My First And Perhaps Only Native GF Lens: FUJIFILM GF 50mm f/3.5 R LM WR.

In a recent week 1 GFX summary I talked about how my first GF lens experience was not a good one.

It was with the GFX 50S II and and the GF 80mm f/1.7.

It was bad. Slow and noisy. I mistakenly set my expectations for all GF system cameras and lenses based on this experience. I learned this was a mistake when I tested the GFX100S with the subject of this post. Night and day. Swift and silent focusing.

I documented how I chose this lens in an earlier post so I will invoke a bit of cut and paste.

Started at the cheapest and that is pretty much where I stopped. The FUJIFILM GF 50mm f/3.5 R LM WR. Least expensive new and used it is not out of line with the price of full frame lenses. And according to the specs and interweb reviews it has a lot going for it.

The smaller native GF lens.
Weather resistant.
Fast, accurate, and silent AF.
Sharp.
Decent bokeh.

The worst I heard was that the colors were a bit muted, but that a tweak of the saturation slider in post should do the trick. It has a couple of advantages over the lens on the GFX100RF.

End cut and paste.

How have things gone after a week? Fantastic, thank you for asking?

I will try (and likely fail) to be brief.

Let me summarize IQ with one photo.

Woof. I like. All the things.

The colors.
Tack sharp.
No vignetting.
3D pop.
The colo… I said that already.

Just lovely. And not a fluke. This thing just spits out pleasing image after pleasing image. And at 50mm it does people pics just fine thank you very much.

And with that image and knowledge that I can crop the mess out of the image I am good for a healthy crop on the subject. Add in a 40mm equivalent focal length and it serves well as a wide enough for most stuff all purpose prime.

And add to that the relatively small footprint when this lens and camera are combined.

So to recap.

Great IQ.
Sharp enough and backed by a 100MP sensor a healthy crop can be used in lieu of a longer lens.
Compact for day to day use.
Fast, silent, and accurate AF.

It is the whole package.

So what of the other FUJIFILM GF AF lenses?

Portrait.

Not really interested in the GF 80mm f/1.7 and a native mount manual focus lens has me covered as far as the 110mm f/2 is concerned…. for now. May change my mind on that in the future.

Zooms.

I did not buy into the GF system for zoom lenses.

Other primes wide and normal.

The slower ones do not interest me. The wider ones do not interest me. The faster ones are larger than the 50mm that has me spoiled with its portability.

Add to the plot two great adapted lenses…