If you were an early subscriber to the 50R and a prime lens enthusiast, you had a limited selection of lenses. Consequently, your kit might look like the following.
How Might this Kit Have Been Created
The following train, though, might have resulted in this kit. Given your experience with the full-frame equivalent lenses, you may have avoided the 18mm. You likely would have acquired the 63mm as it was the only choice in this range; needing a good portrait lens, you would have compared the 110mm and the 120mm. Given that the 120 f4 is a macro and the 110mm f2 is a faster, more compact, and not a specialty lens, likely you would have selected the 110mm lens. Finally, at the time, there was a very cheap offer for the 50mm it was a very affordable way to acquire a pancake lens for street photography.
Now that the Lens Road Map has Changed
If you recently acquired a GFX 100 to replace your 50R, you might now be interested in the more extensive GF lens offering. Compared to what was available when the GFX series launched, now there are more ways to construct a prime lens kit.
Looking at the lens road map, the two lenses that might give you pause are the 55mm f1.7 and the 80mm f1.7. The question that comes to mind is whether reconfiguring the kit would be helpful. One way to answer that question might be to consider how you would create a kit if you had just bought your first GFX camera.
GF lens Compared to 35mm
GF lenses can be converted to 35 mm equivalencies by using the multiplier .79. In the case of the GF 63mm in the image below, by using the multiplier, you can see that it has the same field of view as a 50mm lens on a full-frame camera. Its light-gathering capacity, f2.8, gathers the same amount of light as an f2.2 lens on a full-frame camera. T
How Would a New Purchaser Construct a Kit
Here is how I would approach it: First, I would consider acquiring a lens in the 50mm equivalent range. There would be three choices: 63mm, 55mm, and 80mm. The 55 and 80 mm lenses let in twice the light compared to the 63mm. That would have narrowed the choice to either the 55 or 80. Given the increased interest in the 40mm equivalent lens, with claims that it is more versatile, I would have considered the 55mm lens first. I would then focus on the 80mm as the slight compress might also be helpful. This would then raise the question of a wide angle. If I were to consider the 45mm, it would concern me that it is too close to the field of view I would get from the 55mm lens. I would have settled on the 60mm as my first choice and the 45mm as my second choice.
Given some experience with the 23mm handle distortion, perhaps better than some full-frame lenses, I would have considered this lens instead of the 30mm 24mm equivalent. Then, I added the 110mm as the portrait lens, giving me the kit shown in the following chart.
At this point, I would look at the spread between the fields of view to see if it would create a problem. There is a 22mm shift between the two wide angles, but 35mm between 45mm and 80mm and 30mm between 80mm and 110mm. Here, the spread does look quite good. Given some compression with the 80mm lens, the next question I might ask is if I need the 110mm lens. So, if this were my initial lens purchase, I would not have purchased the 110 immediately and left that decision for later. In this case, my initial kit would look like the following:
A final thought would be the cash outlay, and if that was a consideration, I might start with two lenses. My preference would be just the 45mm and 80mm lenses.
Would you Change Your Older Kit?
If you constructed your prime kit early on, similar to the first image, would you consider any new lenses? Given that the 80 mm lens’s field of view is so close to that of the 63mm lens, it would be hard to justify that purchase. The spread between the field of view of the 30 and 45 would present a similar problem. So, a decision might be made on different grounds, perhaps a faster aperture or a preference for a specific field of view. In my case, I think the 80mm might be my first consideration, as it is a faster lens with some compression and easier to carry than the 110mm. I love the field of view the 45mm lens provides, and it is very close in size to the compact 63mm lens, so the decision would be difficult to make, but having the 50mm pancake lens in some ways is a better street lens size wise than the 45mm lens. Given that I already have the 30mm lens, I would not consider the slower, larger 23mm lens.
Lens Quality
At this point, a deeper dive needs to be done into the quality of all the lenses, how they resolve the GFX100 sensor, how well they are constructed, the focusing engines, etc. So, I will leave this for another post.
