Please help me think through a possible system change. (cross post) Thanks!

Thank you, I appreciate you sharing your experience. I do definitely value connecting with a camera. I think it makes you a better photographer when you love the tool you are using. I find Fujifilm very interesting, but I'm done with APS-C. My K20D can handle any APS-C shooting I want do, and the fuji medium format are in general more expensive and not suited to what I want to do from what I can see of them.

You know, I tried out the 77 limited and I actually don't care for it. I find it hunts for focus a lot, is loud, and slow as well as hunting. I was surprised by that because it is a much beloved lens. However, I honestly like my SDM 50MM 1.4 much better. It's smoother, stops down lower, doesn't hunt nearly as much, and I like the photos I get out of it better so far. I thought I got a bad copy of the 77 so I exchanged it and have found it to be the same. Now, I've only worked with it indoors so far, so I have to give it a fair shake outside in better light, but for my purposes I just love that 50mm 1.4

I really want to try the 85mm. That's the lens I lust for the most.

What body did you try the FA77 on? I use back-button AF with my K-1, focus and recompose, and this lens is solid for me. I calibrated it of course, and it needed a -4 adjustment (as did most of my primes), and now the accuracy is spot-on. With a stationary subject I sometimes use live-view with focus peaking, which is very accurate as well. With AF set to shutter release, I find that the K-1 tends to hunt a lot, so that might be the issue for you. Fortunately, I've always preferred back-button AF, so it works for me. YMMV.