in that regard not only can it focus a lot closer it
9:46
can focus down to 50 centimeters so the magnification grows to 0.14 times which is
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that's at the high end of any 85 millimeter lenses that I you know non-macro 85 millimeter lenses
9:57
that I've tested so that's that's great that's very competitive but even more importantly
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up close the lens remains remarkably good even at f1.2 it is sharp has good contrast and so
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that just adds to the versatility of the lens there's a lot of additional shots you can get
10:12
with this lens that you really couldn't with the previous edition lens so kudos to them on that
10:18
So let's shift over to autofocus and as I've already hinted at this is going to be my least
10:22
favorite section in doing this review unfortunately they have utilized an old style DC motor and for
10:28
some reason Fuji can't seem to marry both large aperture with a linear focus motor a smoother
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more modern focus motor we saw the same thing with the 50 millimeter f1.0 that you know it's
10:40
this very expensive high-end lens and it's got this very primitive autofocus motor in it same
10:46
is unfortunately true here I just I really hate this because I see from so many other brands
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they're capable of doing so much more you know and on the full frame platforms that I test I mean
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they're large aperture lenses like this you can use them for sports because they've got multiple
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no linear style focus motors and focus is zippy that's just not true here at all and so unfortunately
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it's quite noisy in operation you can definitely hear you know whirring and clunking as it kind
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of moves along and on top of that it has this very obvious kind of double clutch action where
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the initial focus if you shift from one focus point to another it'll focus about two-thirds of
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the way there's a pause and then it does another it's like that second clutch action where it kind
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of completes and finalizes focus lock and so that does slow autofocus down as you can see here
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to counterbalance that I did actually have really good focus accuracy with the lens so it's not
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smooth it's not fast in the way it gets there but it is accurate at the very least and so I found
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that I got very good accuracy with just general purpose shooting it was excellent in terms of
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focus accuracy during multiple portrait sessions and in different kinds of settings I was able to
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get very good lock on the eye good focus there I found that even when it came to when I shot some
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gulls on the beach in Myrtle Beach I found that if I started off with focus lock it would do a
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fairly good job of staying locked on there if I didn't start off the burst with focus lock it was
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not intuitive or fast enough to ever pick it up and so you wouldn't want to try to acquire a moving
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subject on the move but if you start with it and it's not moving too fast towards the camera the
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motor is able to reasonably keep up but just don't buy this for sports it is it's simply not good for
12:34
that I also found that out at night kind of walking around that the lens did a good job of focusing
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even in low light conditions obviously this is going to be one of the better performers in terms
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of how much light it can let into the focus system itself and so that certainly helped and so I did
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have good accuracy even in very dim conditions if anything things were worse on the video side of
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things and unfortunately I can't really separate the camera performance from the lens performance
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and this is an area where Fuji is is way behind a lot of the other brands that I test when it
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comes to things like focus pulls and you know video AF tracking it's just it's a little bit
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clunky by comparison to what I'm seeing from Canon Sony I'll soon be covering Nikon and so I'll be
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able to comment a little bit more on that area as well but unfortunately in this case while you can
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see from these focus pulls that they've detuned the focus speed try to make the noise less obvious
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so you can still hear it but it is quieter but it also means that it's it's quite slow and you can
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also see some visible steps including that kind of double clutch action where you're not going all
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the way from one focus point to another but there's a pause along the way and then even once
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it arrives there on the video side of things I saw some little settling micro pulses where it still
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tries to refine focus a little bit further when it comes to my hand test while it did a reasonable
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job of going back and forth and locking on the proper thing it was gradual enough and not reactive
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enough that even though I tried to move much slower than usual there were times that I didn't
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get my hand you know out of the way or you know fast enough or vice versa and so it didn't quite
