I’ve had a long lasting love affair with vintage glass. Even though my contemporary lens collection features dozens of great lenses, I still have 6 or 7 vintage lenses that I enjoy taking out periodically. Some of those include classic SMC Takumars and Zeiss lenses, while others include some of the cult classics like Soviet Helios and Jupiter lenses. The latter category I have prized because of their unique “swirly” bokeh. These lenses are often optical designs derived from Carl Zeiss, and almost all of the lenses I own are based on the old M42 screw mount. Many of these lenses have gotten some revival in the mirrorless era, as they can be fairly easily adapter and mirrorless cameras have manual focus aids that make using them easier than ever. There is a subset of photographers who are turned off by modern lenses that are perfectly corrected, and they are more interested in lenses with some individuality and character.
I’ve wasted a lot of time down the eBay rabbit hole trying to find some of these classic gems at a reasonable price, but some of them are surprisingly expensive. The Zeiss Biotar 75mm F1.5 can cost thousands of dollars. But what if you could get a modern version of that exact lens for under $300? If that sounds intriguing, join me in exploring the unique TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 in either my video review or my text review…or just enjoy the photos in the gallery.
Thanks to TTArtisan for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
TTArtisan has chosen one of the three different housing designs this optical formula had in the past, which is often called the “Fat Version” that was sold from 1952-1967. The end result is a stubby lens that reminds me a lot of the recent Voigtländer Nokton 75mm F1.5 that I reviewed earlier this year. It has the scalloped focus ring, all metal body, and anodized finish of that lens.
This is built around that same old M42 mount, so that comes with both blessings and curses that we will explore. The upside is that the M42 is easily adaptable to a wide variety of lens mounts, up to and including Fuji’s medium format GF mount. I used to mostly use M42 glass on Canon EF mount, where the adapters would be quite slim, but because of the different flange distance on mirrorless cameras, you have to use much thicker adapters to get the optics where they need to be. You can see that the Vello adapter I used here is pretty chunky, which adds a fair bit of length to the overall package, unfortunately.
Initially the lens didn’t lineup quite right for me, but fortunately they have thought about that, as you can mount the lens to your camera, and then use the included allen key to loosen three screws near the lens mount, which will then allow you to rotate the lens to the proper position before tightening it back down.
It’s a good solution to a common problem with lenses like this. There’s no question this is an interesting lens with a lot of character. See that character in the images below.
Keywords: TTArtisan, 75mm, F1.5, swirl, swirly bokeh, TTArtisan 75mm review, M42, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 61MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #Alpha1, #A7RV
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I’ve had a long lasting love affair with vintage glass. Even though my contemporary lens collection features dozens of great lenses, I still have 6 or 7 vintage lenses that I enjoy taking out periodically. Some of those include classic SMC Takumars and Zeiss lenses, while others include some of the cult classics like Soviet Helios and Jupiter lenses. The latter category I have prized because of their unique “swirly” bokeh. These lenses are often optical designs derived from Carl Zeiss, and almost all of the lenses I own are based on the old M42 screw mount. Many of these lenses have gotten some revival in the mirrorless era, as they can be fairly easily adapter and mirrorless cameras have manual focus aids that make using them easier than ever. There is a subset of photographers who are turned off by modern lenses that are perfectly corrected, and they are more interested in lenses with some individuality and character.
I’ve wasted a lot of time down the eBay rabbit hole trying to find some of these classic gems at a reasonable price, but some of them are surprisingly expensive. The Zeiss Biotar 75mm F1.5 can cost thousands of dollars. But what if you could get a modern version of that exact lens for under $300? If that sounds intriguing, join me in exploring the unique TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 in either my video review or the text review that continues below.
Thanks to TTArtisan for sending me a review loaner of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the Sony a7RV along with the Sony Alpha 1 that serve as my benchmark cameras for Sony lenses.
TTArtisan has chosen one of the three different housing designs this optical formula had in the past, which is often called the “Fat Version” that was sold from 1952-1967. The end result is a stubby lens that reminds me a lot of the recent Voigtländer Nokton 75mm F1.5 that I reviewed earlier this year. It has the scalloped focus ring, all metal body, and anodized finish of that lens.
This is built around that same old M42 mount, so that comes with both blessings and curses that we will explore. The upside is that the M42 is easily adaptable to a wide variety of lens mounts, up to and including Fuji’s medium format GF mount. I used to mostly use M42 glass on Canon EF mount, where the adapters would be quite slim, but because of the different flange distance on mirrorless cameras, you have to use much thicker adapters to get the optics where they need to be. You can see that the Vello adapter I used here is pretty chunky, which adds a fair bit of length to the overall package, unfortunately.
Initially the lens didn’t lineup quite right for me, but fortunately they have thought about that, as you can mount the lens to your camera, and then use the included allen key to loosen three screws near the lens mount, which will then allow you to rotate the lens to the proper position before tightening it back down.
It’s a good solution to a common problem with lenses like this. Let’s take a closer look at the performance.
Build and Handling
The TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl has classic good looks. The lens has some heft to it, weighing in at roughly 570g (20oz). I measure the lens at roughly 73mm in diameter and about 72mm in overall length. The lens will grow an additional 10mm in length when focused to the minimum focus distance (externally focusing).
We have a common 58mm front filter thread on the front of the lens.
There are two rings on the lens. The first is the manual focus ring, which is the widest part of the lens and has easy to grip metal knurls.
There are etched distance markings with metric in white and Imperial distances in yellow. The lens barrel before the ring has hyperfocal markings (from F1.5 to F16) on it.
The second ring is near the front, and it a manual aperture ring. This is a clicked aperture with detents at the half stop position from F1.5 to F5.6, then only full stops. There are markings for each full aperture (starting at F1.5, then F2, F2.8, etc…). The aperture ring moves with nice precision.
There are thirteen rounded aperture blades inside that make for a pretty sexy looking aperture.
Minimum focus distance is 75cm, and the resulting magnification is not particularly high (probably in the 0.10x range).
There is no weather sealing, no electronics, or anything particularly modern. You’ll need to manually set the focal length for in-camera stabilization if your camera is so equipped. You will also miss a lot of EXIF data (only the camera based information like shutter speed and ISO will be recorded, though if you are shooting on Nikon you’ll have a chance to manually input some of that information).
The front cap is an old school threaded variety.
All told this is a nicely made lens that focuses nicely, has good aperture control, and costs a whole lot less than grabbing one of the classic lenses it emulates.
Manual Focus on Sony (Alpha 1 and a7RV)
When I first moved to Sony bodies, I found them a wonderful platform for manual focus. They had IBIS (in-body-image-stabilization), good viewfinders, and much more manual focus aids than the DSLRs that I was accustomed to. Since that point, however, essentially the whole industry has shifted to mirrorless cameras, so those advantages aren’t as distinct anymore. But I still found the TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl an easy lens to use on my Sony bodies and found that I could easily nail focus despite the large maximum aperture and narrow depth of field. Here’s a few reasons why:
EVF. An electronic viewfinder has a lot of advantages over an optical viewfinder when it comes to using manual focus lenses. You have the ability to see overlays, magnify the image to confirm focus, and as a byproduct I really didn’t have any misses. I don’t always love Sony’s viewfinders due to them going a bit weird when you half-depress the shutter for stabilization, but focus is still really easy due to the EVF.
Effective IBIS (Steadyshot Inside). Sony was a pioneer with IBIS, and while other companies have caught up and even surpassed them, having the ability to stabilize the viewfinder or LCD screen image while focusing makes manual focus much easier. You can hold that image still while you pull focus to the perfect point.
Useful manual focus aids. Sony’s options include the ability to have a color overlay to help to show what is in focus, though I will note that this works better when shooting at larger apertures and at close to medium distances. At longer distances where more is in focus, the color overlays can just become distracting, and just because a lot is in focus doesn’t yet mean that focus is where you want it. I prefer the secondary method, which is to enable an automatic magnification of the focus area whenever you turn the focus ring. This allows you to visually confirm focus is where you want it, and it is pretty foolproof. Sony’s system will both automatically magnify the focus area when you turn the focus ring and then also switch back to the full view when you go to depress the shutter so that you can ensure your composition is still what you want.
I own four different brands of camera (Sony, Canon, Nikon, and Fujifilm), and I can safely say that manually focusing on each of them is really quite easy…even when focusing on very shallow depths of field.
It is worth noting that the beautiful focus ring also makes doing focus pulls during video a treat. There’s nothing quite like a well calibrated true manual focus ring for smooth pulls.
TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 Swirl Image Quality Breakdown
This “swirl” lens has an extremely simple optical design of 6 elements in 4 groups. Two of those are HR elements.
Lenses like this are all about the rendering, the “look”, and not about their technical proficiency. I haven’t seen an MTF chart that looks this bad in a long, long time!
There’s a huge disparity between the wide open performance and the stopped down performance. The corners are particularly weak, but that’s essentially part of the design. The “swirl” that is so desirable in these lenses actually comes from uncorrected aberrations in the sagittal plane. In fact, most of the unique and desirable qualities we like about vintage glass come from optical defects, which is why modern lenses often feel fairly “clinical” by comparison. There’s a lot of defects in this image…but that’s a big part of the charm!
