For prime lenses, most of us want the fastest we can get. Well, Fujifilm have launched a 50mm that has a widest aperture of f/1.0, and it has autofocus.
I've written a lot recently on not using the widest aperture available to you, and so it's an odd time for me to discuss this. But the Fujifilm XF 50mm f/1.0 R WR lens is really rather impressive. That widest aperture means this lens will perform superbly in low light, offer stellar subject separation, and potentially some lovely bokeh.
As Seth Miranda of Adorama shows, it's a powerful lens. Its low light performance is indeed strong, as expected, and more surprisingly, the autofocus seems good. That said, we are likely to see firmware upgrades for the lens as time goes on, which means it can only get better. It's difficult to tell on a YouTube video just how sharp the lens is wide open, but initial impressions are good. One lesser appreciated perk of having a lens that can shoot at f/1.0 is that you'll likely get sharper images when at f/2.0 or higher, which is still wide enough to get some cinematic looking images with great bokeh. Interestingly though, the narrowest aperture of the lens is only f/16. That's unlikely to impact you, but it's worth noting if you use primes to drag the shutter at all.
At $1,499.95, the lens certainly isn't cheap, particularly for an APS-C mount, but that also means that this lens is shooting at an equivalent of 76mm on a 35mm, which at f/1.0, is very attractive indeed.
Will you be getting the new Fuji 50mm?
I’ve got the 50 f2 and don’t primarily shoot anything that would need this lens, still a remarkable optic nonetheless.
Cool stuff.
Fujifilm prime lenses some of the best; what there are of them. On my wish-list compact telephoto Fujifilm 150mm f4 or 200mm f5,6 to complement my Fujifilm 50mm f2 and 16mm f1,4. No chance.