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get focus all the way there before it needed to start changing focus again and part of that even
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though I was monitoring a bit on from the front of the camera it's that double clutch action that it
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seemed like focus had taken place but it had only done kind of the first part of the focus action
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so again not great there is one strength here relative some of to some of the older Fuji lenses
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that I've tested recently and that was the fact that I saw when I was trying to do just a static
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shot say of this you know people on the beach here that it wasn't doing like this constant
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pulsing it settled on focus and it stayed there so at least that's one good thing to do
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so maybe the kindest way that I can sum things up here is that while the focus experience was not
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particularly refined it did at least get the job done most of the time now I'm glad to get that out
14:59
of the way because this next section is one that makes me much much happier this is a beautiful
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optical instrument 13 elements in eight groups two of those are aspherical one is extra low
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dispersion element in there however the they did it with the optics they did a fantastic job
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this lens is so much better in my opinion than the previous previous lens that I felt felt was
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already starting to be outclassed even on the 26 megapixel sensor on this new 40 megapixel sensor
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I just at wide apertures I would not be pleased with it at all I love this lens even at f 1.2
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even on this 40 megapixel sensor it is way up near the top of my list of lenses to recommend
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that actually work on sig or on Fuji's new high resolution sensors the mtf as you can see here
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looks really really consistent even though they're using the much higher a 40 45 line pair per
15:52
millimeter metric there on the bottom than what you know most cases lens manufacturers using only
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the 30 lines pair margin and so we're 50 percent higher here and yet you're seeing a really really
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strong result and so that is fantastic this is a lens it was actually designed for handling the
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sensor and it really shows when I was shooting side by side with older lenses the images off of
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this lens just sparkled in a way that even if I didn't know what lens was by seeing the information
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I knew which lens that I had used I knew it when it was this lens because the images just were
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so much better so I'll give you a more thorough optical breakdown at the end of the review if
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you're interested in that but here is kind of an overview of the you know the basic stats here
16:35
I saw that when I tested for vignette and distortion very very little distortion I used a
16:40
minus one to correct just the tiniest amount but if you didn't correct it you wouldn't notice it
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and it was about a plus 41 to correct for the vignette which for an f1.2 lens is really really
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low just a little over a stop so neither one of those things is going to be a factor frankly I
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think you'd probably really like the results for most of your portrait work if you left it uncorrected I think that it would be just a nice amount of subtle vignette there and a tiny bit of
17:03
pinkish cushion distortion is actually flattering it makes people look a little bit thinner which
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typically they're they're happy about and so uh really great metrics there a fantastic job in
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controlling fringing I was an area of weakness on the previous lens this lens is amazing and as a
17:18
byproduct it has fantastic micro contrast in situations where a fringing and a lack of contrast
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would cause the image to really fall apart I felt like this lens sparkled in some familiar situations
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where other lenses have been really outclassed this lens did a great job there it has fantastic
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wide open sharpness and very consistent I found across the frame it's sharp in the center sharp
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in the mid-frame it's sharp in the corners if you look at a comparison to the CRI sniper 56 millimeter
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f1.2 it's they're not even in the same ballpark as you can see I typically don't even compare lenses
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to the Viltrox Pro AF 75 millimeter f1.2 it is so good that it makes most other lenses look bad
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in this case I knew that this lens was up to the challenge so I did compare them and what I found
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is that the lenses are comparable in the center but I actually preferred the corner results from
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this Fuji lens it's a little bit more consistent out there into the corner so I mean that is that's
18:14
fantastic the fact that it is competing well with that Viltrox lens just shows how good it is
18:19
stop it down a bit by f2 it's pin sharp even into the corners you're going to see the typical
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diffraction pattern on a high resolution body like this starting by starting basically at f8 you start
18:30
to see a degradation of image quality due to diffraction you can see it more pronounced at f11
