Purchase a GFX50SII body or GFX50SII body with lens kit, with up to three eligible Fujinon GF lenses and save up to $1,800. To submit your claim click here.
55mm F5.6 Medium format lens, perfect for portrait, architecture, night view and Landscape photography.
Charming and unique pentagonal starburst: the AstrHori 55mm F5.6 will present a pentagonal starburst effect at the aperture of F8, especially when shooting night scenes or portraits at night, it can creat amazing ambience.
350g, Compact, lightweight and portable: good-looking on the camera, does not increase the burden on your journey.
Precise focus ring operation: the focus ring is evenly damaged for more precise and smooth operation, and there there is a special stepped design between the focus ring and the aperture ring to avoid accidentally touching other parts during operatoin.
Medium format 55mm F5.6 for Fuji GFX, GFX 50S, GFX 50SII, GFX 50R, GFX 100, GFX 100S, GFX 100 IR Ver.
image credit – Dave Etchells at imaging-resource.com
Dave Etchells from Imaging Resource met five Japanese Fujifilm managers: Yujiro Igarashi, Makoto Oishi, Jun Watanabe, Kuniko Åo and Shu Amano.
And when 5 managers are needed to answer the questions of 1 single person, you know it’s going to be a very in depth and technical talk.
In fact, it ends up in a 8,000 words interview that I have summed up down below in 1,470 words.
Some notes and considerations ahead of it:
Fujifilm says they are working on updating the camera remote App, especially to make it work better with older cameras. They did NOT say they are working on an all new App. But FujiRumors has already shared a rumor that there will be an all new App!
Fujifilm aimed to make the GFX system smaller, and the GFX50R served that purpose. Now the GFX100S is perceived as small enough, and so they see “less need for something even more compact“. But they also add “we always look at the market to see if there’s a need to introduce something“. My impression based on this interview is that they currently have no plans for a GFX100R, but they don’t entirely want to rule out this possibility. And in fact, given how well the GFX100S is selling, Fujifilm has no hurry at all to take decisions right now.
These are just two personal notes on what you’ll read below. But there is really a lot more interesting stuff… like how Fujifilm did work to train the new AF and much more.
Interesting to note that despite being an f/4 lens, the unmarked point on the aperture actually indicates an f/2.8 maximum aperture. I don’t know the reason why it’s not marked f/2.8.
Excellent Optical Structure: The lens structure is 11 elements in 8 groups, which can satisfy the 100 million pixel body, and can cover 33*44 sensors, with excellent center image quality.
Unique Aperture Design: The aperture range is F4-16, and there is an unmarked reserved yellow point F2.8 large aperture,which can be adjusted by yourself to create more shooting possibilities. It not only has high optical quality and good depth of field control, but also has a certain blurring ability, which can better highlight the subject.
Excellent in-focus High Resolution Performance: This lens with 9 aperture blades and good build quality,and its minimum focusing distance is 0.82m,which provides sharp images at 0.82m and infinity with a natural center-to-edge transition.And this lens has an optical and two high-refractive glass quality,and ED lenses suppress chromatic dispersion for a high level of image clarity across the entire frame.
Exquisite Workmanship and Compact: It has a special appearance design,the details such as paint filling process, yellow paint characters, focus ring hob pattern, etc. make the lens look exquisite, the overall coordination with the Fuji GFX body and the focusing process also more comfortable.
High Quality Manual Lens: Its size is about Φ75mm*L76mm, the filter size is 67mm, and the weight is about 634.5g. It is very suitable for portrait street shooting, and compatible with FUJIFILM GFX50SII, GFX100, GFX100 IR ver,GFX50S, GFX50R, GFX100S,etc. Note:Due to the special design, the lens hood must be installed before the filter is installed, and an additional lens hood is shipped with each lens (Not in the same package as the lens & No additional order is required).
2022 has been an X series year so far, and therefore we haven’t covered the GFX system as much as for example last year, when the stellar Fujifilm GFX100S and the affordable Fujifilm GFX50SII hit the market.
And let me say this: Fujifilm has no hurry at all to release new GFX cameras, as the Fujifilm GFX100S is a crazy seller, which is still more often out of stock rather than in stock.
So time for FujiRumors to remind us all that there is also the GFX system out there thanks to a dedicated roundup.
Personally I’ve switched to updating via camera remote App. The reason is simple: it’s much faster, easier and convenient than updating via SD-Card.
So I definitely recommend to give it a try.
But how does it work?
Well, Fujifilm has given precise instruction on how to do it, but there is one thing that should be mentioned in addition to Fuji’s instruction to avoid updating via App becomes a frustrating experience.
Don’t make the error to connect your phone to the camera the same way you do it when you want to transfer images from your camera to your phone (hence connect via Wifi and fiddle around with the App and Camera to establish a connection).
Nothing of all that is needed.
You can simply leave your camera in live view. Just make sure that it has Bluetooth enabled. Everything will happen automatically and needs just few clicks once you have downloaded the firmware file on your phone.
So the process looks like this:
make sure Bluetooth is enabled on your camera and on your smartphone
download the firmware for your camera on your smartphone
once downloaded, click “update” on your phone first and then “OK” on your camera
you camera will ask you to connect via WiFi to your phone. Click “Connect” on your phone [in my video below you read “verbinden”, which is the German word for “connect”]
once connected via Wifi, your phone will start to transfer the firmware file to your camera
as soon as your camera has received the full file, it will automatically start with the firmware update [you don’t need your phone anymore once the firmware upgrade started on your camera]
switch off the camera when the camera tells you to do so
It’s very easy, and for your convenience I have made a short video that shows the process down below.
Many are afraid that there could be issues due to network instability or what not. But don’t worry about that. You only need Wifi connection to quickly transfer the firmware file from your phone to the camera. The firmware update itself is performed by your camera independently only once it has received and saved the full firmware file from your smartphone to its own memory. So don’t be afraid of losing connection with the phone during the firmware update itself. Your camera is doing its stuff by its own at that point and the smartphone is not needed anymore.
Remember:
use a fully charged battery on your camera
updates are cumulative, so no matter what firmware update you currently have on your camera, you can right away update to the latest version (hence skip intermediate firmware updates)
Fujifilm USA is launching a free “try before you buy” program for the Fujifilm GFX50SII.
The retailers that participate are listed below after the list of latest X and GFX deals.
GFX Gear
Buy within April 3 and submit your claim by May 3. BHphoto has all the instruction on how to submit your claim next to each item in offer: just click “rebate available” and then “view details“.
