Fujifilm XF50 mm F2 R Weather Resistant Lens, Black

Product Information

To find out I shot two compositions at dusk which included some bright, distant lights. First a view of The City of London from the South Bank. Here’s the full composition below and below that I’ve cropped and enlarged a portion from just below right of centre which featured the best-defined diffraction spikes. I shot both lenses at their minimum apertures of f16. X-series users aren’t short of choice when it comes to buying a fast mid-telephoto prime, but this lens has some key advantages. It’s a convenient size for travelling and feels just as good on smaller X-series camera bodies such as the Fujifilm X-T20 as it does with the more advanced Fujifilm X-T2 and Fujifilm X-Pro2 models. The WR abbreviation in its name highlights that this is one of Fujifilm’s weather-resistant lenses. It features no fewer than ten seals around the barrel to keep moisture and dust at bay, and you’ll find a rubber seal around the perimeter of the metal mount to prevent moisture or dust creeping inside the camera body. Above left: Fujifilm XF 50mm f2. Above right: Fujifilm XF 56mm f1.2. Both with supplied lens hoods.

Personally, the TTArtisan 50mm f/2 is all about a freedom feeling. It gives you the option to go super lightweight and in an unobtrusive way. It is similar to the experience you get with Fujifilm's smaller f/2 lenses. The quality of out-of-focus highlights means a lot to photographers who like to generate images with a shallow depth of field. Bokeh has a tendency to shift from circular in the centre to an elliptical shape at the edges. In terms of autofocusing (tested on an X-Pro2 body), the XF 50mm f2 is fairly swift and while slightly audible in quiet conditions, rarely obtrusive. In comparison the XF 56mm f1.2 feels slower, less confident and a little louder too – not deal-breakingly so in any regard, but anyone shooting candids or street will appreciate the extra speed of the newer XF 50mm f2. If we stop all three down to f/2.8 – the fastest aperture they share – the rendering becomes much more similar. X-T20, 1/2400, f/2.8, ISO 200 – XF 50mm X-T20, 1/2400, f/2.8, ISO 200 – XF 56mm X-T20, 1/2200, f/2.8, ISO 200 – XF 60mm

This level of quality is seen across the entire Fujifilm X Series lens range, except for one or two lenses. This consistency is especially evident in the other smaller Fujifilm lenses including the XF 23mm F/2, XF 35mm F/2 and the newer XF 16mm F/2. 8. In the crop above you’re looking at the XF 50mm f2 on the left and the XF 56mm f1.2 on the right; since the shooting distance remained the same, the slightly longer focal length of the latter lens has delivered a slightly tighter view and crop as a result. So in all honesty, I need to give Fujifilm some serious credit. TheFujifilm 50mm f2 R WR is highly capable when it comes to build quality and it can take quite a beating. Ease of Use The lens is weather resistant, always a welcome feature, and has an optical formula of 9 elements in 7 groups. There is one aspheric ED (extra low dispersion) element. The diaphragm has 9 blades, using a rounded design to further improve bokeh. Distortion likewise is corrected before we become involved, and hence measures a very low -0.16% barrelling, as near perfect as makes little difference.

It’s tough to test for vignetting with Fujinon lenses since the RAW files and jpegs are processed with a built in lens profile that removes it. I’ve read that you can remove these profiles with editors like Iridient Developer. As a photographer that is already using Lightroom and Capture One, I’m going to pass on a third piece of software and just live with the built in corrections. Autofocus The manual focus ring is electronic, so it only works some of the time depending on how you have your camera set. These caveats aside, this lens is very sharp even wide-open at f/2, although it's a tiny bit softer in the corners if you're looking with a microscope in the lab. It and sharpens up as stopped down a few stops. In actual pictures it's very sharp even wide-open, no worries here.In SINGLE (S) autofocus mode (selected on-camera) the focus ring works only if you have the shutter half-pressed. It's ignored if you aren't half-pressing the shutter.

Stopping the 56mm down to f/2 brings it closer to the others, though it remains the softest by a very small margin. Autofocus on the Fujifilm XF 50mm f/2 is fast, accurate, and silent. This lens also works very well with the face recognition mode on my Fuji X-T3. When shooting street portraits, candid shots, or events, I don’t always have time to set a focus point, so this feature is critical. The accuracy of the Fujifilm XF 35mm f/2 in my experience has been superb. ISO 160 | 1/6000s | f/2.8 ISO 160 | 1/6000s | f/2.8 and 45 cycles per millimeter on APS-C is the same as 10 and 30 cycles per millimeter on full frame. Whereas the 50mm’s diminutive size makes it a good match for nearly any Fujifilm X series camera, including the smaller entry-level models, the 56mm handles somewhat better on larger bodies such as the X-T2 or X-Pro2. (There isn’t any physical limitation to using the 56mm on a smaller body; it just wouldn’t be quite as comfortable.) The 60mm sits in the middle and feels at home no matter which body you use.This tiny gem has more in common with LEICA M lenses than anything from Sony, Nikon or Canon, most of whose small lenses are bigger, 100% plastic and have no aperture rings. Its weather-resistant status will appeal to outdoorsy types and those who don’t like the thought of having to stop shooting in inclement weather or challenging environments. Although there’s nothing to stop it being used with non-weather-sealed cameras, it’s likely to find itself being paired up with the manufacturers weather- and dust-resistant Fujifilm X-T2 and Fujifilm X-Pro2 bodies. When used on Fuji's APS-C cameras, it sees the same angle of view as a 75 mm lens sees when used on a 35mm or full-frame camera. Use the excellent and inexpensive B+W 46mm 010 , or splurge on the multicoated B+W 010M or use a multicoated Hoya filter. None of the lenses are completely resistant to chromatic aberrations but the 56mm is the one that suffers the least. Even at its fastest aperture of f/1.2, you’ll only come across some very mild examples in high contrast areas of your image.

PAST BYLINES: Gear Patrol, PC Mag, Geek.com, Digital Photo Pro, Resource Magazine, Yahoo! News, Yahoo! Finance, IGN, PDN, and others. The moral of the story is that all three lenses perform in a very similar manner at a long focus distance, particularly from f/2.8 onward, whereas the 50mm and 56mm have a slight advantage over the 60mm at a close focus distance. The only value at which the 56mm is visibly softer than either of its competitors is f/1.2, which makes sense given how fast this value is. Bokeh Chromatic aberration (CA) is the lens' inability to focus on the sensor or film all colours of visible light at the same point. Severe chromatic aberration gives a noticeable fringing or a halo effect around sharp edges within the picture. It can be cured in software.Moving onto bokeh-balls, I shot an ornamental tree with some LED fairy lamps behind it. Note the LEDs had a rectangular shape, so don’t look for perfectly circular blobs here. Like the previous example with the beer bottles, I focused close to the minimum distance of the XF 56mm f1.2, then repositioned slightly so the XF 50mm f2 roughly matched the subject size on the frame. Despite having similar focal lengths, the XF 50mm, 56mm and 60mm have each been designed for different purposes. There is something beautiful about the images rendered by the 56mm, especially wide open, that simply can't be emulated. Those that love to emphasise and use that narrow depth of field are likely to remain true to the 56mm.