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and strong at minimum aperture of f16 but frankly this is the kind of lens you don't really need to
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stop down unless you want to increase depth of field because it really is just so good even from
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wide open it's complemented by also having gorgeous bokeh and there are some sharp for example the
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Sigma 56 millimeter f1.4 is a very sharp lens but I didn't love the quality of the bokeh so
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I don't necessarily love the lens I mean sharpness is not everything and frankly in many
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cases you really can't see sharpness the way that you can see the overall rendering of images in the
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way that they're shared particularly on the internet and so I find that this lens has a
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beautiful blend of great sharpness on the subject great contrast there but also really nice soft
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bokeh and really it's only the best lenses that are able to achieve that kind of combination of
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elements I found that the subject isolation was beautiful I just I love the optical quality the
19:30
colors look fantastic Fuji has great optical glass and it shows here colors were beautiful
19:35
and it just had that sparkle due to having great contrast great color saturations and great amounts
19:41
of detail along with if there was defocused area beautiful bokeh in it I also found the flare
19:46
resistance to be quite good as well for a large aperture lens so I mean Fuji knocked it out of
19:51
the park in my opinion when it came to the optics of this lens so as much complaints as I have about
19:56
the autofocus I am showering it with flowers when it comes to the optical performance so in
20:02
conclusion there are some really compelling budget alternatives to this lens at this point
20:07
we've had a great amount of really good options that have come to Fuji particularly in the last
20:12
year or so as mentioned a lens like the Sigma 56 millimeter f1.4 is very sharp and it's half the
20:19
price but in my opinion none of them have the combination of this the gorgeous sharpness and
20:25
contrast but then also that beautiful rendering that this lens has the colors are special the
20:31
rendering is fantastic this is the rare lens that sings on the 40 megapixel sensor from Fuji and so
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I understand if you've got a tight budget there are some great budget alternatives at this point
20:43
but if you're willing to save a little bit longer and spend a little bit more this is the lens to get it has that extra little bit of specialness that will make your images
20:52
I think make you happy and at the end of the day that should be at least a big reason why we're
20:58
buying gear is to kind of produce the images that that really reflect who we are as artists and
21:04
photographers and so for me this is the one I'm personally interested in. I'm Dustin Abbott and if
21:10
you want more information you can either check out my in-depth text review that's linked in
21:14
the description below also an image gallery is there some buying links and if you want a deeper
21:19
dive into the optical performance stay tuned right now and we'll jump into it together
21:31
So first of all we'll take a quick look at that vignette and distortion you can see here again
21:37
just the tiniest bit of pincushion distortion very easy to correct for a bit of vignette there but
21:42
nothing serious as you can see easily to correct for that in the corners no issue here just a
21:47
little over a stop and obviously the profile is going to correct for that anyway. Now an area of
21:53
huge improvement from the previous generation lens is the control of longitudinal chromatic
21:59
aberrations and so this is a bit of a torture test that I often find and that lenses often
22:05
will show a lot of fringing in these situations this little bit of green right here is about the
22:10
worst that I can point to in this area here though where I would expect to see some of the worst I
22:15
find that it's really really well controlled there's no fringing before the point of focus
22:20
and just that tiniest bit of green fringing later on. I found that also when I had you know obviously
22:25
the bright specular highlights here if we look at these shiny surfaces here there's just great
22:31
contrast in detail no issues with fringing there if we reverse things around and I look at the front
22:36
of my vintage SLR here again no fringing before and after that very shallow point of focus if we
22:43
look at the edge of these specular highlights no fringing there all very very clean. What that
22:50
allows is even up close this lens is able to produce really beautiful micro contrast and you
22:56
can see here that the the details of textures are able to really pop which is just often not the
23:01
case this shot right here this is in my backyard so it's an easy place to return to this bit of
23:07
lichen growing on this fallen pine tree what happens is that there's just really high contrast
23:13
and then some really hard edges and I find that very often this looks like trash due to fringing
23:19
and a lack of contrast and you can see here even at f1.2 that's fantastic. Likewise when it comes
23:26
to lateral chromatic aberrations near the edge of the frame corrections are turned off here you can
23:30
see just the tiniest bit of fringing in a few spots nothing that you're ever going to see in a
23:35
real world image this is more than 200 percent magnification so no problems with that either
23:41
So all that bodes well for the resolution of the lens and sure enough in the center of the frame
23:46
this is at 200 percent magnification on that 40 megapixel sensor this is some of the best results
23:51
that I've seen for a large aperture lens very very clean looking over here in the mid-frame
23:56
looks good looking up into this corner looks good looking down here looks good looking into the
24:02
right corner it looks good and of course looking up into the upper right corner also looks good
24:09
there this is a really really consistent performance. I'll give you a little bit of a
24:14
deeper dive into those two comparison points I mentioned the direct competitor here is the
24:19
Sirui sniper 56 millimeter f1.2 these lenses are just not even in the same ballpark you can see
24:26
as I noted in my Sirui review that it's almost like there's a smear of Vaseline on that whereas
