Fujinon GF 80mm f/1.7 R WR
Shallow-focus heaven from this GFX lens
You’ll be taken to shallow-focus heaven with this new lens for Fujifilm’s fêted medium-format GFX system
Medium-format lenses are always going to seem oversized when compared with an APS-C or even a full-frame lens. This is unavoidable: the image circle of a medium-format system needs to be that much bigger, to cover the sensor area. This means more glass, a larger diameter and, in turn, more weight. This naturally drives up the price – and with it the certain expectations that premium product buyers will have.
Fujifilm lenses rarely disappoint when it comes to build quality and user experience. There is no doubt that this medium-format lens does carry some bulk, but when the GF 80mm f/1.7 is attached to the front of a Fujifilm GFX camera, it is perfectly balanced.
Performance
When you are building lenses for use with cameras equipped with north of 100 megapixels, like Fujifilm’s GFX 100 and GFX 100S, you have to be confident that the optics are up to the challenge. There’s no point having all those pixels if the lens in use doesn’t have the resolving power to ever realise the maximum potential of the sensor.
Thankfully, the GF 80mm f/1.7 ticks that box perfectly. Sharpness is superb across the frame, only softening slightly at the edges at f/1.7. This does improve markedly towards f/4, which still produces a significantly reduced depth of field on a medium-format sensor. We also didn’t notice a huge difference between crispness in the centre wide-open and at around f/8, which is impressive.
Contrast is gorgeous, and there is basically no chromatic aberration to speak of. There is noticeable vignetting at the widest aperture, but we actually think this adds depth to many shots, and it can be easily removed in software if you don’t like it.
The autofocus system is slower than in some of Fujifilm’s XF-series lenses, but as the motor is moving a lot of glass, the performance is still more than adequate. Peter Fenech