XF 50/1 - lowlight (night) shots

Hi guys,

tonight I took the XF 50/1 for a walk when it got dark to test the lowlight performance. Some asked for lowlight testshots, so here I share the results with you.

There is a shot that I even like (the door), but please bear in mind most of them are rather snapshots of what caught my eye on my quest to further learn the performance of the lens.

I wanted it to remain a real world test, so because of being an f/1 lens, I decided not to take any tripod with me and shoot everything handheld - to see, what an f/1 lens allows me on my non-stabilized X-T2.

All the shots are developed from raw in C1, none of them is cropped, sharpening was left as it is in default (C1 sharpens mildly in default), I only edited them a little bit (WB, exposure/highlights/shadows), colours. I tried it with/without defringe slinder and the impact on the result is weak in C1 (C1 does a pretty bad job in removing fringing), so I decided to leave it on (because that´s what I always do anyway).

Here are my findings:

- overall look - pleasing

- differences in wide aperture settings - already at f/1 it´s really good, often no need for stopping down

- flare - very interesting (I noticed it earlier already) - with light sources in the frame under certain angle, there is a mild flare reflection on the opposite side of the frame, but the overall contrast in the whole frame remains exceptionally high

- coma, fringing - fringing not bad really, especially for an f/1 lens, there is some coma wide open but it´s quite well controlled (it´s a different world in comparison with the 16/1.4 for example), both of these abberations gradually disappear when stopping down and at f/2 they´re gone completely

- bokeh - pleasing, smooth (without outlining)

So, here are the shots. I hope you will find them somewhat interesting and maybe they can help even you a little in deciding about this lens.

From further with slightly out of focus foreground distance.

Stress test at f/1 with brutal shutter speed (I braced against a wall, but still...) so sharpness suffered a bit. Focused on the bridge.

Comparison at f/2 with even more brutal shutter speed...  Again focused on the bridge.

Bokeh test.

Flare test - notice the faint flare circles I was talking about, also notice there is almost no loss of contrast around the lights.

Focused on the handle on the right. This shot I actually like.