A quick comparison between two products designed mostly to perform the same function. In case you're not familiar with an L-bracket, it's function is purely to allow rotation of your camera by 90 degrees while keeping it balanced on the X axis of your tripod. This is especially important for panoramas so the camera yaws directly over the center point rather than circumnavigating it, which alters the perspective enough to make stitching the result more difficult or even impossible.
I Want to Be An Advocate, Not An Influencer
While I often strayed away from repeatable testing to include a healthy amount of subjectivity, I'm now embracing my biases and forgoing all pretense of being "unbiased," and here's why: I have my skin, aka wallet, in the game. Unlike others who are receiving review units, renting, being gifted items to review or receiving some form of compensation, I'm reviewing stuff that I've actually bought. These are things I've intensely researched, bought, used, and intend to keep. Sometimes I buy purely out of objective needs, like my ND filters. Other times, I'm driven by subjective factors, like my choice to use Fujifilm bodies and lenses. Either way, my purchases are made based on a conclusion I've formed from equal parts objectivity and bias. I am biased. My reviews are biased. I'm not justifying my purchases to anyone but I simply cannot claim to be unbiased when reviewing my own gear. The goal of my reviews are to identify potential pitfalls to avoid the expense of experimentation. It's not my goal to tell you what to buy; my desire is to expose aspects of an item only an owner would notice. There can be things that you're blind to upon purchase, features and issues that can make or break it for you, and this jeopardy goes up exponentially as the price increases, especially if bought used. This is my choice to be an advocate and to avoid being an "influencer."
How to: Power your GFX 50S or 50R with AC, DC or a Power Bank, aka External Battery Pack
As you may know, Fujifilm offers an AC adapter for the GFX series and it's priced at a whopping $97. However, there's another option for AC wall charging as long as you know the power specs. A more versatile option is a power bank with pass through charging. You can power the GFX with the battery pack in the field while simultaneously charging the installed battery. When you’re near an outlet, you can also connect the power bank to AC power and continuously power the camera without depleting the power bank itself. By functioning as an AC wall adapter you won't need to buy a wall adapter specifically for the GFX while having all the benefits of a portable battery pack.
Adapting GFX: Sigma 35mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art
Where the Sigma 85/1.4 is a home run, the 35/1.4 is a bit of a mixed bag. For most people, it should be fine. For some, like me, it's borderline acceptable. For those few, it will be unacceptable. In 35mm crop mode, it works just fine, but for any other mode, it will require a bit of cropping and correction. At wide open, there is a bit more smearing in the extreme corners that sharpen up by ƒ/4 to 5.6.
Adapting GFX: Sigma 85mm ƒ/1.4 DG Art
The Sigma 85mm seems to cover all of the imaging sensor with no hard vignetting. Fitment of a Wine Country Cameras 100mm filter holder does cause some very light vignetting at the extremes but is easily correctable. Image quality at the extreme corners and edges is a bit compromised at wide open but shapes up when stopped down to ƒ/4.
Adapting GFX: Test Shots vs Real World and Lessons Learned
Despite white wall tests of the Canon EF 28mm and 135mm lenses showing acceptable levels of vignetting, my first real world use of them ended in failure.
Adapting GFX: a Quick Note on the Canon EF 135/2L and Some Brain Droppings on the 85/1.8 USM
Eye-AF works pretty well with this combination. Focus is slow, but it's able to find and lock onto an eye. Because of my experience with the X-T3, sometimes my expectations can be a bit skewed; face and eye detect on the 2018 X-T3 is quite good, especially on distant (small) faces as Fujifilm has improved by leaps and bounds in this area. How quickly I forget the GFX 50S is over a year and a half older, with an imaging processor based on the X-Processor 3 design in the X-T2 and not the current X-Processor 4. Combined with other hardware limitations, plus the fact that the latest firmware update was over a year ago, eye AF on the GFX 50S (or 50R, for that matter) cannot be expected to perform anywhere near that of my X-T3.
Revisiting the ARCA-Swiss p0 Ball Head After 6 Months
Since buying this head, I've quickly learned to love it, especially after buying the necessary hardware that allows me to invert it as needed. The smooth design, reliability and light weight has helped it find a permanent home atop my Gitzo GT1542 Mountaineer tripod, supplanting the GH1382QD ball head that came with it.