On the technical side of things, there is relatively little distortion and vignette.
There is a very small amount of barrel distortion (+3 to correct) and under 2 stops of vignette (+45 to correct). Neither metric is bad at all, which is good, as obviously lenses without electronics like this won’t get any kind of in camera corrections.
Not so good, however, is color fringing, particularly in high contrast situations. This is not a lens that will always hold up well when there are brighter lights in the frame. You’ll also see some color fringing before and after the plan of focus, and a general spherical aberrations that softens contrast (what we often euphemistically call “dreamy rendering”).
Other shots in lower contrast situations look better.
Stopping down a bit helps with the fringing in most situations.
Control of Lateral CA was pretty much perfect. The transition from black to white is flawless near the edge of the frame.
We can clearly guess that at large apertures, this is not going to be a very sharp lens, particularly when we consider that I am testing on a much higher resolution point than any classic lens had to deal with. All of my chart tests are shot on the 61MP Sony a7RV sensor with crops shown at roughly 200% magnification. Here’s a look at the test chart, which looks a bit like it is warping due to the unique optical signature of this lens.
And here are the F1.5 crops from across the frame:
There’s actually a decent amount of detail in the center of the frame, but you can also see that some fringing is reducing contrast, giving the textures a bit of a “bloom” to them. The midframe and corners are softer still, but it is mostly due to having very low contrast.
That’s all part of the unique look of the lens, however.
I did note some of the typical quirks with metering as I stopped the lens down for my test chart results. I found that I needed to bias results sometimes to keep metering accurate. As I got into the smaller apertures, it was not unusual to get underexposed results like below if I didn’t.
Stopping down to F2 will increase contrast a bit and eliminate a lot of the fringing. You can see that the whole image looks cleaner and brighter.
If we look in the center of the frame, we can see that the resolution and contrast have picked up considerably. It’s like a whole new lens.
The corners are a different story, however, as, while they are brighter, then look like they are in a fog and the sun is just starting to come out a bit!
Corners never get pin sharp, though they are pretty decent by F5.6:
Landscape apertures of F4-F8 look pretty good other than the extreme edges of the frame.
As expected on a high resolution body, diffraction will hit after F8, softening the image a bit at F11 and more so at F16, which is minimum aperture.
So sharpness and contrast will vary dependent on the aperture you choose, which does give you some flexibility with the kinds of images that you can create with the lens.
But if you are buying this lens for sharpness, you’ve missed the point. This is a lens that is more about what’s out of focus than what is in focus. So let’s talk about that bokeh. First of all, the lens is very capable of producing soft, creamy bokeh. Here’s a look at a scene where I’ve pulled focus back to minimum so everything is out of focus.
There’s actually a specific difference where the swirl is most pronounced. That will be shooting at F1.5 and a medium distance of about two meters.
If I focus further, we can see that there is relatively little swirl effect, so it really only works with the background, not the foreground.
On a practical level, this effect works best when there is something on either side of the subject to serve as the bokeh subject. Putting your subject near the center of the frame works better than composing in the rule of thirds zone, as the plane of sharpness is mostly located in the center of the frame and you can get better subject separation. I put my subject in the rule of thirds for this shot, but it doesn’t work as well.
The effect will be more pronounced with a larger sensor. Medium format users will see the biggest effect, while APS-C cameras will crop off a lot of the swirly look. You can obviously get a fair bit of the effect on full frame as well (as shown in this review).
Stop down a bit, and you can get a more conventional image, like this:
Likewise for landscape shots. Shooting at F5.6 or F8 makes for a pretty conventional looking image.
Flare results are going to be situational. In certain positions there’s a general veiling over a shot, like this:
At wider apertures you may see a ghosting artifact like this:
At its best, you can get some fairly artistic effects that really go along with the vintage charm of the lens.
I would say the results are generally better than some of the vintage glass I’ve used, but not as corrected as a modern lens with effective coatings.
I would say that color is good in most situations. Here, for example, it looks great:
It’s also great here.
But if you are shooting high contrast scenes at large apertures, the general lack of contrast can make colors look a little dull.
I would say that this is both part of the charm and the liability of a lens with vintage sensibilities. Use the TTArtisan 75mm F1.5 “Swirl” to its strengths, and you can get much more interesting images than a conventional lens. Use it poorly, and you’ll just get low contrast, mushy images that neither you or your audience will enjoy. You can see more images by visiting the lens image gallery here.
Conclusion
I’ve definitely intentionally sought out some of the “swirl” lenses myself in the past. It is great to see TTArtisan bringing back some of these fun and interesting optics to a modern audience in the TTArtisan 75mm F1.5.
This lens has to be evaluated with a different set of criteria than my typical lens review, because by definition this swirl lens in embracing certain optical flaws that make for visually interesting results.
Yes, you can get conventional looking results with this lens at small apertures, but that’s not really the reason to buy it.
The real reason to buy this lens is to fully embrace the swirly flaws and to shoot the kinds of images you’ll never get with almost all modern lenses. And with a price tag of just $270 USD, you don’t have to break the bank to get it. Just remember to pick up a cheap adapter for your preferred mount if you don’t already have one!
Pros:
The swirl!
Nicely built lens
Well executed focus and aperture rings
Low distortion
Bright aperture
Good sharpness when stopped down
Nice color in some situations
Unique and special rendering
Much cheaper than trying to find a vintage lens that does the same thing
Keywords: TTArtisan, 75mm, F1.5, swirl, swirly bokeh, TTArtisan 75mm review, M42, Sony Alpha 1, Sony a7RV, Fuji, Nikon, Canon, Review, mirrorless, Full Frame, Sports, Tracking, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Handling, Focus, Portraits, Resolution, High ISO, Image Quality, Sample Images, Photography, 61MP, #letthelightin, #DA, #Alpha1, #A7RV
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I spent some time earlier this year reviewing the Yongnuo 11mm F1.8S DA DSM wide angle on Sony E-mount. I was impressed with some of the truly unique features and strong performance of the lens. It was enough to give me a positive feeling about the brand, so when Yongnuo reached out to me about a new lens for Fuji X-mount, I happily agreed to spend some time with it. I’ve had about six weeks with the Yongnuo YN 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro lens, and in many ways it is a very impressive little lens. It’s got a lot going on for a price tag of about $300 USD, and provides an interesting alternative to the 56mm options on the market with a few more upscale features. You can find out my full thoughts by watching the video review or by reading the text review.
Thanks to Yongnuo for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.
This is an APS-C design that I’ve tested in Fuji X-mount. While there are other versions of this lens available on Sony E-mount or Nikon Z-mount, the Fuji version is the only one to get the unique “Pro” designation due to having some upscale features. It should be noted that there is also a non-Pro 50mm F1.8X DA DSM lens available for Fuji X-mount. That lens is smaller, cheaper, a different optical formula, and has far few features. I’m going to share Yongnuo’s own comparison chart to help you avoid some confusion between these two lenses.
Basically everything about YN 50mm Pro, from the size, feature set, housing material, optical design, and even the angle of view. Still, it’s a little confusing that they have two 50mm F1.8 lenses on X-mount. These lenses are also very different optically, however, with the YN 50mm Pro being superior optically.
That’s extremely important on Fuji, particularly when using it on one of Fuji’s monster 40MP APS-C sensors like the one found in the X-H2 I’m using for the review. Lenses have to be very sharp to look credible on that sensor, but fortunately the YN 50mm Pro does a pretty excellent job of that.
If you don’t speak Yongnuo, let me break down what those letters mean in the 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro lens designation. In many ways this follows the Fuji naming convention which puts a list of features right in the name.
X = Fuji X-mount
DA = APS-C
DSM = Digital Stepping Motor
Pro = Higher end performance and features.
I had a few early quirks between the lens and my X-H2, but fortunately a firmware update completely cleared all of that up and allowed the lens to function fairly close to flawlessly on my camera. I had a lot of fun with the YN 50mm Pro due to a great mix of sharpness and nice bokeh.
There are also a few weaknesses along with many strengths, and we will break down it all in the reviews. Enjoy the photos!
Keywords: Yongnuo, YN, 50mm, F1.8, F1.8, DA, DSM, Pro, Yongnuo 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro, Yongnuo 11mm F1.8, DSM, WL, F1.8S, APS-C, Review, Sony a6700, Fuji, Fujifilm, X-H2, X-T5, X-T50, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
I spent some time earlier this year reviewing the Yongnuo 11mm F1.8S DA DSM wide angle on Sony E-mount. I was impressed with some of the truly unique features and strong performance of the lens. It was enough to give me a positive feeling about the brand, so when Yongnuo reached out to me about a new lens for Fuji X-mount, I happily agreed to spend some time with it. I’ve had about six weeks with the Yongnuo YN 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro lens, and in many ways it is a very impressive little lens. It’s got a lot going on for a price tag of about $300 USD, and provides an interesting alternative to the 56mm options on the market with a few more upscale features. You can find out my full thoughts by watching the video review below…or reading on.
Thanks to Yongnuo for sending me a review sample of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. *The tests and most of the photos that I share as a part of my review cycle have been done with the 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.
