DA: Fujinon GF55mm f/1.7 R WR – Fujifilm’s Best Lens

• 7 months ago

 

Dustin Abbot published his Fujinon GF55mm f/1.7 lens review. You can watch the full review above or you can check out the key points below:

• Great Focal length with amazing optics and good autofocus
• 44mm equivalent focal length
• Great walk around lens that most people will leave on the camera
• Clicked aperture that is in 1/3^rd stops
• Weather-sealed like all other GF lenses it also has a fluorine coating on the front
• Almost identical to the 80mm f/1.7
• About 15g lighter than the 80mm at 780g
• 77mm front filter threads
• Should have declicked the aperture for the GFX100II video features
• Big manual focus ring that moves nicely
• Included lens hood is pretty nice with a locking mechanism
• 11-bladed aperture that provides better bokeh as you stop down compared to Fujifilm’s usual 9 blades
• Improved over the 80mm you can focus down to 50cm or 1.6 feet with a 1.7x magnification
• DC focus motors instead of linear ones which is disappointing
• It seems Fujifilm has problems using linear motors with their large aperture lenses
• This makes autofocus loud and scratchy sounding which limits the lenses used for video
• AF is really good
• Fujifilm’s AF system is still having trouble focusing on the eye over the eyelashes
• AF isn’t fast enough for animals, but it is decent for things like shooting layups which gave about an 80% hit rate
• AF was good in low light even at 12,800
• Video AF is a bit rough with some pulsing
• Autofocus has room for improvement but it is better than the 80mm
• Many of the strengths of the 80mm f/1.7 with fewer weaknesses
• Mild barrel distortion with vignetting that requires 3 stops of correction to completely remove, but there is no LoCA and no color  fringing
• Extremely sharp and high contrast even wide open in the center with strong detail into the corners especially compared to the 80mm f/1.7
• If you stop down to f/2 there is very little improvement same with f/2.8 and f/4
• Image quality peaks at f/5.6 and diffraction ruins the image by f/22
• Beautiful colors that are not over-saturated but still manage to be rich
• Great transition between in-focus and out-of-focus at all distances
• Some chroma smearing toward the corners if you shoot something like Astro
• This is the best lens Fujifilm makes
• Expensive but no more expensive than good full frame glass

Fujinon GF55mm f/1.7

B&H Photo / Amazon / Moment  / Adorama

Fujinon GF80mm f/1.7:

B&H Photo / Amazon / Moment / Adorama

Fujifilm GFX100II:

B&H Photo / Amazon / Moment / Adorama

Fujifilm GFX100S:

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Fujifilm GFX50SII:

B&H Photo / Amazon  / Moment / Adorama

Fujifilm GFX100:

B&H Photo / Amazon / Moment / Adorama

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