- If you're a beginner in photography,
and you're looking at buying your first lens,
chances are you're looking at a 35 millimeter
or a 50 millimeter lens.
And there are so many different versions
of a 50 millimeter lens and that's personally
what my first lens was.
Now Fuji has made a brand new 50 mil and it is very special.
Let's take a look.
So we have a very nondescript box,
a box within a box.
Nice. It's kept the lens nice and safe.
Here we have Fuji Film's 50 mil F1.
Now F1. What does that mean?
Now if you know anything about lenses,
aperture is the setting which dictates
the amount the iris blades on the lens are opened or closed,
and most lenses bottom out at F1.4.
So Fuji has designed a lens that not only is F1,
but has fast, responsive auto-focus,
at least that's what they claim.
We're about to find out.
If it is as good as you think it might be on paper.
So in the box you got the lens itself. Wow.
You know, as a Fuji user, one of my favorite things
about their lenses is that they have always been quite small
because it's an APS-C size sensor
and most cameras these days are full frame.
You got Sony making the A7C.
You got and the A7s III.
And Panasonic coming out with the S1H and the S5.
Everyone's going full frame.
Fuji is sticking with APSC,
but this lens is obviously designed
for their XF APS-C size sensor cameras,
like the XT4, my personal XT4
and it is significant.
Like this feels closer to me to maybe an 85 mil stills lens
on a full frame camera.
Actually, can I get the scale, Andy?
And I wanna weigh this.
- [Andy] Sure.
(pleasant music)
1.77 pounds.
Now that might not sound like a lot,
but when you look at lenses, that is not insignificant.
Okay, just for comparison, let's take my XF 56 millimeter,
which is the lens I would typically use
when wanting to shoot in that focal range
of like 50 mil portrait look,
and let's weigh this.
.88 pounds.
This 15 mil is almost a full pound heavier
than my typical 56 millimeters and again,
that doesn't sound like a lot,
but when you think about it on like a hike
where every gram matters or you're traveling somewhere
and you wanna travel light, a pound will make a difference.
And just for giggles,
this is our 85 millimeter Sigma Cinema lens.
I am curious to see the weight difference.
(pleasant music)
Okay, so this lens weighs three pounds.
That's not even double, when you think about
the size and the application.
This is gonna go on a big, heavy film camera.
And this is a for a stills camera.
So yeah, this lens is not, it's not super heavy,
but it's not light by any stretch of the imagination.
Fuji's also said that they've weather sealed this lens
in 11 places, which is nice
because the 56 mil isn't actually weather sealed at all.
And this lens is one of the fastest lenses Fuji makes.
It's nice to see that upgrading the aperture
wasn't the only thing that they did with this focal length.
The wow, the
the focus ring on this lens is a lot smoother
than any other lens that I've ever used on a Fuji,
which is actually my biggest gripe with Fuji lenses
when it comes to video, is that the, all the focus rings
on all of them aren't so quite smooth enough
to do like precise focus pulls.
This feels like a step forward for them.
Whoa, Whoa, look at that front element.
And you can see how large the circle
on the aperture of this lens actually is.
And you have such a nice aperture ring,
'cause all of Fuji's lenses are going to have
this aperture ring that allows you
to manually control your aperture at any point.
And this one sounds good.
Listen to that.
(gears clicking)
It's just like really satisfying.
Very few lenses are able to say this. Enough talk.
I wanna put it on my camera and see how this does.
(upbeat music)
I will never get sick of the sound
of putting like a very fresh lens on a camera body.
This lens is loud.
(machine buzzing)
Like, do you guys hear that?
Can you hear that, Andy?
- [Andy] Yeah I can hear that pretty clearly.
- It is. It is a loud boy.
Which is, I mean for stills, for the most part, okay.
I mean, if you're at a wedding
and you're trying to be really quiet
and your lens is just like constantly.
- [Andy] Clutsy.
- Making this noise while you're refocusing,
that could be an issue.
You know, you're taking a photo of an animal
and you don't wanna scare them off.
The noise of this lens might just be loud enough
that it could scare something off.