This is an APS-C design that I’ve tested in Fuji X-mount. While there are other versions of this lens available on Sony E-mount or Nikon Z-mount, the Fuji version is the only one to get the unique “Pro” designation due to having some upscale features. It should be noted that there is also a non-Pro 50mm F1.8X DA DSM lens available for Fuji X-mount. That lens is smaller, cheaper, a different optical formula, and has far few features. I’m going to share Yongnuo’s own comparison chart to help you avoid some confusion between these two lenses.
Basically everything about YN 50mm Pro, from the size, feature set, housing material, optical design, and even the angle of view. Still, it’s a little confusing that they have two 50mm F1.8 lenses on X-mount. These lenses are also very different optically, however, with the YN 50mm Pro being superior optically.
That’s extremely important on Fuji, particularly when using it on one of Fuji’s monster 40MP APS-C sensors like the one found in the X-H2 I’m using for the review. Lenses have to be very sharp to look credible on that sensor, but fortunately the YN 50mm Pro does a pretty excellent job of that.
If you don’t speak Yongnuo, let me break down what those letters mean in the 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro lens designation. In many ways this follows the Fuji naming convention which puts a list of features right in the name.
X = Fuji X-mount
DA = APS-C
DSM = Digital Stepping Motor
Pro = Higher end performance and features.
I had a few early quirks between the lens and my X-H2, but fortunately a firmware update completely cleared all of that up and allowed the lens to function fairly close to flawlessly on my camera. I had a lot of fun with the YN 50mm Pro due to a great mix of sharpness and nice bokeh.
There are also a few weaknesses along with many strengths, and we will break down it all in our review.
Build and Handling
50mm isn’t quite as popular on APS-C as it is on full frame, as when you apply the 1.5x crop factor on Fuji to the focal length, you end up with a full frame equivalent of 75mm. I have seen more 75mm lenses in recent years, but obviously the more popular focal length is 85mm, or a 56mm lens on APS-C. There are far more 56mm options on Fuji, though there are a couple of 50mm lenses as well, including the Fujinon XF 50mm F2 WR and the extremely expensive XF 50mm F1.0 WR lenses. Both Fuji options are more expensive than the Yongnuo lens, with the 50mm F2 costing $150 more and the F1.0 lens costing a whopping $1200 more!
You can see from the specifications above that the 50mm F2 lens is smaller and lighter than the YN 50mm Pro, but also lacks its more advanced features.
I keep notes files on my phone to record random field observations when using various gear, and one of the notes I had was that the build of the lens reminded me of a Zeiss Batis lens. This was in part due to the upscale metal construction (an aircraft aluminum alloy) and also the integration of a small LCD screen on the top of the lens.
While the YN 50mm Pro doesn’t have a traditional aperture ring, it does utilize the LCD screen in conjunction with one of the custom settings via a switch on the left side of the barrel to allow the manual focus ring to function as an aperture ring. The LCD readout will show aperture changes in real time to allow you to select your desired aperture.
This feature is perhaps less necessary on a more advanced camera like my X-H2, as that features an LCD readout on top of the camera where I can quickly see the current aperture value (you can see the redundant figures above), but it will be much more useful on the vast majority of Fuji’s cameras which lack a top mounted LCD.
It would have been nice to see this also function as a distance scale when manually focusing (like the Batis lenses).
The size is 68mm in diameter (2.67″) and 85mm (3.34″) in length. The lens weighs in at 387g or 13.65 oz. Up front we have a common 58mm front filter thread.
The lens barrel is made of metal, and it has a nice, anodized black satin finish. The lens design is very clean and modern.
A lens hood is included. While it isn’t anything particularly special, it is sturdier than some and bayonets into place with a reasonably precise feel.
There is a USB-C port for firmware updates covered by a small rubber gasket. Be careful when pulling it out, as it is small and wouldn’t be hard to lose.
The USB-C port will allow for quick and easy firmware updates, which is a smart move by Yongnuo considering that they are a third party lens maker, so they may have to rely on firmware updates to maintain compatibility with cameras in the future. The lens does include a USB-C cable in the box in case you don’t have one. I definitely needed that firmware update to help eliminate a few instabilities in my review copy (these included aperture resets to F16 and the inability to shoot more than one shot in a burst). After the firmware update the lens has operated in a very stable fashion.
There is a metal lens mount with a weather sealing gasket attached. Yongnuo also claims a fluorine coating on the front element to resist fingerprints and moisture.
There is a custom switch that allows for a few different functions, in theory, but in reality only really serves one. In mode 1, it sets the control of ring to aperture control. This works well enough, though the wide, lightly weighted focus ring is fairly easy to bump and cause you to inadvertently change the aperture. I will also note that for some reason the manual aperture change doesn’t seem to work in video mode on my X-H2. I have to control aperture from within the camera.
Putting the switch into Mode II in theory instructs the ring to function as a focus ring, though this does not automatically switch to manual focus. Fuji’s own lenses never have an AF | MF switch, so the whole system is designed for this function to be controlled from the camera, often via a lever. Putting the lens into Mode II means the ring will function as a manual focus ring, but only after you have selected MF from within the camera.
The manual focus ring has a nice feel to it overall, though the weight is on the lighter side. As per usual, I find manual focus a little frustrating on Fuji cameras, as it takes many, many rotations to make major focus changes.
Take a closer took inside and you can see 9 rounded aperture blades, which is a higher blade count than the 7 on the non-Pro model. The aperture shape stays reasonably circular as the lens is stopped down.
The sunstar looks reasonably clean with the aperture stopped down (here at F11), but you can also see from this shot that this is a very flare prone lens.
The minimum focus distance is 45cm and gives a maximum magnification figure of 0.15x, which is good enough to be useful and matches what the XF 50mm F2 offers. Here’s what MFD looks like:
Up close results still look pretty good.
Recent 56mm F1.7/F1.8 lenses from Viltrox and TTArtisan undercut the price tag of the YN 50mm Pro (which can typically be had for under $300), but neither of those lenses are close to matching the build and features of the Yongnuo lens. This is a very nice little lens that feels pretty upscale in the build and handling.
Autofocus and Video
Yongnuo has equipped the 50mm F1.8 with what they call a “digital stepping motor” (DSM). I’m not entirely sure how a digital stepping motor varies from a typical stepping motor, but the end result is a mostly quiet, fast, and accurate focus experience, though with some of the typical Fuji quirks and frustrations. The last time I did a Yongnuo review, it was on Sony, and autofocus is almost always much better there than on Fuji.
Focus noise is quiet, with very little to be heard at a typical shooting distance. If I put my ear right up against the barrel I hear a bit of high pitched whirring and a little clicking.
Focus speed is relatively quick, though particularly in lower light I saw some obvious steps and pulses. Outdoors and in good light autofocus was fairly snappy. For ordinary shots like casual portraits, nature, landscapes, fairly still subjects, I saw very nice accuracy. This shot of Ferrari is a good case in point. You can see note only that the photo is well focused; you can also see that this lens is pretty fantastically sharp.
I was able to shoot narrow depth of field shots with good precision.
I got some good shots at a dog competition, but I got them by prefocusing on the area where the jump would take place rather than trying to just acquire the dogs in movement towards it.
In situations where I tried to track persistent action, I found that focus would move around a bit and was often a little behind where it should be (mid-body rather than face).
The YN 50mm Pro isn’t quite ready for any kind of demanding action.
For most other applications, however, I didn’t have any issues with focus.
Things were (as usual for Fuji) much worse on the video front. As is often the case, I found it nearly impossible to do my focus pull test by touching the point I wanted focus to move to on the screen. Rather than going back and forth, I had to touch the place where I wanted to go and wait…and wait…and sometimes focus would change, though with obvious steps and adjustments. Very frustrating.
The YN 50mm Pro did a little better in my hand test, where I alternately block the camera’s view of my face with my hand and then remove it, but here too focus changes were slow…or just didn’t happen. It was better than the focus pull test, but far from satisfying. I noticed that focus was not consistently on the right place even when focused, however, with some microadjustments. There is also some obvious focus breathing.
Video AF of more typical subjects and movements was better. I tracked a sailboat moving through a harbor fairly well, coneflowers blowing in the wind, and my video footage of a ride on a gondola down a mountain was reasonably good. Video is better reserved for those types of shots rather than trying to track action or make dynamic focus changes.
You need to have reasonable expectations about what this lens can and cannot do on Fuji cameras.
Yongnuo 50mm F1.8X Image Quality Breakdown
The YN50mm Pro has an optical design of 11 elements in 8 groups. Six of these elements are exotic, including low dispersion, high refractive, and aspherical lenses. A lot of fancy glass for an inexpensive lens! The MTF chart shows a consistently sharp performance across the frame with strong contrast that only dips a bit in the corners. This MTF chart also shows an F8 report, and there we see even more sharpness across the frame and consistently high contrast.
I was repeatedly impressed with the great results both wide open and stopped down. I’ve come to expect this 40MP sensor to make lenses look a bit disappointing, so when a lens is able to look good on it, I know it is a pretty special optical instrument.
