FUJIFILM FUJINON GF 500mm f/5.6 R LM OIS WR Lens

Lens was very much worth the wait! It's fast, lighter than expected in weight, and the glass is absolutely perfect. Fuji knocked it out of the park with this 500mm lens! Using it on a GFX100S body.

I've only taken a few test shots, but right out of the box I was surprised at how lightweight this lens is.

Longtime pro shooter here. I've been working in Medium Format for the last ten years. Last year switched from Pentax 645z system to Fuji. I shot the Pentax 400mm f5.6 for a long lens, which comes in at about a 315mm FF equivalent. This new FujiFilm lens is a fully modern prime telephoto that comes in at about 400mm FF equivalent. It is lighter and smaller than the Pentax 400, focuses quicker, is sharper, and has in-lens stabilization that works great with the GFX IBIS. You can also add the teleconverter to get more reach.In practice these things make this lens very useable handheld, where the Pentax was not. The AF through this lens is very good, and along with the lens and body stabilization combined extends medium format use cases way beyond where they used to be. I'd say the first thing you notice if you've carried long lenses before on either MF or FF systems is that this combo (GFX 100sii and this lens) is light. Surprisingly so. They have balanced the weight so that the center of gravity is really more toward the camera body than the end of the lens. It's even lighter than my old canon body and 70-200mm with 2x teleconverter. I used to use the Pentax long lens for long landscapes, but it was really hard to get shots of anything that was moving. With no stabilization, and the weight of the system, it needed to be locked down on a tripod. It just wasn't feasible to shoot a lot of things in the field with the Pentax system with a long lens. I'd always end up renting a Canon body and one of the excellent Canon telephoto primes. But that's heavy, and definitely needed a monopod or tripod. I'd say this combo is perfect for those who want to gain extra reach and keep using MF. With that said, MF systems still have some limitations compared to the top end Sony FF systems, and real sports or wildlife shooters may want to stick with those. Personally, this lens and system combo is great for me. If I got another gig shooting F1 or MotoGP I'd take this, but I would also rent a Sony with a Sony Teleprime as a backup until I was satisfied I could get the results I want. Just a note, it's interesting to see the MF 3D look along with the compression of a teleprime. I'm still learning the lens's strong and weak points. I don't see any distortion in this lens at all. I don't see any falloff of sharpness toward the edges. And surprisingly, it's just as sharp at 5.6 as it is at smaller apertures.