Fujifilm GFX100RF assessment: one sensor, 9 cameras

When Apple launched the iPhone 15 Pro, Greg Joswiak, the corporate’s senior vp of worldwide advertising and marketing, stated the machine’s three rear cameras would give shoppers “the equal of seven digital camera lenses of their pocket.”

We might spend a number of podcasts debating the technical validity of that assertion, however what Joswiak was making an attempt to indicate was that the iPhone now had sensors with a decision that was huge and excessive sufficient that it might crop in to emulate varied focal lengths.

Now, Fujifilm is making an attempt the identical factor.

With a 35mm lens caught to a physique shockingly much like the super-popular X100VI, it will be simple to imagine Fuji’s new GFX100RF is the corporate’s try to take a profitable technique and scale it as much as medium format.

But whereas most fixed-lens cameras just like the X100VI create intentional limitations and encourage you to shoot greater than you suppose, the GFX100RF is all about flexibility and intentionality. Using its high-resolution 102MP sensor, an all-new facet ratio dial and 4 completely different digital “zoom” modes, Fujifilm goals to switch 9 cameras and 4 lenses with one comparatively compact physique.

Fujifilm’s GFX100RF is the corporate’s most compact medium-format digital camera but. Housing the identical sensor as its flagship GFX100II, the $4,900 digital camera is vastly succesful, delivering the identical pleasant bodily controls and wealthy colours the model is understood for. There’s a motive individuals love capturing with Fujifilm cameras, and in case you’re in search of extra of that have, the GFX100RF gained’t allow you to down.

The new twist this digital camera provides to the formulation is its facet ratio dial. This bodily dial, mounted to the again of the digital camera, permits you to decide from certainly one of 9 completely different codecs to border your picture. As somebody who nonetheless shoots a number of previous movie cameras, it had me geeking out huge time. Particularly, as a result of the facet ratios the digital camera affords are primarily based on actual movie cameras Fujifilm manufactured many years in the past. It’s a really enjoyable throwback. You can select between 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 17:6, 3:4, 1:1, 7:6, 5:4, and, my favourite, 65:24 — an homage to Fujifilm’s legendary TX-1 panoramic digital camera.

Because Fujifilm didn’t embrace the hybrid optical viewfinder such as you’ll see within the X100VI and X-Pro3, it included three completely different view modes for composing with these facet ratios as a substitute. You can see the complete scene with body traces, a 50% opacity mode that allows you to see what’s outdoors your body, or a full blackout mode that solely reveals the crop you’re capturing.

After testing this digital camera for a few month, I’ve began to surprise why each digital camera doesn’t have a dial like this. Carrying the digital camera round Utah, it was a ton of enjoyable to leap round completely different ratios whereas composing a photograph, and in a number of circumstances, a picture that I’d solely thought of ‘good’ within the full 4:3 mode was upgraded to ‘nice’ as soon as I discovered the fitting crop for it.

Now clearly, whenever you crop out a big portion of a picture, you’re additionally cropping a good quantity of decision. But even when utilizing the most-cropped 65×24 ratio, you’re nonetheless left with a big 50MP file. And in case you shoot RAW along with JPG and also you edit in Adobe Lightroom, RAW recordsdata shall be ingested pre-cropped with the choice to zoom out to the complete 4:3 picture. I like that.

The super-high decision of the sensor has one other profit, although. The GFX100RF affords 4 digital focal lengths, which crop into the middle of the sensor to ship a unique discipline of view. The digital camera affords 35mm, 45mm, 63mm, and 80mm choices, which equate to about 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 63mm in full-frame phrases. These “zoom” modes will even value you decision too, although, with the complete 80mm focal size cropped to 65×24 spitting out a 9MP picture.

To make zooming in easy, Fujifilm added a small change to the entrance of the digital camera much like what you’d see on an previous camcorder. And proper above that, you’ll discover a remappable knurled dial, which surprisingly wasn’t mapped to something out of the field on my unit.

It looks like Fujifilm constructed this digital camera to do all of it, and in a number of methods, it defies expectations of what a fixed-lens digital camera is constructed to do. But sadly, the GFX100RF can be restricted in two key methods: a comparatively sluggish f/4 aperture and a scarcity of optical picture stabilization.

An f/4 aperture on Fujifilm’s medium format sensor equates to about f/3.16 on a full-frame digital camera, and whereas that isn’t horrible by any means, it felt limiting in my time with it. A slower aperture means much less gentle on the sensor, and fewer gentle means pushing up the ISO or flattening the shutter pace. On a digital camera just like the Fujifilm X100VI with optical picture stabilization, I might comfortably drop the shutter pace all the way down to a full second hand-held. But on the GFX100RF, the slowest I might comfortably shoot handheld with out getting a shaky picture was 1/30 — perhaps fifteenth if I used to be particularly regular.

As somebody who carries round a tripod practically each time I am going take pictures, this wasn’t an enormous deal for me. But Fujifillm is positioning this digital camera as the perfect on a regular basis digital camera available on the market, and with out a sooner lens or optical picture stabilization, you may need hassle capturing with this digital camera as soon as the sunshine will get low, except you employ uncomfortably excessive ISO values. When I needed to shoot in decrease gentle, I typically switched to Fuji’s wonderful Acros black and white simulation, which is made to look fairly grainy anyway.

It’s comprehensible why Fujifilm might not have added optical picture stabilization to this digital camera. The 100RF is simply marginally larger than the Fujifilm X100VI, so it might not have developed a stabilization system compact sufficient for the physique but. And at $4,899, which remains to be fairly costly, this digital camera is available in cheaper than every other GFX physique Fujifilm presently sells. Plus, this one features a lens.

But what perplexes me essentially the most concerning the digital camera is the choice to make use of an f/4 aperture. Taken alone, the lens is shockingly small — smaller than each devoted GF lens that Fujifilm sells by a protracted shot. But Fuji additionally features a lens hood and filter adapter ring within the field, and, added collectively, these equipment nearly triple the general footprint of the lens to the purpose the place it’s about as huge because the lens on the Leica Q3. And at that time, why not simply make an even bigger, sooner lens?

There’s little doubt the GFX100RF shall be constantly in comparison with Leica’s full-frame Q3 — primarily as a result of, till just lately, in case you wished an excellent remotely new fixed-lens digital camera with a big sensor, the Q3 was just about your solely possibility. And whereas Fujifilm has Leica beat with its new versatile facet ratio dial and ultra-high decision, Leica trades these options for a a lot sooner f/1.7 lens and optical picture stabilization. Which options matter to you might be going to depend upon what sort of photographer you’re. And, on the very least, I’m glad there’s lastly another choice accessible available on the market.

I actually liked my time with this digital camera. Composing practically each facet of your closing picture in-camera is an actual pleasure, and I’ve a tender spot in my coronary heart for bodily dials. But for a digital camera that aspires to do all of it with one lens, you’re going to want a tripod to make {that a} actuality.

Photography by David Imel