What’s more, the lens isn’t overcorrected, so I find the rendering of the bokeh pretty nice as well.
The lens performed well in my tests of vignette and distortion, showing minimal distortion and a moderate amount of vignette.
I only had to use a -2 to correct the tiny bit of pincushion distortion, and a +41 cleaned up the vignette. Both of these figures a very low for this type of lens. The slightly larger size of the lens shows its worth here, as they made a larger lens that is better corrected.
The lens is not completely corrected for fringing, showing a bit of LoCA before and after the plane of focus in the form of mild magenta before and slightly more prominent greenish fringing after the plane of focus.
There isn’t much of the lateral style of fringing, however, which you find near the edges of the frame in high transition areas.
So how about resolution and contrast? My tests have been done on the 40MP Fujifilm X-H2. Here’s the test chart:
Here are F1.8 crops at roughly 200% from across the frame (center, mid-frame, and lower right corner).
Results here look really quite good. Not quite in the upper echelon of a handful of lenses that just look amazing on this sensor, but near the top of the next tier. What’s more, this is a nicely consistent performance where the results are good right into the corners.
I thought that many of my real world results showed very nice detail and contrast.
This is great when shooting in dim lighting conditions, as you don’t need to stop the lens down to get sharp results.
Stopping down just 1/3rd stop to F2 does give a bit of a contrast boost, so it will be worth doing when you want just a bit more performance.
Stopping on down to F2.8 provides a bit more boost across the frame.
By F5.6 even the corners are razer sharp.
That means that landscape style shots will shot a lot of detail, and if you are shooting with a high resolution body, you will have a lot of flexibility for cropping.
Sharpness peaks around F5.6, with F8 being very close to the same. Diffraction will start to soften the image after that, with a mild amount at F11 but a more obvious amount by F16:
A common tradeoff for leaving a bit of the aberrations uncorrected is a nicer bokeh rendering, which I think is the case here. This lens definitely has nicer bokeh than a number of competing lenses.
The blur is generally quite soft and creamy.
Here’s another that I like:
What isn’t good, however, is the flare resistance. This is not a lens that copes well with bright lights…particularly if they are in the corner of the frame.
Flare was generally worse with the lens stopped down, and a little better at larger apertures, though you can definitely see some flare artifacts in the upper right corner of the grass image above. You will need to be careful with your composition even when using the fairly deep hood. My experience with a couple of Yongnuo lenses this year tells me that they need some work with their lens coatings to help improve this area of lens design.
What was generally good, however, were the colors. I got a lot of great looking images and was mostly happy with the color consistency so long as the lighting wasn’t too harsh.
I got plenty of images that I was very happy with, however.
When compared to other lenses in this price class, I would say that Yongnuo has found a nice balance between sharpness and rendering. I don’t have a lot to complain about here outside of some vulnerabilities to flare. $300. If you’d like to see more image samples, check out the image gallery here.
Conclusion
I agreed to test the Yongnuo 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro based on what looked like a good blend of build, features, and performance, and that has largely proven to be the case. The YN 50mm Pro is very nicely made, handles fairly well, and delivers really great looking images.
As per usual on Fuji, it was the autofocus that probably most left me wanting (particularly on the video side of things), but at the same time I was able to get the photos that I wanted in just about every situation save fast action.
Since Fuji has opened up X-mount, there are now plenty of alternative lenses, both more and less expensive, though I don’t think any of them offers up a better value when examine the build, features, and performance of the YN 50mm Pro. It’s a very nice lens, and I think is a solid choice if you are looking for a short telephoto capable of delivering excellent results for under $300.
Keywords: Yongnuo, YN, 50mm, F1.8, F1.8, DA, DSM, Pro, Yongnuo 50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro, Yongnuo 11mm F1.8, DSM, WL, F1.8S, APS-C, Review, Sony a6700, Fuji, Fujifilm, X-H2, X-T5, X-T50, Review, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, let the light in, weathersealing, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
One of the indictments against Fuji’s medium format GF lineup has been in the limited number and variety of lenses. Until recently there were only 15 lenses available, and the longest focal length amongst them was the GF 250mm F4 OIS. But when you consider that focal lengths are registered in the full frame standard, and Fuji’s “crop” factor for medium format is thus 0.79x, that means that the full frame equivalence of 250mm on a GFX body is just 198mm, which isn’t exactly into serious telephoto range. That reach could be extended with the use of Fuji’s 1.4x teleconverter, but that still only gets you to about 277mm of effective reach. But Fuji announced a much longer telephoto alongside the GFX100S II body that I just reviewed in the form of the Fujinon GF 500mm F5.6 R LM OIS WR. With the crop factor, that’s equivalent to right under 400mm of reach, but add on that teleconverter and you’ve got 555mm of effective reach. This opens up whole new horizons for Fuji medium format shooters, and at $3499 USD, it is just $200 more than the 250mm F4. But is the longest of MF lenses worth buying? Find out by watching the video review below, reading my text review, or just enjoying the photos in the gallery below.
Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. I’m doing this review on a 102MP Fujifilm GFX100S II.
If you don’t speak “Fuji”, here’s a quick breakdown of what all those letters mean.
R = Aperture Ring
LM = Linear Motors (focus system)
OIS = Optical Image Stabilization
WR = Weather resistance
The GF 500mm has pretty much all of the available Fuji features, so it gets all the letters. This is a very feature rich lens.
The GF 500mm is not a small lens, but the truth of the matter is that Fuji has actually done a really good job managing the size and weight of this lens. It was both smaller and lighter than what I expected, and while the build quality is not at the level of the super-teles (or even Fuji’s own XF 200mm F2 OIS), it strikes a nice balance between quality of construction and weight.
This is a very sharp lens. Combine the GF 500mm with one of Fuji’s 102MP cameras and sweet things happen. Take this shot, for example.
Unimpressed, right? But when I looked at this image at a pixel level, I noticed that there was actually a frying pan stranded out on that rock.
How did it get there? I don’t know, but it was clear as day when zooming into the image due to the crisp detail that the lens (and a good sensor) afford. But probably the bigger question is where or not the GF 500mm will actually open up new types of photography for Fuji’s MF system. That’s a big part of what we explore in the reviews linked above.
Keywords: Fuji, Fujinon, 500mm, Fuji 500mm, GF 500mm, GF, AF, Autofocus, 500mm, F5.6, f/5.6, R, WR, Weathersealing, LM, OIS, Fuji 500mm Review, Fuji GF, Fujifilm, G-mount, Medium Format, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Fujifilm GFX100S II, GFX100 II, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
One of the indictments against Fuji’s medium format GF lineup has been in the limited number and variety of lenses. Until recently there were only 15 lenses available, and the longest focal length amongst them was the GF 250mm F4 OIS. But when you consider that focal lengths are registered in the full frame standard, and Fuji’s “crop” factor for medium format is thus 0.79x, that means that the full frame equivalence of 250mm on a GFX body is just 198mm, which isn’t exactly into serious telephoto range. That reach could be extended with the use of Fuji’s 1.4x teleconverter, but that still only gets you to about 277mm of effective reach. But Fuji announced a much longer telephoto alongside the GFX100S II body that I just reviewed in the form of the Fujinon GF 500mm F5.6 R LM OIS WR. With the crop factor, that’s equivalent to right under 400mm of reach, but add on that teleconverter and you’ve got 555mm of effective reach. This opens up whole new horizons for Fuji medium format shooters, and at $3499 USD, it is just $200 more than the 250mm F4. But is the longest of MF lenses worth buying? Find out by watching the video review below…or just reading on.
Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. I’m doing this review on a 102MP Fujifilm GFX100S II.
If you don’t speak “Fuji”, here’s a quick breakdown of what all those letters mean.
R = Aperture Ring
LM = Linear Motors (focus system)
OIS = Optical Image Stabilization
WR = Weather resistance
The GF 500mm has pretty much all of the available Fuji features, so it gets all the letters. This is a very feature rich lens.
The GF 500mm is not a small lens, but the truth of the matter is that Fuji has actually done a really good job managing the size and weight of this lens. It was both smaller and lighter than what I expected, and while the build quality is not at the level of the super-teles (or even Fuji’s own XF 200mm F2 OIS), it strikes a nice balance between quality of construction and weight.
This is a very sharp lens. Combine the GF 500mm with one of Fuji’s 102MP cameras and sweet things happen. Take this shot, for example.
Unimpressed, right? But when I looked at this image at a pixel level, I noticed that there was actually a frying pan stranded out on that rock.
How did it get there? I don’t know, but it was clear as day when zooming into the image due to the crisp detail that the lens (and a good sensor) afford. But probably the bigger question is where or not the GF 500mm will actually open up new types of photography for Fuji’s MF system. That’s what we will explore in today’s review.
Build and Handling
While I noted that the size and weight is well moderated, that doesn’t mean that this is a small. It is still quite large, as you can see here.
It is 104.5 x 246.5 mm (4.1 x 9.7″), making it a good 43mm longer than the GF 250mm. We have a large 95mm front filter thread up front.
