XF50mmf/2

Mikeywcu wrote:

Truman Prevatt wrote:

Mikeywcu wrote:

Tom Schum wrote:

Great lens and a good purchase choice too!

I have one, but use my third party manual lenses more often. The AF is a feature my third party manual lenses can't match though, for quick family shots and so on.

Looks like you are getting the best out of it so far!

I too love throwing on manual glass. I’ve been toying with getting the Fuji 50 f2, but I’m afraid it won’t hold a candle to my Zeiss Planar 50 f2 zm, which puts my Fuji 35 f2 to shame.

The 50 mm lens is a sweet spot for lens designers. The 50 f2 is a significantly better lens than the 23 f2. I have both - the 23 is not bad but the 50 is better. I’ve seen a number of reviews and reports of the 3 Fuji compact f2 lenses, the 35 f2 is the weakest and the 50 the best. The 50 is not the 56, but it is a good lens.

This is quite helpful because while I enjoy the 35 f2, in all honesty I’ve felt let down at times by its rendering and sharpness. I actually thought at first that something was wrong with my XPro3...surely this thing can take sharper photos? Then I threw on some Zeiss, Voigtlander, and Leica glass...oh no, the camera was not the issue at all.

I've been doing business at my local camera shop since 1985. I know the owner quite well.  His son (who I used to refer to as "snot nose kid" ) runs the business now.  When I bought my Pro2, the 35 f2 had just come out.  When I asked the difference between the 35 f2 and 35 f1.4, he handed me both lenses and the Pro2 and told me to take then out and have fun and come back and we'd put them up on the monitor.  There was no contest.  The rendering of the f2 lacked - especially in the OOF areas.  The f2 also produced onion rings in backgrounds it should not have been.  Onion rings are to eat, not be a distraction in your images.  In certain conditions the f2 produced concentric onion rings- yuck.

The 23 f2 has much better - not 23 f1.4 better - rendering.  You can for the most part avoid gnarly background rendering but you need to use some care since an onion ring can popup from time to time.  The 23 f2 works really nicely on the XPro OVF.  The 50 f2 was the third in the series and I read reports that Fuji had a better design for the lens and a 50 is the sweet spot for lens design (why so many of the early lenses from Zeiss and Leica were 50 mm or 5 cm at the time).

I picked up the 50 f2.  It is not the 56 - no lens is the Fuji line up except maybe the 90 f2.  Some swear by the 16 f1.4 but it's too wide for my taste so I've not used it.  But the 50 f2 has a little better rendering than the 23 f2.  It is compact, light and a very good value and it works nicely on the XPro. It's probably worth a try.