Fujinon GF55mm F/1.7R WR Review

The Fujifilm Fujinon GF55mm F/1.7R WR
Fujifilm Fujinon GF55mm F/1.7R WR is a bright normal prime for the GFX system of mirrorless cameras. With a maximum aperture of F/1.7, this is the brightest Fujifilm lens specifically built for the GF-mount. Its 55mm focal-length is equivalent to 45mm on a full-frame which captures a very natural perspective.

The GF 55mm captures a 52° field-of-view. Given a minimum focus-distance of 50cm, its maximum magnification is 0.17X. The F/1.7 maximum aperture makes it exceptionally bright for use in low-light situations. A 11-blade circular-aperture makes it capable of producing beautiful rounded bokeh. Since this is a Medium-Format lens, the resulting shallow depth-of-field compares to an F/1.4 Full-Frame lens.

Body Design

Bright lenses are usually heavy due to their large glass elements. Medium Format tends to push this even further, yet Fujifilm managed to keep the weight of the GF55mm F/1.7R WR under control. This lens weighs 780g which is not light. It is a relatively large lens, measuring 9.5cm in diameter and 10cm long. When used at bright apertures, the depth-of-field is so shallow that minimum movements can push it out-of-focus, so a tripod is highly recommended when using this lens.

This prime lens is built as a single metal barrel with a silky black finish. A very wide focus-ring wraps around the barrel which is why it is wider than the base of the lens. A front filter-thread accepts common 77mm screw-on filters. At the back, the lens mount is made of metal too. The GF 55mm F/1.7R both weatherproof and freezeproof down to -10°C. Its all-internal design feels very sturdy.

The focus ring rotates smoothly without any hard stops. The ring is fly-by-wire, just like other Fujinon GF lenses. The ring turns very smoothly with some resistance to minimize accidental changes. Manual Focusing is extremely precise as many complete turns of the focus-ring are required to drive focus across its range.

A second ring, closer to the mount, controls the aperture between F/1.7 and F/22 in 1/3 stops. There are two additional positions, labelled A and C. When the aperture-ring is set to A, the camera automatically selects the aperture. When it is set to C, the user controls the aperture using a control-dial on the camera. This is very useful to get around the soft detents of the aperture-ring which can be easily rotated unintentionally.

To avoid accidentally changing Exposure Modes, the aperture-ring cannot move freely between C, A and F/no positions. A small square button marked with a red line built into the aperture ring must be pressed to move the aperture-ring in a way that changes the Exposure Mode. This lets the photographer choose between using an aperture-ring or a control-dial to change aperture. Using the control-dial option is sensible unless it is also assigned to another function.

Fujifilm 55mm F/1.7

Fujifilm GFX100S II

Fujifilm GFX100 II

Fujifilm GFX 50S II

Optical Performance

Fujifilm designed all GF-mount lenses to resolve 100 megapixels and, with the GF55mm F/1.7R WR, it reached that level performance quite well. This is an ultra-sharp less with fantastic performance all apertures. It renders subjects without optical distortion and maintains great constrast across the frame. There is only a minute amound of vignetting at F/1.7 but that virtually gone from F/2 onwards.

This lens has an exceptional rendition of colors. Micro contrast is also very well captured throughout the entire imaging area. The optical design shows impeccable resistance to flare and no signs of chromatic aberrations.

Fujinon GF55mm F/1.7R WR Sharpness

Sharpness of the Fujinon GF55mm F/1.7R WR is simply outstanding. Over its entire aperture-range, it renders tack-sharp details. Extreme corners exhibit a slight softness that is only visible when captured at 100 megapixels and shown at 1:1 magnification. This equates to an ernormous print size! Near-perfect sharpness starts at F/2.2 and stays that way until F/14, right before diffraction starts softening the finest details.

What is shown below are 5 crops taken from a photograph, repeatedly captured for each combination of focal-length and aperture. The smaller pieces are cropped from the extreme corners of the image, while the middle wide crop comes from the center of the image. Select an aperture in a row for a desired focal-length to see the crops from the corresponding image. When judging quality, keep in mind that these crops come from a 50 MP image which is normally used to print an image up to 40x30". On a computer display, these may appear much larger which magnifies image defects.

Upper Left

Upper Right

Center

Lower Left

Lower Right

This is a fantastic lens for general photography. It is extremely well ambient scenes, group portraits and urban photography. Given its natural perspective, this is a great lens for candid and reportage-style photography too. While neither small nor light, the GF55mm F/1.7 balances well with most Fujifilm GFX-series cameras.