Add on that big hood (+95mm), and you’ve got a very long lens. The hood itself is made of plastic, but has a rubberized edge to allow you to set the lens down on the hood (often one of the safer ways to balance a big lens), a locking mechanism, and even a window to allow you to rotate a polarizing filter.
This is a weather sealed lens, and there is a gasket at the rear mount along with internal seals throughout.
You’ll note that there is a lot of depth in that mount, and that allows the 1.4x teleconverter to be mounted there.
That’s no small thing, as the Fujinon 1.4x has a serious protuberance at the front.
There will be relatively few lenses that have enough depth at their rear to accommodate this (only the 250mm and 500mm at present.) It’s also the most expensive teleconverter I’ve seen, carrying a whopping $850 price tag.
This is the most feature rich GF lens I’ve seen. There is a very nice setup for the tripod collar and foot, with the foot being very easily removable (a great design!).
Loosen that knob, then depress the release and the tripod foot slides right off. It can be executed in seconds. The lens becomes quite handholdable without it, too, as the weight is only 1375g (3lb) with the hood and foot removed.
Even better is the fact that the foot is Arca-compatible (hello, Canon, Sony, and Nikon!), which means that I can pop it right onto one of my tripods.
The collar itself is not removable, but it can be easily rotated by releasing the tension knob and turning the lens. Just tighten it back down when you get to the position you want.
There are also attachment points for a strap on either side of the lens barrel here.
Next comes a series of switches and controls. At the top is a two position focus limiter. It will allow you to eliminate the close focus possibilities under 5 meters (minimum focus distances is 2.8m) for snappier focus. Next comes a simple ON | OFF for the OIS system (it is a smart system that will determine whether or not you are panning).
Finally there is a three position switch that will allow you to choose AF-L, Preset, or standard AF modes. You can set the Preset focus position by using the button underneath the switch.
You can then hit one of the buttons towards the front of the lens located at the four pole positions, and focus will instantly revert to whatever the preset was. It’s a nice option when you are shooting in a situation where both your shooting position and your subject (or at least one of them) are at consistent positions.
Aperture is controlled via an aperture ring located between the switches and the broad manual focus ring. You can select aperture manually on the ring, and while the one third stop positions are not marked, there are light detents at each of them. You can also switch into either the Auto or Command positions by depressing the release button on the ring that will allow you to move either in or out of these options. The aperture iris itself has the typical nine blades.
The geometry of the specular highlights is reasonably circular (though with some deformation), but you can get slightly rounder specular highlights across the frame by stopping down.
The focus ring itself is nice and wide (as you can see above) and has a rubberized grip surface. It is very easy to distinguish between the focus and aperture rings even if you eye is pressed up to the viewfinder.
There’s no question that part of the light weight can be attributed to the use of plastics in the lens barrel rather than some kind of metal alloy. The latter is common in the better telephoto lenses, but there’s no question they were able to keep the weight down by using plastics instead. I suspect there will be a few who find the “feel” of the lens a little cheap for a $3500 lens, but the reality is that the lens will probably be nice and durable anyway.
The lens does feature an effective OIS system, and I found that it works very well despite the long focal length. The lens is rated at 6 stops of stabilization, and, of course, the camera I was using (GFX100S II) has a camera based stabilization system rated at 8 stops. That doesn’t add up to 14 stops, as the two systems will work in some degree of harmony, but I suspect with a practical limit not much higher than 8 stops. I was able to get a decent results at 1/4th second, which is 7 stops of assistance.
I was also able to get fairly steady results while shooting video, which is probably a more practical application than trying to shoot very low shutter speeds.
Minimum focus distance is 2.8 meters, or right over 9 feet. Not close, obviously, but that will get you a decent but not amazing 0.20x magnification.
Now if you happen to own the 1.4x TC, you can throw it on there, and because the minimum focus distance doesn’t change, and the focal length becomes 700mm, you get a much higher level of magnification.
So yes, while some might find the build feel a little plasticky for a $3500 lens, I’ve come to appreciate the balance of what Fuji has done here. This is a feature rich lens that manages to stay reasonable in both size and price, so that’s a win.
Autofocus and Video
It is rare that I’m fully impressed with a Fuji product when it comes to autofocus, but this is obviously a very critical lens for Fuji. They are trying to expand the horizons of what medium format can do. So autofocus needs to work here. They have employed what appears to be a single linear motor in the design (I looked pretty carefully at their marketing language). This strikes me as being a bit underpowered when it isn’t unusual for similar lenses on full frame to have dual and even quad linear motors. Still, the linear focus motor is Fuji’s premium autofocus motor, and the focus sound is nice and quiet. I can hear a very faint whirring if I put my ear right up next to the lens barrel, but that’s about it.
Focus speed, however, isn’t nearly as fast as what I’ve come to expect from recent lenses. I reviewed the Sigma 500mm F5.6 DN Sport on Sony a few months back, and there’s no question that focus was much, much faster with the Sigma lens. You can feel inertia building a bit during focus, and it unfortunately isn’t unusual for focus to do a rack in the wrong direction before correcting to the right direction. All of this adds some additional time to focus acquisition. I feel like the current iteration of Fuji’s focus system in their cameras is squeezing probably the last bit of performance out of what is (underneath the AI processing) some aging hardware.
So acquiring birds in flight (a natural subject for this lens) was sometimes frustrating, as the focus motor was not reactive enough to grab onto the moving target. I got far more images like this that what I would like!
It takes a bit to acquire focus sometimes, and once the AI is tracking, it does reasonably well, but the perfect focus rate is still considerably below what I expect from the cameras I personally own. I had some definite misses in sequences where I would typically expect to get well focused results.
But other situations the tracking did fairly good until the subject got too near the edge of the frame. There is some blackout in between frames on Fuji’s cameras, which makes it a little harder to smoothly pan with the subject.
Focus reactiveness is still not on par with any of the current full frame options, so there will be plenty of moments where focus is still adjusting and you miss the shot. And sometimes focus will sometimes get “stuck” and it takes focusing on a difference subject or even manually focusing to get things where you want. But fortunately most of the time focus works pretty well. And when you nail focus, you can get amazing detail (even with the 1.4x TC attached, so 700mm here).
For more moderate subjects, focus is fast enough and the lens delivers simply lovely results.
The AI Tracking did a good job with other subjects as well, with a little green box appearing tracking ants on my hive when I shot in the appropriate mode. Sometimes focus wasn’t quite on the head (torso instead), but, to be fair, that is a tiny target.
I did a bit of taking photos of a speaker at our church, though the focal length is pretty long for that kind of work and the aperture a little slow for that kind of light. But focus did just fine, even shooting at ISO 3200 and 6400 to account for the lighting.
With normal (non fast moving subjects), focus was great. It delivered good accuracy and great results.
But when you introduce the variable of movement, results are largely going to be dependent on getting a good early lock on your subject and keeping them well framed if you are tracking action. And focus just wont be reactive enough to track a subject moving quickly towards the camera. Plan on plenty of missed shots in that scenario.
And video focus needs to be pretty much just on either still or extremely slow moving subjects. I tried to shoot some video of Nala moving towards me, and focus just didn’t seem to move. Even when I started shooting a still shot of her, so AI was tracking her eye already, and she decided to trot over towards me, focus just lost it altogether.
I was essentially unable to get focus to move when touching the screen to select a new focus point, so I find it hard to recommend this lens for video unless you want to shoot mostly static shots to compliment your stills.
You can capture some action with the GF 500mm, but it will require some good technique and some patience, because you will have some missed shots. Autofocus is pretty good by Fuji and by medium format standards, but not really when compared to smaller formats.
Image Quality Breakdown
Ahhh, it is a relief to land here, as I have no real reservations in this section. The GF 500mm employs 21 elements in 14 groups, and this includes 2 Super ED elements 5 ED elements.
The MTF chart looks fantastic, with very high sharpness even at the high lp/mm standards. The lowest that we ever see even on the edge of the frame is about 79%, and the center is essentially perfect.
There is essentially no reason to shoot at anything other than F5.6 unless you want more depth of field, as sharpness is pretty much perfect even wide open.
We’ll break down the details together. *A few caveats about my chart tests, which I’ll rely less on here and more on real world results. I set up to shoot these tests outdoors due to space constraints indoors. That introduces some extra variables due to the movement of wind on the chart or the tripod, so I’m parsing the data with that in mind.
First of all, let’s look at vignette and distortion. There’s not much to see on either front.
I used a -2 to correct the tiniest amount of distortion and a +32 (just a little over a stop) to correct the vignette. That’s pretty much meaningless, so you’ll never have to worry about that.
I saw zero issues with fringing. You can see from this high contrast white blossoms shot that even in a crop you can see no fringing as you transition from docus to defocus.
Lateral chromatic aberrations show up near the edge of the frame in transitions from dark to light areas. You can see from the edge of my test chart Fuji has also nailed this metric, and there is next to no fringing in the transitions from black to white.
So clearly no optical issues in this basic areas.
So how about resolution? The 102MP resolution point is the highest that I’ve personally tested on, but the GF 500mm has no problem keeping up with this very high resolution. Here’s a look at the test chart that crops throughout the review come from:
And here is a look at F5.6 crops from the center, then mid-frame, and then extreme lower right corner:
That’s great sharpness, and it holds up in real world shots. Here’s a deep crop from another image.
