Fujinon XF 50mmF1.0 Review by Christopher Frost: “Easily the Sharpest Lens I Have Ever Tested at Apertures Brighter than f/1.2”

Christopher Frost has published his review about the brand new Fujinon XF50mmF1.0.

I will provide written summary below for those of you guys, who are in a hurry and don’t have the time to watch the video right now.

Full Frame Equivalency

• The dimensions of the XF50mmF1.0 are very similar to the ones of the Full Frame Sony GM 85mmF1.4
• the advantage of the Fujifilm optic is that the max. aperture of f/1.0 will mean that an enormous light intensity is hitting your camera sensor, leaving you with much faster shutter speeds than all other lenses
• f/1.0 is twice as bright as f/1.4 and 66% brighter than f/1.2, so it really gives you a substantial advantage.
• The XF50mmF1.0 is a dream lens not only for bokeh, but also for shooting indoors and in darker situations. It could be an incredible lens for wedding photography or video work.

Build Quality and Autofocus

• build quality more or less second to none. Fantastic and professional feeling
• lens is big and heavy
• metallic and solid feeling
• well weather sealed
• aperture ring a bit too easy to change away from f/1.0
• metallic focus ring turns extremely smoothly, but the way it works with the focus motor is pretty jerky, so using it is not the smoothest experience
• very little focus breathing
• internal microphone picks up sound of the focus motor
• autofocus on X-T3 with firmware 3.00 (old firmware): autofocus works OK but is a bit unsure of itself hunting around a bit
• autofocus on X-T3 with firmware 3.00 (new firmware): huge change. Focus is reasonably quickly and confidently even at f/1.0
• DC AF motor is noisy

Image Quality

Sharpness

• usually such fast lenses almost never have great image quality wide open
• f/1.0: high resolution but low contrast. A little bit of purple fringing in high contrast edges. But he is really impressed by the great amount of detail being captured at f/1.0. You can add extra contrast in post. Sharpness remains all across the frame, but the far corner see some softness. But ever other lens he has tested at f/1.0 was significantly softer than the XF50mmF1.0
• f/1.4: a lot more contrast in the center and reduced fringing
• f/2.0: perfect image quality in the middle a little more detail in the corner
• f/2.8 and beyond we can see excellent image quality in the corners, although not quite as perfect as the middle of the image
• f/11 and f/16 image quality will soften again due to diffraction
• OVERALL: Easily the sharpest lens he has ever tested at apertures brighter than f/1.2. It captures a very impressive amount of detail at f/1.0. For more contast stop down at f/1.4. For very sharp corners stop down at f/4. But at f/1.0 the lens is already sharp, which is very exciting to see

Distortion + Close up image quality + Flare

• at f/1.0 just a little bit of pincushion distortion and vignetting is surprisingly moderate. He was expecting much more vignetting
• af f/1.4 corners brighten a bit
• at f/2 corners brighten a lot more
• at f/1.0 close up quality is a bit softer than at normal distances, but still pretty usable. Stop down to see gradual improvements
• despite the extreme nature of the lens, Fujifilm did fairly well to control flare, with flaring reduced to just a little green point when a bright light hits directly the image

Bokeh + LoCA

• he really likes the look of it. Smooth, clean and all around gorgeous
• if you really want to nitpick, then you could say it has slight cat eye shaped balls in the corners with very slight green outline
• background looks wonderful
• Longitudinal Chromatic Aberration is a bit noticable from f/1.0 to f/2.0. More or less all gone at f/2.8

Conclusions

• the experience of using this lens was “out of this world”
• it’s so cool to shoot at f/1.0 with autofocus
• not a perfect lens, but unique, very powerful, decently sharp at f/1.0 and renders images with beatiful bokeh
• $1,500 may be expensive, but Fujifilm achievement with this lens has matched the ambitions
• he certainly recommends this lens.

This is basically another very positive review, after the one of ePhotozine, which we will link again down below.

• read here – ePhotozine Fujinon XF50mm f/1.0 Review: “Top Tier Performance, Impressive Chromatic Aberration Performance… Magical!”

Fujinon XF50mmF1.0 Pre-Orders