Fujifilm GF500mm f/5.6 R LM OIS WR — Field Notes & Review

Loan provided by Fujifilm Belgium, coordinated via Photography Lounge

Photography Lounge, is a partnered Discord community that fosters open exchange among photographers from beginners to professionals, through peer critique, themed contests, and constructive discussion. Founded in 2020 and now totaling nearly 30,000 members. This was the server’s first official collaboration with a major camera brand, made possible thanks to an established dialogue with Fujifilm Belgium.

GFX 100 & Fujifilm Belgium's 500mm F5.6 (loaned to me hoodless, heightening stress)

Loan Context & Intent

This lens was loaned to me by Fujifilm Belgium for use during my summer 2025 trip to Norway. The arrangement came through Photography Lounge, a photography community Discord server I help run. This wasn’t a commercial or contractual review; it was a field test integrated into my long-term, contemplative Norway photography project — part of an ongoing book centered on landscape, infrastructure, and the rhythms of family life across seasons.

The goal wasn’t to test the GF500mm in isolation or to chase wildlife with it. Rather, it was to see how it could extend my photographic vocabulary — primarily in how I work with distance, atmosphere, and scale.

Initial Testing in Belgium

When I went to collect the lens from Fujifilm Belgium's headquarters, I first realized I had to reacquaint myself with the field of view of a super-telephoto. I’ve owned one in the past when I still used a full-frame system and loved working with that range, but it had been a few years. While I feel at ease with the reach, my inner eye needed some readjusting. I took the lens on local walks and short commutes to get a sense of handling again.

Even early on, the lens proved intuitive: I could isolate details, observe without intruding, and found it surprisingly capable in spontaneous event/documentary situations. Autofocus on the older GFX 100 (non-II) doesn’t quite match modern full-frame speed, but that was expected. More impressive was the weight and size which is nearly on par with the GF250mm, just slightly longer and thinner. That makes this lens vastly more portable than most would assume. For the same size and weight, the GF500mm offers twice the reach for only one stop of light lost. That’s a fair trade, and in most use cases I encountered, that particular downside was negligible.

Portraiture Field Test

Curious about its potential beyond expectations, I arranged a portrait shoot with a frequent collaborator who was kind enough to quickly make herself available for an impromptu portrait session. I’ve always liked long-lens portraits as they produce unfamiliar but compelling compression.

What stood out of course was the working distance. At 10–15 meters, communication is less immediate than with shorter telephotos, but in this case, that distance helped. The model quickly relaxed, almost forgetting I was taking pictures. That effect gave the session an unusual softness and calm. Obviously it’s not a lens I’d recommend for general portraiture. The GF250 or GF110 make more logistical sense, but it works, and its character shows. In practice, people tend to stay within conventional portrait ranges and use lenses like the 55mm f/1.7 for environmental portraiture and 80mm f/1.7, or the benchmark GF110 f/2 for most portrait use cases. The 500mm isn’t meant for this, but that’s why I tried it, to more than satisfactory results. This little test has actually reminded me that I should use my GF250mm F4 more often for portraiture.

Germany: Surface Coal Mines

En route to Norway, I stopped at one of the massive surface coal mining sites in Western Germany. Such locations I’d long wanted to photograph for their scale and surreal industrial presence. It felt curious being this excited about photographing something usually wrapped in understandable environmental controversy, but these machines speak to my inner worlds, somehow. It felt something like seeing harvesters from the Dune universe.

I arrived on location in the evening and shot handheld from golden hour into dusk, sometimes as slow as 1/30s, with fully usable results. IBIS + OIS combo worked flawlessly in ways that will never fail to surprise me.

I didn’t have much editing capabilities while the trip was ongoing, but the files looked excellent even on my aging laptop. Edge-to-edge sharpness, no rendering issues. The lens performed as you'd expect from GF glass: clean, detailed, simply the outstanding standard.

Use in Norway

Once in Norway, the GF500mm came into its own. I mostly paired it with the GFX 50R (leaving the GFX 100 for wider and midrange glass) since I didn’t need much more cropping power. I carried the GF250mm, GF500mm, GF110mm, and GF35-70mm — not an ultralight setup, but manageable.

I wasn’t doing multi-day hikes, so short 2–3 hour explorations with a full load were doable.

I typically had the GF250 and GF500 slung across me and the GFX 100 on another strap. Switching between them as needed, I definitely felt the weight but accepted it. The 500mm allowed me to compress space and pull out fragments from vast terrain. It gave me the ability to isolate textures and tiny silhouettes across great distances. On occasion, I’d mount it on the 102MP body to crop further — especially when I wasn’t walking much.

At times, even in wide-open Norwegian landscapes, the 500mm felt too tight. I used one of my favorite workarounds: handheld two-frame telephoto panoramas to widen the field slightly. I use this method with the 250mm often — even the 110mm when needed. It’s fast, and it suits my avoidance of tripods unless strictly necessary.

Atmospherics & Limitations

Here's a key real-world issue that has nothing to do with the lens quality: atmospherics. At 400mm–500mm full-frame equivalent, heat haze, humidity, and ground reflections become real constraints. Images can fail simply due to air quality, especially in summer light, over concrete, water, or open fields. This is an unavoidable physical limitation at these focal lengths. It means the GF500mm is, inherently, a niche lens — not only in field of view, but also in usable shooting conditions.

On Wildlife (or lack thereof)

I didn’t test it extensively for wildlife though I had hoped to catch a deer crossing the shoal behind my in-law’s house like I did a few years prior with the 250mm. I caught a few birds here and there, but Medium Format is a strange choice for most wildlife applications. The lens doesn’t feel suited to birding in general, and AF on the original GFX 100 is fine for static or slow subjects, but not for erratic movement. Big game? Definitely doable. But action-oriented photography remains, in my view, better suited to other systems.

Acquisition Thoughts

The GF500mm has landed firmly on my acquisition list. But pragmatically, I’ll likely prioritize the 20–35mm f/4 first. Field of view is precious at the wide end, so while I want the 500mm sooner rather than later, it may have to wait until the wide zoom is secured. I can always crop into the GF250mm’s image to approximate the 500mm field of view. That crop still leaves me with ~25MP on the GFX 100 which is more than enough for many purposes, and if I had the 1.4x TC, it would give me a 350mm field with an aperture of F5.6. Close enough to the 500mm for most needs (not to mention saved space and carry weight on my back).

Conclusion

The GF500mm f/5.6 is a lens of clear intent. It’s not for everyone, nor should it be. But it’s optically excellent, mechanically compact, and pushes the GFX system into territory digital medium format hadn’t entered until now: as of this writing, it remains the only modern 500mm lens made natively for digital medium format with autofocus, image stabilization, and a size that doesn’t compromise mobility. (Other systems rely on using much larger, aging optics from the film era).

For me, the GF 500mm offered a different angle on a landscape I’ve been photographing for a decade. It provided new tools for abstraction, compression, and distance. It didn’t replace anything in my bag, it simply made my range deeper. That’s exactly what I needed it to do.

After a few weeks of use, returning the GF500mm to Fujifilm Belgium marked the close of a valuable opportunity to secure the last images for my ongoing project — Glitrande Heim — while also doubling as a field test. I thank the Fujifilm Belgium team for their trust and the Photography Lounge community for facilitating this first collaborative step. Hopefully, not the last.