Long landscape images are a little tougher with telephotos, as there tend to be pockets of warm or cool air that cause shimmering and/or distortions. Under the right conditions you could expect to get great results, but almost never when shooting over water.
I found very good centering on the copy of the lens I tested, with even results in all four corners.
Stopping down makes only a minimal difference in sharpness, so only stop down when you need more depth of field. They have clearly optimized the performance for wide open.
Adding the 1.4x TC doesn’t seem to make a huge impact on sharpness. Here’s an example at 700mm, F8:
Minimum aperture is F32. You’ll see the effects of diffraction after F11, with the image looking considerably softer at F32:
Bokeh quality is very nice. I found that even shots at distance had a nicely blurred background.
At closer distances the subject isolation is obviously intense.
Specular highlights aren’t perfectly round, as mentioned, but this image still looks pretty nice!
If you are close to your subject, there essentially won’t be any background!
A very long focal length means that you won’t often have to deal with flare issues, but I did shoot into the sun a few times without any kind of issue.
I typically find Fuji glass to have great color, and that’s certainly no exception, particularly when you pair it with the gorgeous sensor in the GFX100S II that I was using for this review.
In short, there is basically nothing that I have to complain about here optically. This is a wonderful example of how to do lens design, with optics that deliver both high contrast and resolution while also giving lovely bokeh. Kudos to Fuji! You can check out the image gallery if you’d like to see more.
Conclusion
The Fujinon GF 500mm F5.6 R LM OIS WR is a very important lens for Fuji. It is twice as long a focal length as the previous longest lens for the platform, and is much more of a legitimate telephoto than the GF 250mm F4. Fuji has found a nice balance of features and performance while keeping the size, weight, and price reasonable.
I’m somewhat underwhelmed by the autofocus performance here (particularly for video), but that is often par for the course with Fuji. I’ve never gone birding with a GFX body before, so this is obviously pushing the limits of what you traditionally do with medium format. I do think that Fuji will continue to improve in this area, but I think it is going to take a serious hardware upgrade. Hopefully when that day comes the GF 500mm will be an even more effective lens.
The image quality is pretty fantastic here. I don’t really have any complaints in that regard, as the lens really does deliver beautiful results. I’ve certainly shot with telephoto lenses that were a little easier to acquire subjects with, but I’ve rarely shot anything at any price point that delivered better results. If you are a person already invested in Fuji’s GFX system and have been waiting for a longer lens, that wait is over. And if you are a person that has been on the fence about whether or not to take the plunge into MF, the GF 500mm may just be the lens to convince you that Fuji is serious about this platform. I’ll say this in conclusion; my review period was just not long enough. I’d love to have many more opportunities to make beautiful images with this lens.
Pros:
Nicely built lens
Size and weight is kept moderate
Full weather sealing and fluorine coating
More feature rich than any GF lens I’ve used before
Compatible with 1.4x teleconverter for more flexibility
Love the tripod foot design
Focus motor is nice and quiet
Focus accuracy with still or slow moving subjects is good
Basically no distortion or vignette
Low chromatic aberrations
Awesome sharpness across the frame even at F5.6
Lovely bokeh
Good flare resistance
Great colors and contrast
Cons:
Focus experience can be exasperating
Video AF is poor
Some may find the build a little plasticky for the price
Keywords: Fuji, Fujinon, 500mm, Fuji 500mm, GF 500mm, GF, AF, Autofocus, 500mm, F5.6, f/5.6, R, WR, Weathersealing, LM, OIS, Fuji 500mm Review, Fuji GF, Fujifilm, G-mount, Medium Format, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Fujifilm GFX100S II, GFX100 II, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
It’s been nearly 5 years since I’ve done my review of the Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R lens, which was regarded as one of the classic portrait options due to its large maximum aperture (F1.2) and classic 85mm equivalent angle of view (56mm x Fuji’s 1.5x crop factor = 84mm). My conclusion was that while the lens had some nice optics (more in the overall rendering rather than great sharpness at large apertures), the clunky focus motor, lack of weather sealing, and high price ($999 USD) left me somewhat underwhelmed. My conclusion was that this lens was only competitive on Fuji only because (at the time) Fuji was a closed platform, and Fuji XF shooters didn’t really have options. Thankfully, that is no longer true, as since that time Fuji has opened up their platform to alternatives, and at this point you can get half a dozen 56mm autofocusing third party lenses in X-mount, including two from Viltrox (56mm F1.4 reviewed here and newer 56mm F1.7 reviewed here), TTArtisan (AF 56mm F1.8, reviewed here), Sigma (56mm F1.4, reviewed here on Sony), Sirui, (Sniper 56mm F1.2, reviewed here), and one from Tokina (56mm F1.4) that I haven’t reviewed. Add the two Fuji options, and you’ve definitely got options. Fuji now has to compete on merit, and the new Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R WR has a lot of merits…but also still have a few flaws.
Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. I’m doing this review on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.
The plethora of new 56mm options show how important this focal length is as a portrait lens and short telephoto general purpose lens. 85-100mm is my favorite portrait range, and having that massive F1.2 aperture really allows for beautiful background separation even when shooting fuller length portraits. As we’ll see in this review, the Fuji 56mm WR remains the premium priced lens in the comparison. It’s full retail is $999 USD (as before), though the lens is currently on sale for $899 (at the time of this review) on a sale price. That’s more than double the price of any of competing lenses on the platform. But in some ways the price tag, while high, feels a little more justified this time around, as this is genuinely the premium option among the many alternatives that I’ve reviewed. It still has some flaws, but its ability to really perform at F1.2 for portrait work makes it special.
There have been some really competitive lenses recently release with smaller maximum apertures (the TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 and the Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7 are the standouts due to being both strong performers AND costing less than $160 USD!), but neither one of them can provide the kind of subject separation that the Fuji and its F1.2 aperture can.
Here’s an example: with both lenses stopped down to F2, I felt the Viltrox F1.7 lens did a shockingly good job of providing similar sharpness and contrast for portrait work.
But where the 56mm WR showed the clear advantage is if you look at the backgrounds. Look at how much creamier the background is from the Fuji (on the right).
The difference would be even more pronounced if the subject was closer to the background.
There are two ways to view this:
“A lens like the Sigma 56mm F1.4 is close enough at half the price. The Fuji isn’t worth the premium.”
“Like a performance car, you pay for that last little extra bit of performance, but that can be the different between winning and losing.”
I think both perspectives are valid. Where I have an issue is when something has both a premium price and a less than premium performance (which is what I felt about the previous 56mm F1.2 from Fuji), but in this case I do think this is a premium lens in the class on X-mount. Let me put another way: in 2019 I sent the XF 56mm F1.2 R back after my loaner period without a moment’s regret; with the XF 56mm F1.2 WR I’m scheming of a way to add one to my own kit.
Sound interesting? Let’s break things down in detail…
Build and Handling
One of the key areas that needed improvement has been addressed…and it shows up right there in the name. This is Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R WR has both R (Aperture Ring) and WR (Weather Resistance) in the name. The weather resistance was definitely needed on a premium lens, and it does provide an area where this lens is set apart from most of of the other available lens. Fuji has chosen to not give their new lenses a MK II designation, which in my mind is a mistake as it makes it less apparent that Fuji has a new and improved 56mm F1.2 on the market. I’ll refer to this one as the 56mm WR throughout the review to distinguish it from the older, non WR lens.
That weather sealing takes the form of a gasket at the lens mount along with internal seals (Fuji cites 9 seal points plus a fluorine coating on the front element to resist oil and moisture). This is very handy as you can continue to use the lens with confidence even when the weather turns a bit sour (providing you are shooting on a weather sealed camera).
As noted, the XF 56mm WR has the largest maximum aperture of the competitors save the Sirui Sniper AF 56mm F1.2. As such, it is larger and heavier than most of the competitors, though the Sirui is actually slightly larger (72mm x 92.2mm, since this comparison chart doesn’t show its dimensions).
The Sirui lens is longer and slimmer, while the Fuji has that squat prime look that frankly looks pretty sweet mounted on a camera.
If you compare it to the recent Viltrox F1.7 and TTArtisan F1.8 lenses, the Fuji looks a bit hulking.
But compare it to the X-mount version of the Viltrox Pro AF 75mm F1.2 (the most worthy competitor even if the focal lengths aren’t identical), and the Fuji looks positively svelte.
Fuji’s design language hasn’t really changed much over the years, so the look of this lens isn’t radically different, though the shape is a little more sculpted. It’s a nice looking lens, however, with just a little more gloss that speaks of it being a newer design. Unfortunately Fuji’s feature list hasn’t really really expanded since the release of the original lens in 2014. We have an aperture ring on the barrel…and not much else.
That’s a little disappointing, as while Fuji’s cameras have developed a lot of additional video specs during that period, there is absolutely no video related progress in their lens design. The aperture ring is clicked (one-third stop detents), but there is no option to declick the aperture to allow for aperture racking. No custom button that could be used for various functions, or even to program an A-B focus pull that some lenses allow.
