The New Fuji GFX 50s Medium Format Camera

Size comparison; Fuji X-T2 left; Fuji GFX 50s right (click to enlarge)
Courtesy of Camerasize.com (fair use for educational purposes)

If you aren't aware, and I"m not sure how you couldn't be if you are an admirer of Fuji's cameras and lenses, Fujifilm recently introduced a medium format camera called the GFX 50s.  It is small in stature, has a 51.4mp sensor that is approximately 44mm X 33mm, or about 1.7x of what we commonly call a full frame sensor (24mm x 36mm), and has been introduced with three lenses.  From everything I have seen or read, it is getting stellar reviews.  I would call it a "game changer" in the medium format digital world as the price is significantly lower than its competition.

If you are interested in its features, here is Fuji's webpage  with its specifications.  If you want to read more about it, you will find many, many articles here on the Fuji Rumors website.  Just go back over the past few weeks and you will find much to read about as well as reviews, videos, etc.

I was a medium format film camera user for most of my film days.  I bought my first medium format film camera around 1980, a Koni Rapid Omega 100 with 3 lenses.  It was primarily a press and wedding photographer's camera but it wetted my appetite for those big, lusciously smooth gradations I found in my negatives when I developed my film. Thirty-five millimeter film could not even come close to the beauty of a medium format negative or slide, in my view.  I don't care how slow the 35mm film, enlargements couldn't come close to equally what a medium format camera, even an inexpensive one, could give you.  Size does matter in this case.  Loving medium format I quickly moved onto a Mamiya C330F with three lenses and, for about 25 years, used a Pentax 6X7.  So, I have an interest in the new Fuji.  By the way, still have the Pentax and lenses...

Will I buy one?  No.  Not even close.  I am very happy with my Fuji X-T2 and my new Olympus E-M1 Mark II.  Both are superb cameras, much smaller, lighter, less expensive and produce very high quality images.  Image quality is not nearly affected as much with digital photography as it was with film.  It is a factor of analog versus digital.  Both have a finite size, but film was saddled also with a finite amount of emulsion, coated with silver halide particles, thereby creating a limited light gathering ability as well as resultant grain.  It was what it was, unlike digital, where you have tools to manipulate your digital file and improve it afterwards.

The one criticism I noticed, or maybe more properly question, that Fuji received was "why would you develop a medium format camera and only lenses with no leaf shutter?  Isn't Fuji artificially restricting versatility?  Typically, Hasselblad and others have lenses that use shutters between the lens elements instead of in the camera body (Hasselblad did make lenses without leaf shutters as well for certain bodies they produced).  That way, they can sync with flash at all speeds.  I've been thinking about this and, in my reading, saw some hints as to why.  Those hints give us a bit of an understanding as to the direction Fuji is moving in the future, I suspect with all of there top-tier cameras.

Here is my speculation.  Fuji developed conventional lenses because first, it keeps theirs and customer's costs down.  The cost of entry in the world of medium format is typically very high.  The cost of the Fuji lenses is significantly lower than the competition's cameras and lenses that have to have leaf shutters as the competition's camera bodies themselves have no shutter.  Second, by using adapters (already many companies are producing adapters to use with a variety of differently branded medium format and 35mm lenses), the opportunity exists to use a wide variety of lenses, many already owned by photographers, on the new Fuji GFX, with very little additional personal cost.  That just may push some tentative buyers over the edge since they can get into the system potentially using some already owned lenses.  Again, lowers the entry cost to the potential consumer.  That also takes the pressure off Fuji for having a plethora of lenses available right at launch.  Third, the criticism comes in the way of not being able to sync non-leaf shutter lenses at all shutter speeds.  I will tell you that Fuji engineers are working on a global shutter.  A global shutter will allow the cameras and lenses to sync at any speed as well as provide other significant benefits.

What is a global shutter? It is a form of electronic shutter that works differently than the ones we have in our cameras today.  Today's electronic shutters are a way of briefly turning on and off the sensor's ability to record a scene and make an exposure.  The problem is that it does it by scanning the sensor from left to right/top to bottom.  Hence, the famed "jello" effect of electronic shutters when photographing moving objects.  The top left of the shutter records light a split second before the bottom right, therefore the image is distorted if it has moved during exposure. In effect, the top left of the subject is recorded at a different time before the bottom right so you don't get a true "snapshot" of the subject.  A global shutter, when turned on, gathers light across all parts of the sensor simultaneously resulting in all light being recorded immediately, unlike that of a traditional electronic shutter.

I think the global shutter will be the next big breakthrough in mirrorless photography. Already Olympus gives us 60 frames per second on their Mark II's electronic shutter.  Fuji 18 fps.  That can double or triple, I believe, using a global shutter.  Can you imagine?

In the mean time, I'll continue to follow Fuji's progress.  No, I still have no plans to buy the GFX 50s.  A few years ago, my mouth would have been watering for one.  I still practiced chasing the ultimate image and was never satisfied with what I was producing.  I always thought I could produce technically better images with cameras that were bigger, faster, more expensive, etc.  Now, I'm perfectly happy.  No need to stress.  No need to figure out how I'm going to get the money for the new camera.  No need to worry about not having the absolute best images.  I'm just enjoying the wonderful tools I now use.

Stop chasing like I did.  You will find new inner peace!

Thanks for looking. Enjoy!  

Dennis A. Mook 

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