Now the auto focus isn't the fastest that I've ever seen,
but there's a lot of glass elements
moving around in this thing.
I did wanna compare this 50 mil, F1 that Fuji made
to something that is also maybe the crowning achievement
that some might say of a 50 mil F1.
And that is this, Leica NOCTILUX 50 mil F1.
Now it's not an auto focus lens
because all of Leica's lenses are manual focus,
but it is a historically high pedigree lens.
Last I checked, this like a 50 mil is worth
between eight to 10 grand US used.
And that's if you can find a good copy of one
and I have to say
it is also very, wow, there is so much glass in here.
Okay, just really quickly.
We're gonna weigh this as well, 'cause
wow, 1.28.
So just for context again, half a pound almost.
Lighter than the Fuji,
but look at the size difference, guys.
That is not insignificant.
Why don't we see what it looks like
to test these lenses next to each other?
Okay so I'm going to test the Leica first
and then I'm gonna switch the Fuji.
And I have Chase here to take photos of.
Wow. This Leica is not that sharp wide open.
It is soft.
I am punching in all the way to see,
and it is soft.
Okay. Well that's really interesting.
It looks good despite it being soft,
but it is not a super sharp lens.
Okay. Fuji is going on.
F1.0, okay and let's see.
immediately the fact that it has auto focus
just gives me so much more confidence
in the accuracy of the photo.
(tractors buzzing)
So just to cover all our bases,
I'm gonna do a quick test shot on the 56 mil F 1.2.
It's not gonna be the exact same aperture, obviously,
but I do wanna see how they compare.
So right off the top,
this is the Leica 50 mil NOCTILUX frame.
(upbeat music)
And yup, as I expected, it is super soft.
Now this lens is 45 years old.
So I don't expect it to be super sharp
and like, it looks super creamy
in the bokeh out of focus areas.
It is definitely at F1.
And this might be a look that you like,
'cause it's sort of a nostalgic look, honestly.
This is without any editing.
This is straight out of camera.
No settings or changes have been applied.
Let's take a look at the Fuji.
Wow. Okay.
So punching into the Fuji, you can see
that it is immediately so much sharper,
especially in Chase's eyes.
It's not the sharpest lens that I've ever seen,
but considering it's at F1, it is pretty sharp.
The other interesting thing to me is the color difference
between the Leica and the 50 mil F1,
because you can see in the Leica that it is
much lower contrast by default and there's a significant,
more amount of vignetting to the point where you actually
see in Chase's black jacket, it looks darker,
but it is much less.
And it doesn't actually make the overall image feel darker.
Now between the 50 mil and the 56 mil, which is an F1.2,
not an F1 lens, the left is the 56 mil F1.2
and the right is the 50 mil F1.0.
Honestly,
(pleasant music)
the 50 mil F1.0 at 1.0, looks
slightly sharper just for our, again, our reference,
the 50 mil F1 is on the left and the Leica's on the right.
Very clear, the difference.
The Fuji is way sharper and the other cool thing is
the Leica, while an antique at this point,
and a very sought after rare lens,
that lens is eight to $10,000 USD.
The Canon version of the F1 lens is $5,000 ish USD.
This Fuji 50 mil F1 is $1,500 USD.
(machines grinding)
Come on. $1,500 USD.
So far cheaper, five times less expensive than the Leica.
I'll hand it to Fuji.
They delivered on an auto-focus F1 lens
that while it's bigger for a Fuji lens
is still usable and feels good in the hand.
So great job.
If you're in the market for 50 mil
and you want like crazy low light performance
and crazy shallow depth of field and you own a Fuji camera,
this is probably it for you.
You can see a clear difference between F1 and F1.2,
but a lot of you might argue that it's negligible
so that's up to you.
Yeah so compared to the 56,
if you don't want the extra weight
and you want the F1.0 aperture,
this is a great choice and a great addition
to Fuji's lens lineup.
So thank you guys for watching short circuit.
If you like camera things, especially Fuji content,
you might wanna watch my XT4 unboxing
that I did a couple of months ago,
if you haven't seen it already.
Thank you guys for watching.