Now that some of the Covid-19 lockdown restrictions have been eased here in the UK, we were able to see the grandchildren in the local park for a few hours. After seven weeks of isolation, it was great to see them again! So I took the GFX and GF110mm lens with me to record some of their antics once we all met up again.
My last post here reported on my use of the Fujifilm GF110 for some bird photography. With a close focus distance of just under 3 feet, I couldn't get up really close to the birds I was photographing with the GF110mm. So the images you see on that post were quite severely cropped. With the larger sensor of the GFX and the excellent quality of the lens, I could get away with the crop whilst still maintaining image quality.
The GF110 is of course primarily marketed as a perfect portrait lens. However, I knew I would not have the opportunity to take any formal portraits of these very lively subjects. My plan was for more informal captures of the morning as the children played. I knew this would be more of a challenge than when I had used this lens for a studio shoot, There everything could be controlled and the model was adopting static poses for the camera.
For this session, I decided to shoot with the lens wide open at F2 wherever possible taking advantage of the wonderful shallow depth of field that this lens offers. The focus was therefore very critical and obviously much easier when the kids were stationery.
The lens is fairly hefty although it didn't seem much bigger than the 32-64mm that I had used to photograph the children nearly a year ago. The lens was a joy to use and my hit rate wasn't too bad considering the challenges I had set myself. The flip screen on the GFX50R proved ideal for getting the low angle shots. I did find myself using the screen quite a lot making use of face detection whenever I could. For more formal portraits I think that will be a great way to work as it allows the photographer to keep eye contact with the subject rather than disappearing behind the viewfinder and losing contact with the model for every exposure.
I used the lens without the lens hood as it makes the lens look massive and the lighting wasn't too bright. Even with the aperture fully open this lens is still very sharp. The lens is out resolving the 50MB sensor in the 50R as the same lenses can be used on 100MB Fuji's. The bokeh is very impressive and reminds me of the 56mm and 90mm lenses that I used to use on the X system cameras. However, the larger sensor gives a whole different look. The autofocus was reasonably fast but of course, the depth of field leaves little room for error at the wide apertures. F2 on this camera is equivalent to an aperture of F1.6 on a 35mm full-frame camera. I hope to get the chance to use the lens for more traditional portraits in due course when restrictions are lifted further.
