FUJINON GF120MM F4 MACRO R LM OIS WR

This powerful medium-format lens is ideally suited to extreme close-ups

- Matthew Richards

1 The lens uses a fairly modest 72mm filter attachment thread.

2 The aperture ring operates in one-third f/stop click steps.

3 This switch limits the distance across which autofocus operates.

www.fujifilm.​com £2,499/$2,699

The Fujifilm GF120mm is tailor-made for macro photography. The effective focal length of 95mm (less than the true focal length because this lens is paired with Fujifilm’s medium-format GFX cameras) is ideal for extreme close-ups of anything and everything, from bugs and insects to wristwatches and the other interestingly detailed paraphernalia of everyday life. The minimum focus distance for achieving maximum magnification is 0.45m (as measured from the image sensor in the host camera), and enables a comfortable working distance.

Yet this lens is no one-trick pony. With fast autofocus and five-stop optical image stabilisation, it works well for portraiture and any other shooting scenarios that require a short telephoto focal length.

Build and handling

My initial reaction to this lens was one of disappointment. Dedicated macro lenses I’ve used on full-frame and crop-sensor cameras usually offer full 1x maximum magnification and sometimes more. As such, they reproduce small objects at life-size on the camera’s image sensor. When you can fill the whole image frame with something that’s little more than the size of a postage stamp, the potential for enlargement on screen or in print is incredible.