50mm f/1.0 Versus 56mm f/1.2: Which Fujifilm Lens Is Right for You?

Fujifilm has blessed its users with a couple of options when it comes to fast telephoto primes. This short video puts the 56mm f/1.2 alongside the more recently released 50mm f/1.0 to see how they compare when shooting portraits using natural light. Which one is the better choice?

Fujifilm originally intended their fastest prime to be a 35mm lens, but as their engineers and designers began work, they decided to make it a 50mm prime instead. The company’s fastest lens was released just under a year ago and was a welcome addition for Fujifilm photographers who enjoy shooting with a super shallow depth of field.

The 56mm f/1.2 is a stalwart and has been around for more than seven years and has been a longtime favorite of many photographers. At $999, it is two thirds the price of the 50mm f/1.0, and as Julia Trotti mentions, it’s significantly lighter — just 0.9 lb (405 g) compared to the 1.86 lb (845 g) of its heavier counterpart.

Both lenses clearly produce excellent results, and deciding between the two is a tricky prospect: price and weight over that extra bit of background separation. Which would be your choice? Let us know in the comments below.

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Andy Day is a British photographer and writer living in France. He began photographing parkour in 2003 and has been doing weird things in the city and elsewhere ever since. He's addicted to climbing and owns a fairly useless dog. He has an MA in Sociology & Photography which often makes him ponder what all of this really means.

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10 Comments

50mm f/1.0 vs 56mm f/1.2 ?

I would take the one between these two: the next to be released 53mm f/1.1
Oh wait, it’s a bit too short, I will wait for the 54.7mm f/1.13
Seriously… Will they cover every millimetres and tenths of millimetres in prime lens? And then every starting from millimetres to every up to millimetres zooms in all possible maximum aperture versions? While not individually tailored lenses for each photographer?
Oh, I forgot, I need a camera with a 31.4159265359 mp sensor…

Nowadays, of course, due to technology, you can have your Pi and eat it.

Dammit—I thought by subscribing to the "Fstoppers ORIGINALS" RSS feed, I would avoid seeing a bunch of these 'hey look at this cool photography related youtube video!" posts... I subscribe to DPReview, Petapixel, SLR Lounge, several of the brand 'rumors' sites, but Fstoppers posts by far the most junk everyday. C'mon!

From what I can see, their RSS feed is their normal Latest articles. It's not specific to a category (eg, Latest, Originals, News, etc).

Bookmark this: https://fstoppers.com/originals

Stay away from the root domain https://fstoppers.com/ unless you're looking for a reason to act like the sky is falling.

On closer inspection, despite subscribing to the 'Originals' feed, it just redirects to the root in my RSS reader. Lame.

Since when did we start calling portrait lenses "telephoto"?

85mm on 135 has long been referred to as telephoto.

50mm has been the “normal” lens in 135 but in reality 50mm is already a short tele, as the diagonal of the 24x36mm frame is only 43.2mm

I owned both. The AF on the 50mm F1 is lightyears ahead of the 56mm which made selling the latter an easy call. Considerably less chromatic abberation to deal with in post when shooting wide-open too.

That being said these are really fine details that probably won't make a difference to most unless they shoot video too, in which case the 50mm is the easy winner.

Hi all.
What is the device with antennas she has aside the camera?