24:31
the textures just pop by comparison from the Fuji lens anywhere you look the degree of contrast and
24:38
detail is just so much better look at the amount of kind of fringing along those black areas that
24:43
are showing up whereas it's just super clean on Fuji great job with this lens so that allows me to
24:50
directly compare it to the Viltrox a pro af 75 millimeter f1.2 which to this point has been one
24:56
of the very very best lenses that I have reviewed on Fuji's 40 megapixel sensor in the center of the
25:02
frame I would say that the Viltrox has very slightly more contrast you can see that the
25:08
detail on just look at the various whirls here this stamp here and even the lettering themselves
25:14
I would say that the Viltrox is slightly better in the center of the frame I would also say that
25:18
the Viltrox is better in the in the mid-frame there looking down into the corners I would
25:24
favor the Fuji lens outside of maybe just this last little bit right here you can see if you
25:29
compare the door here and here more detail on the Viltrox but coming back a little bit from the edge
25:34
in the zone here of the face very clearly better on the Fuji lens so that translates into a lot of
25:42
great real world performance here and so here amongst the amongst the Spanish moss you can see
25:47
the little bit of new life coming but look at how great the detail is here and contrast very very
25:53
little fringing to see anywhere in all of this really fantastic this is an f1.2 portrait shot
26:00
from a distance with bright light I mean you can't really control outdoor lighting conditions
26:05
when you're just kind of strolling around and you can see here that it's handled all of that without
26:10
falling apart we can see in the areas that are still in focus for example this falls in the same
26:15
plane of focus even right off in the corner it looks fantastic and then if we step back and look
26:20
at the image as a whole that defocused area just looks beautiful it looks like like a painting or
26:26
a canvas or something it doesn't look like a real world shot it is in fact at night as well in high
26:32
contrast situations we can see here that if I look over here to the left side of things looks really
26:38
good coming here close to the center all of these bright lights that could become you know smears of
26:44
either coma or fringing you just don't see it it's doing a great job and while this isn't my typical
26:50
coma test we can see coming back here for a moment that we're not seeing that coma smear near the edge
26:55
of the frame really strong performance now if we stop down to f1.4 you can see that there is a
27:01
slight improvement to contrast there also you'll see a little bit of that here in the mid frame
27:07
and a tiny bit in the corners mostly just a little bit of brightening due to a little bit less vignette
27:13
now by the time we get to f2 we can see the contrast has improved even more and now I would
27:18
say significantly if we pan towards this corner you can see that the corners are looking really
27:23
really crisp at this point great improvements there from f2 to f2.8 the gains are going to be
27:30
much more moderate from f2.8 to f4 we can see a little bit more of a corner boost now these
27:36
corners are looking super crisp and then from f4 to f5.6 again just the slightest bit of contrast
27:44
boost that is coming there but at this stage you're getting everything that you could possibly
27:48
ask for f8 is largely holding its own diffraction is just starting to take a little bit of the edge
27:54
off of some of the details but it's slight enough remember we're looking at 200 magnification
27:59
you won't notice it here it's not till you get to f11 that you really start to notice that
28:04
softening effect due to diffraction and it's strong by f16 as we can see here I gave the lens
28:10
really high marks when it came to its up close performance some lenses fall apart when you get
28:15
up close this is at f1.2 and you can see it really still looks fantastic that aperture iris
28:21
is so nice and round so you can see there's a little bit of that cat eye deformation at f1.2
28:27
by f2 because the aperture is so round we can see that the bokeh specular highlights there
28:33
they're nice and round all across the frame which is very useful if that's something that you value
28:38
the ability to isolate subjects even when the background is fairly close there's some people
28:43
here at the table in the background I wanted the focus to be on this donut which by the way was
28:48
amazing but you can see the detail is beautiful there the powdered sugar on it you can see all
28:54
of that detail but then look how creamy the background is I love that f1.2 aperture I also
29:00
love it for this kind of shot where I'm blurring out the foreground and trying to draw the eye
29:04
through the layers of defocus to get to our destination this is a hard kind of image optically
29:10
because usually these lenses are optimized for a little bit closer this lens is great all the way
29:15
through and here at f1.2 look at how beautiful that detail is there deep into the image and that
29:21
adds up to a really beautiful portrait lens you know I really quite like the Viltrox 56 millimeter
29:27
f1.7 as a budget portrait lens and I continue to feel like that's the case and you if you compare
29:33
right here wide open to wide open you know the Fuji is a little bit sharper but not radically so
29:39
but your big difference is going to be here as you look towards the background in various places
29:44
the Fuji is very soft whereas the Viltrox with its smaller maximum aperture the background is
29:50
going to be busier and this is actually quite an optimal situation the main background is quite far
29:55
away and so the closer the background is the more the advantage will be for the Fuji lens and its
30:01
f1.2 aperture versus the Viltrox here I really love the colors and the contrast from the lens
30:08
and so it just means that wherever I look in the frame you know there's just great detail the image
30:14
as a whole looks great but it also holds up over under a close examination all throughout the frame
30:20
you can see that the detail just looks fantastic and finally for real world shots shooting into
30:25
the sun I was actually pleased with the amount of contrast that held up in that the lack of any kind
30:32
of flaring or glaring effects it just looked really really nice optically this lens is top
30:38
notch so thanks for sticking around until the very end I hope that this has helped you to have an
30:43
informed opinion as to whether or not this is a lens you're interested in buying thanks for
30:48
watching have a great day and let the light in