Wedding Session Afterthoughts: FUJIFILM GF 80mm f/1.7 R WR.
First things first. Congratulations to the Clarks. It was an honor to be asked to capture images of their special day.
But first be warned. This is a long one. I really like this lens. A lens I never thought I would actually own. Warning declared here we go.
Four weddings in I feel I am getting the hang of this wedding photography thing. As I stated in an earlier post:
- This is four more weddings than I ever expected to do.
And I have a fifth booked for later this year.
Oftentimes, wedding photography talk centers around gear.
Makes sense.
Of all of the types of photography I have pursued, no other has such a wide and conflicting grouping of requirements.
Detail pics.
Candid.
Low Light.
Fast AF.
Portraits.
Flash.
And anything else that comes up that you could never predict.
What I used for the first wedding…
…was a common setup.
Good light.
- A body and a short to long tele lens.
- A body and a wide-ish to short tele lens.
Meh light/Cave light.
- A body and a fast normal prime.
- A body and a fast portrait prime.
Since then, newer zoom lens types…
…have allowed for a much more simplified approach.
- One camera and one zoom lens.
Did I bring more stuff?
Yes.
Did I use other stuff?
Yes.
But that was a personal choice, not a need. Tamron did an amazing thing here. Created a new category of lens. Evidently, other companies agreed. Rokinon/Samyang basically copied off of Tamron’s homework and Sony is trying to upstage them with their own take on one lens for most purposes.
For this wedding I ran into a first time challenge for me.
Diabolical lighting.
Every wedding so far has been straightforward.
Wedding ceremony: Outside.
Reception: Inside.
Easy. Lighting was the only challenge to deal with.
The only lighting challenge involved so far was an afternoon wedding in December where we lost the sun between the ceremony and the reception. So it is still the amount of light, not the color of the light.
But this time was different.
Both the wedding and reception took place in the same location. I say first… A wonderful venue. Wonderful folks that were a pleasure to work with… But it had all the lighting.
And mixed lighting is of the devil. Sun on entry to the venue through the garage doors. Heavily backlit inside. Not sure for sure but LED and/or fluorescent inside and a near constant mix of all throughout, depending on the subject’s position and mine. And precious memories do not care about your preferred position.
This required some fiddling with the settings. Largely setting exposure to subject rather than scene, and understanding that white balance for the background will often be at odds with the subject. Thankfully courtesy of RAW file flexibility post editing was a thing. Necessary here, not a luxury.
On to the topic of this post. The finest portrait solution I have ever had the pleasure of using. Bold claim? Not really. It is the best of everything I have ever wanted in a portrait solution. I suspected this would be the case, but courtesy of patience and depreciation, I was only recently allowed access to it. I will explain but first a little backstory abut the camera body behind the lens.
Since the release of the first GFX body I have wanted one. There was a huge problem. A second, smaller but still significant problem… And a third inconvenient truth.
First issue: Price.
Technically, it was a “good deal” since it was inexpensive compared to prior digital medium format offerings. At $6,499, it was less than even the earlier first mirrorless medium format camera, the Hasselblad X1D, which was $8,000 at release. Great! But it was a no at that price. Especially considering…
Second issue: Contrast only AF.
I was deep into Sony land at this point. Stellar AF by the time these cameras were released. So when I tried out the 50S it was an immediate no. Its contrast AF was jarringly slow to my modern mirrorless AF sensibilities. Especially considering an…
Inconvenient truth: The A7R line of cameras exists.
All of them, A7RIII and beyond, cause problems for the GF. The oldest A7RIII was released around the same time as the 50S and stomped it on paper, if you ignore the medium format thing.
- 42.4 MP is close enough resolution wise I doubt anyone would notice.
- Much better AF.
- It cost thousands less at $3,199 at release.
So as much as I wanted a GFX body, I stuck with Sony. And the medium format “look” thing?
A bit of full frame alternative lens background.
I dealt with that utilizing an array of fast full frame glass. Speaking in equivalencies technically faster than any GF lens on the market at that time. The fastest GF lens, the 100mm f/2, was and is still eye wateringly expensive and works out to an 86.9mm f/1.58 full frame equivalent. So I threw a few lenses at the Sonh camera that got me close to what I was looking for.
Mitakon Zhongyi Speedmaster 50mm f/0.95
Both were… fun. And I swore by the 7Artisans for the longest. Even purchased it multiple times. Used it adapted to Sony and natively on M. But it was not what I was looking for. What I wanted was not just a fast lens but a fast lens without compromises. Fast as in faster than f/1.4.
Necessary?
No.
It is what I wanted and I could not shake it. So all of this led me to a trade fit of epic proportions to get my hands on a lens without compromise… except one… but I will get to that. It came so very close.
But this is where we get to the ‘except one thing’ part.
Once queen of nice Ellen had a stand up joke years ago that made me laugh. Not a hardy laugh. More of a chuckle because I thought it was clever. To paraphrase it went like this.