There are no switches on the lens barrel. Fuji chose long ago to have switching between auto and manual focus through the camera (typically via a dedicated lever or button), so that means no AF/MF switch on the barrel. The lens feels nice, but for the prices that Fuji charges for these premium lenses, some updated features feel warranted.
The included lens hood is pretty huge…about 2/3rds the length of the lens.
This is the first Fuji X-mount lens to have a higher-than-blades aperture, and they have given this aperture iris eleven blades, which does a great job of keeping a circular shape even when the lens is stopped down (here at F5.6, nearly four stops closed).
That’s fantastic, as while there is some geometric deformation of specular highlights near the corners (lemon shape) at F1.2, in this series at F2 and F2.8 you can see that the specular highlights of the raindrops are nicely circular.
The filter threads have slightly grown to 67mm rather than 62mm, which is a bummer if you own the previous lens and are upgrading, but is a positive for everyone else, as 67mm filters are FAR more common than 62mm filters.
The manual focus ring is nice and wide and feels good in terms of damping, though manual focus emulation here isn’t great. Mirrorless lenses utilize a focus-by-wire system where input on the focus ring is routed through the focus motor. Because this lens does not have the smoothest focus motor, you can really feel the pulses of the focus motor with every little adjustment you make. The slightly noise and rough pulses of the focus motor really pull you out of the manual focus experience…which takes away from the otherwise quality feel of the manual focus ring. The active focus area will be automatically magnified when you start to focus.
It’s a bit sad, but the budget TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 actually provides a much more sophisticated feeling manual focus experience.
Another key area of improvement by Fuji over the original 56mm F1.2 is when it comes to minimum focus distance. The original lens had the kind of minimum focus distance typically reserved for a much longer focal length, only able to focus as closely as 70cm and provided a very low 0.9x magnification. The newer 56mm WR can focus closer (50cm) despite having a longer focal length, which adds up to a much improved magnification of 0.14x, which is vastly more useful for up close work for both photos and video.
Not only that, but the up close performance is very strong even at F1.2, with great sharpness and contrast even on my very high resolution X-H2. Here is a shot at MFD and F1.2, and notice how clean the details are when deeply cropped.
Other than a less than desirable manual focus experience and a lack of evolution on the feature set, this is another nicely built Fuji lens, and at least we got the important upgrades of weather sealing and a much more usable up close experience.
Autofocus and Video
Uggg. This is rarely a very enjoyable section for me when reviewing anything on Fuji. With every new Fuji camera we hear about how improved autofocus is (and it is, to some degree), but it just never seems to actually get to the level of the competition. Even cheap lenses on Sony tend to autofocus better than the best lenses on Fuji, but unfortunately I can’t divorce lens performance from the camera’s autofocus…and I’m testing using one of Fuji’s very best cameras.
Furthermore, Fuji can’t seem to find a way to put their superior linear motors in their larger aperture lenses. That means we are saddled with a DC style motor here as in the 50mm F1.0. And while I have read some reviews that brag that this motor is just fine…these people are either being disingenuous or aren’t aware of what is available on other platforms. Autofocus performance is adequate at best, and rather crude in the process. This is not a refined focus motor, making all kinds of whirs and clunks as it goes about its business. I often have to put my ear right up next to the lens to try to hear any focus noise when doing autofocus tests, but that was definitely not necessary here. I could hear them every time I shot, even when using the lens at waist height and viewing in a field monitor.
Focus precision was generally good, but the focus process is slowed because there will often be a double clutch where the focus motor will first move to the approximate focus point and then do a secondary adjustment to refine focus. That slows focus speed down, and the fact that the focus motor makes noise during both steps draws your attention to it.
At the same, I found that focus was very reliable for work during portrait sessions. Focus is nailed even at F1.2:
I loved this lens as a portrait lens, as while I may not love the smoothness of the autofocus system, it did deliver well focused results in a variety of settings…and the optics are lovely!
I even took a few portraits of this gator, which did not impress my wife, as it was just sunning itself along a pond and I got rather close to take my series of photos.
I eventually scared him, and fortunately he chose to jump into the water rather than jumping the photographer!
While I wouldn’t recommend this lens as a sports lens, I did find that once I grabbed hold of a group of gulls nearby me on the beach, I was able to stay pretty sticky on them even shooting at F1.4:
Here’s another example of pinpoint focus of a static object at F1.2:
Point being that while the focus is not very sophisticated in feel, this is an improved AF system over the previous generation in speed, and, more obviously, accuracy.
Video AF is even sorer spot with me on Fuji. There tends to be more obvious steps in video pulls, the touchscreen is often unresponsive in trying to force autofocus changes, and tracking isn’t as sophisticated. Fuji has clearly tried to detune focus speed a bit here to quiet the focus motor and smooth the process when the microphone will be recording, but the results are pretty mixed. There’s less focus noise due to the slowed focus speed, though the on board microphone did still pick up a bit of focus sound. Focus transitions are on the slow side, and there is a very obvious step where focus travels 3/4ths of the way, pauses for a split second, and then makes a secondary focus pull to the final destination. There will often be some final microadjustments as focus attempts to settle on accurate focus lock.
This impacted the results of my hand test (where I alternately block and then unblock the camera’s view of my face with my hand) as well. I tried to give the camera extra time to make the transitions from my hand to my eye, but because of that double clutch of focus, the camera/lens would often complete the first of the two major focus pulls, but would pause…and by the time my hand was added or removed, it wouldn’t have quite made the transition. It would eventually get to my hand or my eye, but I had to be very patient.
On the plus side, focus breathing isn’t terrible, and, unlike the older lenses, at least focus would stay stable when I used the lens for static shots. There wasn’t the pulsing I saw on the 16-55mm and 18-55mm lenses I used side by side with it.
I’m not sure that I could recommend this lens for video work if you need autofocus…but I don’t really know a lens that I would strongly recommend over it. This is just an area where Fuji needs to improve, period. It’s frustrating because this lens is so good in so many other ways!
To offset the negativity, let me end with another positive. I found that autofocus continued to be precise even in very low light conditions. This shot of my son is at ISO 1600, F1.2, and with just a 1/90th second shutter speed. If I had been shooting with an F2.8 lens, that would have been a 1/10th second shutter speed. In other words, very dim lighting, and focus didn’t slow down much and remained accurate on his eye.
I would have loved to see a more refined focus motor here, but at least focus precision was good in my tests even if the focus process left somewhat to be desired…much like my feelings on the XF 50mm F1.0.
Image Quality Breakdown
Expect this section to go much more smoothly! There will be as many raves in this section as there were rants in the last. I traveled with the XF 56mm F1.2 WR alongside two of the venerable zooms (16-55mm F2.8 and 18-55mm F2.8-4 OIS), and the images from the newer lens just sparkled in comparison to those older lenses. This is one of those rare lenses that just sings on the new ultra high resolution 40MP X-Trans sensor (similar pixel density to over 90MP on a full frame sensor).
The optical formula is 13 elements in 8 groups, with two of those being aspherical elements and one being an extra low dispersion element. You can see just how impressively sharp the lens is across the rule of thirds portion of the frame in the MTF chart, with some drop-off to the corners. For perspective, I’ve added the MTF for the recent TTArtisans AF 56mm F1.8…and that MTF is 30lpmm rather than the much higher 45lpmm results shown in the Fuji chart.
When the original 56mm F1.2 R was released, the Fuji standard resolution was 16MP, so I already saw the cracks when I tested it on 26MP. It just wasn’t very sharp before F2. The new lens is clearly designed with 40MP in mind; it is beautifully sharp even at F1.2 and has flawless contrast.
We’ll break down the details together. First of all, let’s look at vignette and distortion. There’s not much to see on either front.
I used a -1 to correct the tiniest amount of distortion and a +40 (just a little over a stop) to correct the vignette. That’s impressive for an F1.2 lens, and it shows how the slightly growth of the diameter of the lens had paid optical dividends.
Longitudinal chromatic aberrations were definitely an issue at times with the first generation lens, but Fuji has utterly slain LoCA here. I found lens markings to be an extreme torture test for LoCA, but I just don’t see fringing here.
I’ve got a fallen pine in the forest behind my house that lichen is growing on, and I find this lichen to be just miserable for many lenses for fringing. The 56mm WR just nails it, though, delivering instead gorgeous microcontrast on all of the various textures there.
Lateral chromatic aberrations show up near the edge of the frame in transitions from dark to light areas. You can see from the edge of my test chart Fuji has also nailed this metric, and there is next to no fringing in the transitions from black to white.
All of this is a huge improvement over the previous generation lens…and this is while reviewing the new lens on the much higher resolution sensor.
So how about resolution? The 40MP Fuji X-Trans sensor tends to make all but the very sharpest of lenses look a little soft when viewed at high magnification levels, and it just so happens that my review standard is to examine results at a 200% magnification. That is a lot to ask of any lens, but this is one that’s definitely up to the task. Here’s a look at the test chart that crops throughout the review come from:
And here is a look at F1.2 crops from the center, then mid-frame, and then extreme lower right corner:
Lovely. That’s great sharpness for an F1.2 lens. If you need to know what this sensor does to a lessor lens, check out how that performance compares to the Sirui Sniper 56mm F1.2 that I reviewed five months ago!
