FujiFilm GF 500mm f5.6 R LM OIS WR, A Short Review

A few weeks ago, FujiFilm Canada was kind enough to lend me a copy of the recently released GF 500mm f5.6 R LM OIS WR, the longest telephoto lens for digital medium format cameras in existence! I was able to play with it for a weekend, but unfortunately due to prior commitments, I was only able to use for a day.  I paired the 500mm with our rental FujiFilm GFX 100 II body, and off I went to a couple of local birding spots!  It was a hot day, and there wasn’t much activity at the pond, but I did spot a curious Cooper’s Hawk checking me out!  The first image is the full frame, uncropped image, and the second is cropped to 100%.  The 100MP files offer the ability to do some major cropping without losing any detail at all!

Later in the day as I was going home, the sky was a beautiful orange, and I noticed the rides at Playland were silhouetted against it. I quickly looked for a good angle to photograph the roller coaster against the sky.  Luckily, the Atmosfear rotating swing ride was awesomely backlit too!  The FujiFilm 500mm f5.6 lens was a perfect focal length to capture both rides against the bright orange sky.

Paired with the FujiFilm GFX100 II body, I found the lens was relatively quick to focus, and held its own while tracking objects. The AF system of the GFX100II is much, much better than the GFX bodies that came before it, but still has a way to go to match the best 35mm based camera systems.  The lens is very, very sharp, and provides a field of view roughly equivalent to400mm on a 35mm full frame camera and is also very light.  Hand holding the lens all day was not an issue.  All in all, it was a joy to shoot with this lightweight combo.

The Beau Photo Rental Department has the FujiFilm GFX100 II Body available for rent @ $365/Day or Weekend.  We currently do not have the GF 500mm f5.6 lens available for rent yet, but you can see more info about this lens here: https://fujifilm-x.com/en-ca/products/lenses/gf500mmf56-r-lm-ois-wr/