My morning walk from the train depot in Högdalen after finishing my job there at 06.00 - going home through the open forest - together with the Fujinon GF 500 lens, was such a pleasure.

Again, I am amazed by the details that get chiseled out from this lens. Plus the advantage of framing just a little section of nature and reality - suddenly coming to life in a way, i normally don't see.

The above photo a little bit of a favorite; I love the magic of the forest the way it presented itself like that. Dead and living branches from pine trees.

Along the walk, a hare, as well a Blackbird (Swe: koltrast / Ger: Amsel) came along - both of which I was able to capture, as well. Down to the finest hair... It is simply incredible to zoom into the details - seeing so many of them. I am blown away.

The AF is a bit wacky...

Especially when i enabled Animal AI, it wasn't successful at all really while still in AF-S (single shot AF), but it went a lot better with C-AF (continues AF) and (later) Bird AI enabled. Even there, the Fujifilm GFX system simply can't hold up to the top models among fullframe cameras.

I get a feeling of that Bird AI works better than Animal AI... but i would have to test to a lot more, in order to say exactly.

Super happy !

Nevertheless - I am super happy about that AF even works, as well continued AF as well the various Bird/animnal/Eye/Train etc AI models. (Since AF-C practically doesn't work at all in the Fujifilm GFX 50s II camera, due to the old sensor architecture only having contrast based AF).

I work slow (with medium format photography)

As I say many times - working with a mediumformat camera - is for me, and always has been - a much slower workflow (in the past doing focus and light measuring all manually). With that perspective The Fujifilm GFX 100 second generation series, are a blessing in terms of speed. Being able to work with such sharp lenses, plus the enormous resolution of 102 MP... and (relatively) fast AF from the perspective of a mediumformat camera, I mean.

With all that in mind, everything is actually FAST compared to anything that existed in mediumformat earlier, both analog as well digital.

In a way, I still can't believe, that I am working with the GFX 100s II + 500 mm lens combo. It is for me, a dream come true. I didn't even think that i had that in me - going super telephoto, and loving it.

So, the choice of that relatively extreme lens, was a wise one !