Five years later - Fujifilm XF 56mm f1.2 R review
Introduction
I don't exactly remember the date when I got the lens. I bought it second hand for £500 on Gumtree from a guy living across London sometime around 2015 or 2016. But the “Five years later“ title reminds me of Avengers Endgame and I think it’s close enough so I just went with it. Ever since I got the lens I've loved it to bits but it's not without its downsides. And after using it for so long I believe I do have some authority on what you can expect from it if and when you decide to acquire it.
Build
The build quality is definitely great. It has survived knocks, falls, and drops of all kinds and it’s still going strong. The entire body of the lens including the focus and aperture rings is made of metal and it feels premium in the hand. Not too light, but not too heavy either. The aperture ring clicks rather lightly but even then you can easily tell whether your aperture is on a full stop or on one of the thirds in-between as those have a softer click.
The thread on the front has a 62 milimetre thread for a filter which I’d say is absolutely necessary as the front element is pretty large. You’ll definitely want to minimise the chance of it getting damaged in any way.
Focus
Let’s talk focus. If you’re looking for speed this isn’t the lens for you. It’s a big chunk of glass and the motor is doing its best I’m sure, but in the end it is definitely one of the slower ones. I’ve used it on all three generations of the X-Pro cameras and even though the newer cameras did make it go faster each time I upgraded, I wouldn’t use it in continuous focus tracking a subject moving towards or away from me. Those are just misfocused shots waiting to happen.
Focusing manually doesn’t really help either as the lens utilises, like all Fuji X-Series lenses, a fly-by-wire system. That means you turning the focus control ring only tells the motors how far and fast to move but the motors just can’t move fast enough to make manual focus better than autofocus.
Don’t let that discourage you though. The focus is fast enough for most uses. I’ve used it plenty when I photographed weddings, protests and street photography, and I’ve used it to capture life on the frontline and the only times it has failed me was when I didn’t consider its limits. And I haven’t even talked about the image properties yet.
Image
Of course, most of us get this lens for the juicy f1.2 aperture and, to be honest, I rarely ever stop it down to anything less than that. The depth of field is razor thin. So thin, that you often have to keep it in mind when you’re framing your shot. The standard focus/recompose technique can easily shift your focus plane slightly off and you’d be left with a blurry image. But once you get used to the quirks you can get gorgeous results. Whatever does find a way into focus comes out looking crispier than a bowl of morning cereal before you add the milk. Unless you pour the milk in first in which case don’t ever come near me, you monster.
I was going to test out the chromatic abberation to make sure I’m not making stuff up but I managed to drop the lens a couple of times on hard dirt and even concrete so it is a little too rattly on the inside for my taste. But it does still perform rather well. But I don’t think it performs at the original 100% of what it could do when I first got it. I am getting a slight red shift at the edges when shooting something with a strong contrast. However, that was not the case before the drops.
Conclussion
Even after all these years the XF 56mm f1.2 R is still one of the best lenses the X system has to offer and worth at least trying out. The bright aperture just sucks light right in. It is my go-to lens for night street photography to a point where all I need is a single dim light source like a phone screen and I still get a decently lit image.
Pros:
Image quality
Depth of field
Bright aperture
Build quality
Size and weight
Cons:
Slow focus
Lack of weather resistance
Images taken using the lens:
