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Archive 2017 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

molson
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p.2 #1 · p.2 #1 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

thrice wrote:
The native Fuji GF 20-35 vignettes as much as 4 stops in the corners with lens correction disabled. You should write to Fuji and advise them that their lens doesn't cover their sensor.

I assume you're meaning a hard vignette, but that is clearly not the spirit in which it is being described with these lenses. It would be a soft vignette.

I mean mechanical vignetting, not falloff. Mechanical vignetting means the lens image circle doesn't cover the sensor.

The cosine^4 falloff is not visible in images I've shot with the GF 20-35, even with lens corrections turned off. I guess you might see something if you're shooting a white wall with the lens wide open, but then that's true of pretty well any lens on the market.

May 26, 2023 at 08:14 PM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #2 · p.2 #2 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

Seems like there would be a lot of interest in something like a Fujifilm 200-400mm lens with f/5.6 or larger.

May 26, 2023 at 08:39 PM

Makten
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p.2 #3 · p.2 #3 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

molson wrote:
I mean mechanical vignetting, not falloff. Mechanical vignetting means the lens image circle doesn't cover the sensor.

The cosine^4 falloff is not visible in images I've shot with the GF 20-35, even with lens corrections turned off. I guess you might see something if you're shooting a white wall with the lens wide open, but then that's true of pretty well any lens on the market.

Mechanical vignetting does not necessarily mean hard vignetting. It simply means that something is obstructing part of the entrance or exit pupil, but as long as it doesn't fully cover it, there won't be hard vignetting.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vignetting#Mechanical_vignetting

The funny thing with mechanical vignetting is that it can get worse with stopping down, if the center of the pupil is blocked but not the border.

May 27, 2023 at 02:31 AM

Peter Figen
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p.2 #4 · p.2 #4 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

The Canon 500mm is very very sharp out to the edges on the GFX. There is a very small mount of mechanical vignetting in the corners that gets better both as you stop down and as you focus closer. I borrowed a v1 IS from a buddy for the last three months and then just bought a very clean 500mm v2 IS. The newer lens is a tiny bit sharper and has slightly less vignetting.

Many Canon lenses have a plastic baffle that easily pops out of the back the lens with a little bit of finger pressure. The 300mm f/4 has that and when you pop that out virtually all the vignetting disappears. The 300mm f/4 (non IS, and that is very important) autofocuses very fast with a Fringer adapter, is very sharp even wide open. The Canon 100-400mm v2 IS lens also responds very well to removing that black plastic baffle. The Canon 200mm 2.8L is an exceptional lens but shows no real improvement removing the rear baffle so I put it back in.

I have not figured out how to pop out the baffle on the 500mm but I have every expectation that that will solve the slight vignetting on that lens. The baffle does not want to pop out with the same sort of pressure that worked on the other three lenses. I found a parts list online for the lens and it lists that part as a separate part from the rear lens mount so maybe it just needs a little more persuasion to separate.

There are other telephoto lenses that work well too. The Contax 645 210mm is very good at closer distances but loses something at infinity. The Contax 645 350mm f/4 is very good but super rare and fairly pricey at around three grand. The Contax Mutar 1.4X is very affordable at $200 but it loses too much on the edges of the frame for me although I would be fine for smaller prints - maybe up to 16x20 or so. The Canon 500 far surpasses the Contax 350 + Mutar though.

Lots of choices out there and some of them involve some compromise to get what you want but at there are viable longer lenses out there that perform well.

May 27, 2023 at 03:00 AM

aae991
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p.2 #5 · p.2 #5 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

The Canon 400mm f4 DO MKII is excellent on the GFX 100S with minimal (if any) vignetting. I also second Peter’s thoughts on the Canon 100-400 mkII. My Canon 600mm f4 MKII is crazy sharp on the GFX, but shows vignetting. I have not been willing to try and remove the rear baffle on it since I use this lens extensively on my Canon R5 for BIF and other wildlife.

I use the excellent Fringer adapter.

May 27, 2023 at 09:04 AM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #6 · p.2 #6 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

Peter Figen wrote:
The Canon 100-400mm v2 IS lens also responds very well to removing that black plastic baffle.

That's an interesting observation. I have that lens, and it _might_ get me where I need to be before considering a GFX-based system. Aside from the mechanics of attaching the thing, how is it working for you on GFX? I assume that optical quality within the 23x36 frame is as we would expect, but outside of that?

Any experience using that lens with the Canon 1.4x TC? I put that TC on mine often enough that I'd like to be able to do that. (I use the 100-400 a lot, including for landscape photography, and the absence of a Fujifilm zoom in this range has been a deal-killer for me. Also, I do understand that 400mm (or 400mm+TC) gives a wider angle-of-view on miniMF, but I could live with that in a number of cases.)

Does it AF well with the Fringer adapter? I usually MF the long lens, but there are times when I might wan to AF.

Thanks,

Dan

May 27, 2023 at 09:21 AM

Frank Kearney
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p.2 #7 · p.2 #7 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

The Canon 400DO II is an extraordinary lens and works beautifully on my GFX100s. I recommend it wholeheartedly. It's spectacular. It's also compact and light.
I also use the Canon 100-400 II a lot, and it is also an excellent lens.

May 27, 2023 at 10:06 AM

thrice
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p.2 #8 · p.2 #8 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

molson wrote:
I mean mechanical vignetting, not falloff. Mechanical vignetting means the lens image circle doesn't cover the sensor.

The cosine^4 falloff is not visible in images I've shot with the GF 20-35, even with lens corrections turned off. I guess you might see something if you're shooting a white wall with the lens wide open, but then that's true of pretty well any lens on the market.

Ok, so not what people are describing when they say "some vignette". Unless someone is being deliberately obtuse I would expect them to say "hard vignette".

So, 4 stops falloff is not visible with lens corrections turned off

I wouldn't tolerate that, I'm shocked that you do. Obviously you can add 4 stops vignette for aesthetic reasons which can look good, but as a starting point? No thanks.

I resisted the urge to add the dramatic barrel distortion the 20-35mm has un-corrected at 20mm as I felt that was a little unfair.

May 28, 2023 at 08:11 PM

molson
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p.2 #9 · p.2 #9 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

thrice wrote:
Ok, so not what people are describing when they say "some vignette". Unless someone is being deliberately obtuse I would expect them to say "hard vignette".

So, 4 stops falloff is not visible with lens corrections turned off

I wouldn't tolerate that, I'm shocked that you do. Obviously you can add 4 stops vignette for aesthetic reasons which can look good, but as a starting point? No thanks.
https://i.ibb.co/XFywhks/23vs20-35-Vignette.jpg

I resisted the urge to add the dramatic barrel distortion the 20-35mm has un-corrected at 20mm as I felt that was a little unfair.

I guess I don't see it because I never add vignetting in post-processing. I'm not really sure it adds anything to your photo either, but I suppose everyone has different tastes.

May 28, 2023 at 11:16 PM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #10 · p.2 #10 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

gdanmitchell wrote:
That's an interesting observation. I have that lens, and it _might_ get me where I need to be before considering a GFX-based system. Aside from the mechanics of attaching the thing, how is it working for you on GFX? I assume that optical quality within the 23x36 frame is as we would expect, but outside of that?

Any experience using that lens with the Canon 1.4x TC? I put that TC on mine often enough that I'd like to be able to do that. (I use the 100-400 a lot, including for landscape photography, and the absence of a Fujifilm zoom...Show more →

So, no one can shed any light on this?

May 29, 2023 at 12:26 PM

Peter Figen
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p.2 #11 · p.2 #11 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

gdanmitchell wrote:
So, no one can shed any light on this?

I put a Canon 1.4X v2 on the Canon 300mm f/4 Non IS and it was horrible toward the edges and corners. A ton of light falloff and even more, so much barrel distortion it sort of looked like a 420mm fisheye. I was shooting the windmills at Palm Springs and I don't remember if I tried the converter on the zoom, but it was all before I pulled those baffles out.

May 29, 2023 at 01:53 PM

thrice
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p.2 #12 · p.2 #12 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

molson wrote:
I guess I don't see it because I never add vignetting in post-processing. I'm not really sure it adds anything to your photo either, but I suppose everyone has different tastes.

I feel like you misunderstand. Did you know that your camera auto-corrects the lens falloff and distortion unless you tell it not to?

May 30, 2023 at 04:12 AM

Makten
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p.2 #13 · p.2 #13 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

thrice wrote:
I feel like you misunderstand. Did you know that your camera auto-corrects the lens falloff and distortion unless you tell it not to?

It's not possible to tell the camera to not correct falloff and distortion. The raw converter OTOH...

May 30, 2023 at 05:08 AM

thrice
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p.2 #14 · p.2 #14 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

Makten wrote:
It's not possible to tell the camera to not correct falloff and distortion. The raw converter OTOH...

As usual you are correct. My mistake

Would explain why @molson has never noticed the huge vignetting in the 20-35. If one were to shoot aurora or night landscapes at higher ISO that lens would be much more difficult to get a usable result from than the 23mm.

May 30, 2023 at 06:47 AM

gdanmitchell
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p.2 #15 · p.2 #15 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

thrice wrote:
Would explain why... never noticed... vignetting in the 20-35. If one were to shoot aurora or night landscapes at higher ISO that lens would be much more difficult to get a usable result from than the 23mm.

That's an interesting comment for a few reasons, and they cut both ways.

If image optimization is applied automatically and one "never noticed" a problem with it — in other words, the result looked quite good — what is the downside of the image optimization? Imagine a hypothetical comparison between using a lens that minimized vignetting (to stick to one parameter) optically and one that achieved the same result using some kind of correction — e.g. attentive viewers would think that both looked equally good. What would be the argument for the traditional optical solution over the software approach?

On the other hand, I'm skeptical that the software optimization can actually produce the same result in all cases. One lens that I frequently use vignettes enough that it sometimes needs correction. I often use it in low light and very foggy situations for a particular kind of photography. When I let software compensate for the vignetting I sometimes see color shifts in areas of gray fog that are either monochromatic or have only very subtle gradients. Yet I hardly even see the issue excepting this particular situation, and I'm not sure that observers would notice it.

I'm honestly on the fence about this whole question, at least if we steer away from the extremes.

- - -

Also, I'm still interested to hear about (or be pointed to a discussion elsewhere) that looks more thoroughly at the performance o the Canon 100-400mm v.2 lens on the miniMF system. Ideally, assuming that the baffle does create some corner fall-off on the larger sensor, I'd love to know more details about its performance when Peter's removal suggestion is applied. I already have a very good idea of its performance across the 24x36 frame (including the vignetting that may occur even there), so I'm particularly interested in things like whether it manages to retain image sharpness all the way into the 33x44 frame corners and how vignetting/fall-off affects images using it.

Thanks.

May 30, 2023 at 08:28 AM

thrice
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p.2 #16 · p.2 #16 · Best Telephoto for Fuji GFX

Fujifilm's corrections are absolutely some of the best. I would imagine that if they're enabled on an image whose white balance and tone curve is drastically shifted in post you would see weirdness though. On Sony it's quite egregious.

I have no issue with distortion correction if the corrected image is very competitive in sharpness across the frame. Vignette correction only works well if you're not at the edge of you camera's capabilities. My earlier example of astro (especially aurora) is where falloff correction will ruin an image.

gdanmitchell wrote:
That's an interesting comment for a few reasons, and they cut both ways.

If image optimization is applied automatically and one "never noticed" a problem with it — in other words, the result looked quite good — what is the downside of the image optimization? Imagine a hypothetical comparison between using a lens that minimized vignetting (to stick to one parameter) optically and one that achieved the same result using some kind of correction — e.g. attentive viewers would think that both looked equally good. What would be the argument for the traditional optical solution over the software approach?

On the other...Show more →

Jun 02, 2023 at 10:21 PM

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