Adapting GFX: Canon EF 135mm ƒ/2L USM
There are some drawbacks though. Uncannily enough, they’re the same as with the Canon EF 28mm ƒ/1.8 USM: slight vignette with a hard vignette at infinity focus. At ƒ/8, it isn’t very prevalent as you’ll see in the samples, easily corrected with a 5:4 crop that retains 48MP. However, as the aperture gets smaller, the vignette hardens, as you can see at ƒ/32, but still works at a 5:4 crop ratio. The lens works fine with a 3:2 crop at full sensor width and in 35mm crop mode, so you can choose what works best for you. Weirdly, the lens changes focus as you move in and out of playback mode on the GFX...
Adapting GFX: Canon EF 28mm ƒ/1.8 USM
Widening out to an approximate 22mm in 35mm format terms, the Canon EF 28mm ƒ/1.8 USM does show some hard vignetting that is never fully resolved. It’s very, very slight and occurs at ƒ/4 and smaller at infinity focus. Vignetting is prevalent fully open, mostly disappearing by ƒ/4 at close focus distances. If the vignetting is a problem for you, the EF 28mm ƒ/2.8 IS might be a better bet but isn’t on Canon’s list of preferred lenses for the 5DSR, so it may or may not resolve well on a 50MP sensor.
Adapting GFX: Sigma Doesn’t Seem to Be the Answer
After spending a few weeks with the Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art, I've come to realize maybe Sigma lenses aren't the solution for me. At least the 50mm has a very short focus throw, making manual focus a tedious process, even with focus aids like focus peaking and focus zoom. Autofocus is just too unreliable and slow to depend on for all occasions, making manual focus capability a priority.
Adapting GFX: Sigma 50mm Art Addendum
One thing I quickly discovered is the intrusion of the lens hood when adapting 35mm lenses onto the medium format GFX. Since the 50mm Sigma casts an image circle closer to 40mm, it's going to pick up more of what's on the periphery of the field of view; in this case it's the lens hood.... Continue Reading →
Adapting GFX: Contributing Data
If you'd like to contribute your findings, please include lens specifics (brand, focal length, maximum aperture, lens version, firmware version, and if it's weather sealed or stabilized), adapter used, and camera used. Full sensor sample shots without the lens hood (JPEG, 2000x1500 pixel minimum) needs to be of a white or gray background at the widest aperture at both minimum and infinity focus, repeating this at ƒ/8 and at minimum aperture, be it ƒ/22 or ƒ/32.
Adapting GFX: Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art
This is the first in a series of posts on individual lenses adapted to the Fujifilm GFX 50S with the TechArt Pro EF-GFX adapter. Fujifilm GFX 50S, firmware v3.30 (latest) TechArt Pro EF-GFX, firmware v1.01 (latest) Sigma 50mm ƒ/1.4 Art, firmware v2.02 (latest) Summary: Full compatibility: Autofocus, EXIF OK. This lens shows a correctable vignette throughout the aperture range but is heavily affected by focus breathing. As the aperture shrinks, focus toward infinity causes the vignette to become harder and more pronounced. Despite this, it is easily cropped and corrected while maintaining 45mp or more.
Adapting GFX: The Introduction of 35mm “Full Frame” Lenses on the GFX
As I have alluded to in a burst of recent posts, I am planning to generate a small database of lenses for use on the Fujifilm GFX series. Here's my chance for an introduction to give my rationale and to lay the foundation of this endeavor. I'd like to break this down into three "Y's." Let's begin with a personal "why": I'm choosing to use Sigma lenses to obtain focal lengths and apertures not currently offered in the GF lens lineup. Fujifilm's lineup is sparse at best, and apertures wider than ƒ/2 aren't represented. It's not that I'm a bokeh whore; it's that I need more light gathering for astrophotography and Fujifilm's widest lens, a 23mm, has a maximum aperture of ƒ/4 and that's just not going to work without a star tracker due to the sensor's 51MP resolution. I'm hoping to print a few of these so what counts for "sharp" on the web doesn't work at 20" print sizes. Other benefits: 35mm lenses are much cheaper, especially used prices, and these lenses mostly have direct focusing units unlike the "fly by wire" systems used on Fujifilm lenses. The GFX system just isn't mature enough to have grown both a complete lens lineup or a diverse used lens market.
You must be logged in to post a comment.