Ouch.
I typically don’t compare lenses to the Viltrox Pro AF 75mm F1.2 as it feels almost punitive; the Viltrox is just so much sharper than just about any lens I compare to it on Fuji. The 56mm WR is up to the challenge, though providing near identical levels of sharpness and contrast in the center of the frame.
If we move off to the corners, I actually prefer the Fuji save the last tiny bit on the edge where the Viltrox stages a comeback.
Yup. This is a very, very good lens optically.
And it is no paper tiger, either. I found sharpness held up even at greater distances and in harsher lighting conditions. Here’s an F1.2 shot at distance, and you can see from the crop that though the mid-day sun is bright on my wife, the lens has still delivered lovely contrast.
And look at how gorgeous the defocused region is. I shot this at Middleton Place in Charleston, South Carolina (a truly gorgeous place). Impressive.
It was great at night, too, delivering high detail even at F1.2 (ISO 1600 here) and with a lot of bright contrast transitions in this shot.
It was a lens that I didn’t hesitate to use even at F1.2 for portrait work. There’s plenty of detail and contrast, and it allows me to get great separation of my subject from the background.
Stopping down to F1.4 provides a slight boost to contrast, and by F2 the improvement is more pronounced. You can see that even the corners look pretty great by F2:
And remember, that’s on a 40MP body and showing the results at 200%. That’s impressively good.
The lens that I tested also showed good centering with a consistent performance in all four corners.
F2.8 is largely the same as F2, with just a slight bit more contrast at F4 and F5.6.
As you might expect, landscape results are just stunning, with great detail all across the frame along with Fuji’s excellent color in their optical glass.
Diffraction comes early on a high resolution body like this, so expect some softening by F11 and much more obvious softening by F16, which is minimum aperture here.
This is one of Fuji’s strongest performers optically. It really is a treat, as lenses like this make the 40MP sensor make sense. It just punishes the weaker glass.
I love walking around with a lens like this, as the large maximum aperture makes it easy to create storytelling images by isolating subjects.
The lovely bokeh augmented by great contrast makes it easy to shoot images like this where the eye is drawn through the layers of defocus towards the subject.
Shooting ordinary objects with a lens like this allows them to really stand out from otherwise distracting backgrounds, even when those backgrounds are close.
Get close to a subject and you can really blur out a background into a nice creamy mass of colors.
None of the competing 56mm lenses are going to be able to do this in quite the same way.
I was also able to get results even when shooting into the sun or other bright lights. Some of the cheaper lenses at this focal length I’ve tested really fall apart with bright lights in the frame, but that’s not the case here.
In short, there is basically nothing that I have to complain about here optically. This is a wonderful example of how to do lens design, with optics that deliver both high contrast and resolution while also giving lovely bokeh. Kudos to Fuji! You can check out the image gallery if you’d like to see more.
Conclusion
Lenses like the Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R WR give me hope that Fuji can make this 40MP sensor work. It is pretty tough on even good lenses, so it takes exceptional lenses like this to really sparkle on this sensor. But this lens does, and I could SEE the difference in the images from the new lens even when I was looking at a group of images without the lens designation showing. They just sparkled in a way that images from some of the older Fuji lenses I was shooting with did not.
I’m underwhelmed by the autofocus performance here (particularly for video), as it feels like Fuji has saddled these amazing optics with a decade old focus system. But even the somewhat clunky autofocus motor is incapable of souring me on this lens. The optics are too nice, and the size is still reasonable enough that I could happily haul it around all day. The improved minimum focus distance is also greatly appreciated, as it opens up new subject opportunites.
This is a lens that definitely goes onto my short list of lenses fully capable of handling the 40MP sensor of cameras like the X-T5 or X-H2. So if you own the older 56mm F1.2 R lens and are considering upgrading your camera, I do think this is a worthy upgrade for a lot of reasons. If you’ve recently upgraded to one of the 40MP Fuji bodies, this lens should definitely be on your short list of lenses worth buying. At $900 USD (at the moment), this lens isn’t cheap, but it is also pretty special. And sometimes special is worth paying for.
Pros:
Nicely built lens
Nice looking lens
Full weather sealing and fluorine coating
Focus accuracy good
No distortion
Well controlled vignette
Low chromatic aberrations
Awesome sharpness across the frame even at F1.2
One of the sharpest lenses on Fuji when stopped down
Much improved minimum focus distance and up close performance
Handles high contrast scenes great
Lovely bokeh
Better flare resistance
Cons:
Focus experience feels dated already
Manual focus experience flawed by the focus motor sounds and vibrations
Keywords: Fuji, Fujinon, XF, AF, Autofocus, 56mm, F1.2, R, WR, Weathersealing, Fuji 56mm F1.2 WR Review, f/1.2, Fuji X, Fujifilm, X-mount, APS-C, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Fujifilm X-T5, Fujifilm X-H2, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
It’s been nearly 5 years since I’ve done my review of the Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R lens, which was regarded as one of the classic portrait options due to its large maximum aperture (F1.2) and classic 85mm equivalent angle of view (56mm x Fuji’s 1.5x crop factor = 84mm). My conclusion was that while the lens had some nice optics (more in the overall rendering rather than great sharpness at large apertures), the clunky focus motor, lack of weather sealing, and high price ($999 USD) left me somewhat underwhelmed. My conclusion was that this lens was only competitive on Fuji only because (at the time) Fuji was a closed platform, and Fuji XF shooters didn’t really have options. Thankfully, that is no longer true, as since that time Fuji has opened up their platform to alternatives, and at this point you can get half a dozen 56mm autofocusing third party lenses in X-mount, including two from Viltrox (56mm F1.4 reviewed here and newer 56mm F1.7 reviewed here), TTArtisan (AF 56mm F1.8, reviewed here), Sigma (56mm F1.4, reviewed here on Sony), Sirui, (Sniper 56mm F1.2, reviewed here), and one from Tokina (56mm F1.4) that I haven’t reviewed. Add the two Fuji options, and you’ve definitely got options. Fuji now has to compete on merit, and the new Fujinon XF 56mm F1.2 R WR has a lot of merits…but also still have a few flaws. Find out my full thoughts in my video review or by reading my text review here.
Thanks to Fujifilm Canada for sending me a review copy of this lens. As always, this is a completely independent review. All opinions and conclusions are my own. I’m doing this review on a 40MP Fujifilm X-H2 camera.
The plethora of new 56mm options show how important this focal length is as a portrait lens and short telephoto general purpose lens. 85-100mm is my favorite portrait range, and having that massive F1.2 aperture really allows for beautiful background separation even when shooting fuller length portraits. As we’ll see in this review, the Fuji 56mm WR remains the premium priced lens in the comparison. It’s full retail is $999 USD (as before), though the lens is currently on sale for $899 (at the time of this review) on a sale price. That’s more than double the price of any of competing lenses on the platform. But in some ways the price tag, while high, feels a little more justified this time around, as this is genuinely the premium option among the many alternatives that I’ve reviewed. It still has some flaws, but its ability to really perform at F1.2 for portrait work makes it special.
There have been some really competitive lenses recently release with smaller maximum apertures (the TTArtisan AF 56mm F1.8 and the Viltrox AF 56mm F1.7 are the standouts due to being both strong performers AND costing less than $160 USD!), but neither one of them can provide the kind of subject separation that the Fuji and its F1.2 aperture can.
Here’s an example: with both lenses stopped down to F2, I felt the Viltrox F1.7 lens did a shockingly good job of providing similar sharpness and contrast for portrait work.
But where the 56mm WR showed the clear advantage is if you look at the backgrounds. Look at how much creamier the background is from the Fuji (on the right).
The difference would be even more pronounced if the subject was closer to the background.
There are two ways to view this:
“A lens like the Sigma 56mm F1.4 is close enough at half the price. The Fuji isn’t worth the premium.”
“Like a performance car, you pay for that last little extra bit of performance, but that can be the different between winning and losing.”
I think both perspectives are valid. Where I have an issue is when something has both a premium price and a less than premium performance (which is what I felt about the previous 56mm F1.2 from Fuji), but in this case I do think this is a premium lens in the class on X-mount. Let me put another way: in 2019 I sent the XF 56mm F1.2 R back after my loaner period without a moment’s regret; with the XF 56mm F1.2 WR I’m scheming of a way to add one to my own kit.
Sound interesting? Let’s break things down in detail…
Keywords: Fuji, Fujinon, XF, AF, Autofocus, 56mm, F1.2, R, WR, Weathersealing, Fuji 56mm F1.2 WR Review, f/1.2, Fuji X, Fujifilm, X-mount, APS-C, Review, Telephoto, Action, Tracking, Hands On, Dustin Abbott, Real World, Comparison, Sharpness, Bokeh, Flare Resistance, Autofocus, Image Quality, Sample Images, Video, Photography, Fujifilm X-T5, Fujifilm X-H2, let the light in, #letthelightin, DA
DISCLAIMER: This article and description contains affiliate links, which means that if you click on one of the product links, I’ll receive a small commission. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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