YN50mm F1.8X DA DSM Pro – A Good Start

Yongnuo has been in the photographic industry for over 10 years and they are no stranger to making autofocus lenses. In fact, for 50mm focal length per se, they have about 10 different 50mm lenses for different mounts up in their online store and this Yongnuo 50mm f1.8 DA DSM Pro is the first for Fujifilm X-mount.

Intro

The first time I learned about this lens was on a rumor website in May 2023. My thought is that this might be a direct competitor to the XF50mm f2.

And today, it’s right in my hand and let me give you my opinion after a short 2 weeks of day-to-day hands-on with the lens.

Special thanks to the nice people at Yongnuo for sending me this lens. Without their support, this blog will not be here.

Design and Build Quality

When I first unbox the package, the prominent OLED screen appears in front of my very eyes. This less than 2cm screen (in diagonal) reminds me of some of the Nikon Z-mount lenses. Obviously, it is meant to show some information.

Picking up the lens the first impression that this lens gives me is a very clean and simple design. From the lens appearance, it lacks the physical aperture ring. So here is the interesting part. There is a function switch 1 and 2. Toggling to switch 1 gives you the capability to change the aperture while the other gives you focus ring control. Oh yes, the ring itself is very smooth. More about this later.

The metal-constructed lens (or so it seems) weighs about 378 grams. The rear mount is metal too. I can feel the weight when I hold it on my hand but it’s not as heavy as the number stated. Overall, I feel it has a very solid built quality.

The filter size is 58mm which is very decent and small. Also, it comes with a lens hood.

Image Quality

At wide-open, the shots are phenomenal or I should say it exceeds my expectations. The contrast and sharpness are pretty decent and I am not able to spot any softness in the photos. Vignetting and chromatic aberration are well-controlled too.

At f1.8, it does not give a strong/heavy background blur like the one with f1.2 or f1.4 but good enough separation between the subject and the off-focused foreground/background. The blur result does not look very busy or harsh, which is comfortable in my opinion.

The sun star gives a good soft star shape to the photo. If you are aware, there is a lens flare introduced as well. For photographers who do not like lens flare, please do note. Also, I have the lens hood mounted but somehow there is still a lens flare, it could be my handling problem.

Focusing

Thanks to the digital stepping motor, the focusing performance is fast but not as snappy as the new generation Fuji lenses (for example: XF23mm f1.4 WR and XF56mm f1.2 WR).

I have no complaints about the fast focusing performance, however, I do encounter some off-focused results when the focus box is green. Luckily, when I experience this issue, the off-focused preview is quite obvious. This happens when I aim at darker environments like under shadow or in a dim environment. The good thing is it happens rarely in my course of testing.

Minimum Focus Distance (MFD)

Although it is not as close as what XF50mm f2 offers (39cm), MFD at 45cm is still pretty decent. It still provides a good close-up result of the subject without losing details.

Price Point

It is priced at 265 USD on the Yongnuo official site. As compared to XF50mm f2 (449 USD), I have to say it is a sweet price point and very competitive pricing among third-party manufacturers.

Yongnuo 50mm f1.8 does not have any direct competition of the same focal length and aperture value. But somewhat close will be Viltrox 56mm f1.4 (329 USD) and Sigma 56mm f1.4 (429 USD). Of course, I am comparing based on brand new units and not comparing with second-hand/pre-owned lenses of the above-mentioned lenses.

Others

There is a USB-C port on the lens for future firmware updates and it is positioned exposing on the outside of the lens, unlike other manufacturers that locate the USB-C port at the rear mount. It comes with a rubber to seal the port but I am afraid it could be potentially missing someday and leave the port exposed by accident.

For a note: the terms DA and DSM are “Digital APS-C” and “Digital Stepping Motor”.

Feedback

Although this is a pro lens from Yongnuo, there is no weather resistance found in this lens. I think this can be a good improvement for their next-generation pro lenses.

This lens comes with a unique aperture ring and focus ring combination. Somehow this might be a problem here. After I set my aperture value and leave the function switch as “1”, there is a possibility that I might accidentally change the aperture value again without knowing. This does happen to me even if the lens comes with an independent aperture ring. So in order to prevent such a thing from happening, I will have to remember to toggle the function switch to “2”.

Following this, the screen only provides an aperture value. I hope to see more likable to see the focal range I am at when I am toggled to function switch 2.

I also noticed that I am unable to control the aperture value via the camera front control dial. I think this will be nice if the Yongnuo engineers can help to implement this. I also think that this would be nice if the photographers had the option to choose their preferred way of controlling the aperture value.

Lastly, the manual focus throw is long. It takes me quite a long while to focus from minimum distance to infinity. No matter how slow or fast I rotate the focus ring, the momentum is constant. As this is a digital focus throw, I hope that Yongnuo will improve on the manual focus throw to be dependent or react to how fast or slow I am focusing. Having said that, this is not the top priority.

Who is this for?

In my opinion, this lens is great for photographers who want a small lens that covers mainly the portrait genre. Of course, this lens is also capable of covering landscape, street, product, and documentary photography.

Conclusion

The way I see it, this lens is all out to directly compete with the XF50mm f2. I think it’s a good competition. This not only gives Fujifilm a second thought about refreshing its F2 lens lineup, but it also gives photographers more options to pick. As much as I give a number of feedbacks, I do feel this is a very solid lens in terms of optical quality, performance, built quality, and of course, attractive price point.

As I stated in my title, Yongnuo has a good start with launching this lens. I hope the future lenses coming out from Yongnuo will be even better or at least should maintain this benchmark.

Thank you for reading.

Disclaimer:
1. All the shots taken here are shot by me.
2. Most of the shots are straight out of the camera with some shots edited via In-Camera Raw Processing.
3. The opinions are based on my experience. If there is any mistake, please kindly drop me a message and I will gladly make the amendment.
4. I reserve ownership of these images, if you wish to use my images, please notify me.

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