“I was in my hotel room and there was no shampoo. So I called down to the front desk. They knock on my door and hand me many bottles of conditioner while apologizing for running out of shampoo. The punchline:
You do understand that no matter how many bottles of conditioner you bring me, it does not make it shampoo?”
Welp. In this scenario after trying the best Sony had to offer I had to finally admit that for me fast aperture and better and better full-frame prime lenses are conditioner, and a medium format sensor is shampoo.
I just wanted it. Felt the same way about Leica until an M body snuck into my strike zone. So I struck. And it was good.
But after I got a couple of years of my rangefinder kicks out of my system do you know what a Leica M camera is? Starts will full and ends with frame.
That is right a full frame camera. And so you what a full camera is not? Even a fancy pants high fallutin’ one?
Shampoo.
…I still wanted shampoo. A funny parallel to draw for someone with a lack of hairstyle, I will admit, but here we are. After the red dot haze faded I still wanted a medium format camera. This became clear when FUJIFILM aimed a GAS missile at my torso in the form of the GFX 100RF.
That, until now, contained GAS demon yelled “Sell everything! Get me that camera!” from the depths of my consumerist soul. It solved my main issues with GF options until now.
- 100MP easily bests the 61MP Sony full frame upstarts.
- It has hybrid phase/contrast AF with face and eye detect.
- A “good deal” in that Leica Q lens + camera for less than an M body nonsensical way.
- IBI… <checks notes>… Nope.
Uh oh. Ueahm I tried (unsuccessfully) to excuse this but reamed with a (relatively) f/4 aperture combined with a stinger from an email exchange with Hamish…
“I dunno man, I’m not convinced for myself… I think if I was going to go MF digital, I’d want to be able to mount random lenses to it.”
…I looked elsewhere. Not far. I reexamined a camera far out my price range at release with every feature I wanted…
- 100MP.
- Hybrid phase/contrast AF with face and eye detect.
- IBIS.
- The ability to slap any lens I want to onto it.
- About half the price used compared to its $5,999 release price.
- Combined with a close-ish spec’d lens used for less than the GFX 100RF.
Sign me up. So I loosened the latch on the GAS demon’s enclosure and a mighty trade fit was had.
GFX body sorted. What about the “right” lens?
The GF 50mm f/3.5 mentioned above is a fine multipurpose lens. Not going anywhere. But it I snot a portrait lens in the traditional sense. Owing to its focal length and modest aperture. It can take a portrait…
…but this is more of an environmental portrait. Not what I came to medium format for. To get a taste of what I was looking for I picked up a used TTArtisan 90mm f/1.2. A fine result…
…but once again not what I was looking for. Two reasons:
- Not as sharp wide open as I was looking for.
- Focusing on stuff is fine. Focusing on folks? Not that fun.
So what next? The awesome 110mm f/2? Nope. I have one shot at this. There is no two AF medium format portrait lens scenario in my future. So I need to choose well. Here is why the 110mm did not make the cut:
- Significantly more expensive new or used (80mm and 110mm).
- The 80mm is smaller and lighter.
- The 80mm is slightly faster.
- The 80mms focal length is more flexible.
- Key since I will only have one lens.
Before making my purchase, I tested a borrowed 80mm f/1.7 and confirmed that this was the lens for me.
Ok. Camera and lens sorted. On to the photos from wedding day. Starting out light here is a simple stills pic.
Onto portraits. The main event. Groom first.
Excellent. But the bride and bridesmaid portraits are really where this lens and camera really shined.
Onto the wedding party photos after the ceremony.
Wonderful. I could not ask for better. But then a string of events revealed that this combination is suited to more than just portraits. As mentioned in a prior post about the GRIIIx I burned through the SD Card on my main camera. I turned to this camera and lens on my left. It did just fine thank you very much. As crazy as it sounds I would be fine using this medium format camera as an event camera. Wild overkill resolution wise for sure, but it did very well.
Then in what I found to be very funny I had burned through the card on the GFX.
If one were so inclined this could be their own only system.
Me? Not quite there yet.
Lens question set aside there is no other GFX body I would want. All of the GFX 50 variants are out. They are contrast only and just no. Getting another 100S does not make sense to me. The GFX 100 released first is a bit of a bus and all of the other 100 variants cost cost as much or more.
So for now I will just enjoy what I have. It is more than I would have expected to have not that long ago.
Would I recommend this set up?
Depends.
In my personal opinion it is the best bang for buck portrait solution. Yes, it is expensive. But it is actually comparable to full frame.
A used GFX 100 S goes for about the same price as a used Sony A7RV.
A used GF 80mm f/1.7 goes for about the same price used as a Sony 50mm f/1.2 GM.
Having now had both, I would choose the GF pairing.
Happy capturing.
-ELW
Eric L. Woods 
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