Fujifilm X RAW Studio and Tether App add Fujifilm GFX100RF Support
Fujifilm X RAW Studio and Fujifilm Tether App added support for the Fujifilm GFX100RF.
Down below you can find all the details.
Fujifilm X RAW Studio and Fujifilm Tether App added support for the Fujifilm GFX100RF.
Down below you can find all the details.
The Fujifilm GFX100RF is collecting general praise all over the internet for just how incredibly small and light it is for a medium format camera, and also for its excellent build quality.
But of course they also address the fact that it does not have IBIS.
Now, you can read more about it below, but in general it seems the consensus is that at 1/30th you can still get away with sharp images, but below that it starts to get tricky. That’s according to Luca Petralia (review below) and docma (article in German below) and also to the Vistek video we shared in our live blog. Of course I have not tested it myself (I am just a mere mortal like you and I don’t get anything from Fujifilm unless I pay full price for it), so for now I will just report what reviewers have to say about it.
Out of curiosity I checked the shutter speeds of my last few hundred images, and I found one at 1/33th, one at 1/50th a few at 1/60th and 1/80th but mostly I am well over that. So if the statements of reviewers so far holds true, if I were to use the GFX100RF with my style of shooting I could live very well without IBIS. Of course I have shots at even slower shutter speeds, but for those I used a tripod anyway, as I was working either in blue hour landscape/cityscape or with filters and I needed exposures of multiple seconds.
With that said, here are the reviews I mentioned above as well as a few more, including interviews with Fujifilm managers that while nice to listen at, do not really disclose anything new, hence I did not dedicate them a specific article but I decided to include them in this roundup.
Camerasize has added the Fujifilm GFX100RF to their database. Now you can compare its size to any other camera.
In our case we are going to compare the Fujifilm GFX10RF vs GFX50R vs X100VI vs Leica Q3 vs Sony RX1rII vs Hasselblad X2D.
Overall the Fujifilm GFX100RF is indeed very compact for sporting a sensor that is about 70% fuller than full frame.
I know some wish it would have a hybrid viewfinder, IBIS and a faster f/2 lens. But then, besides the much higher price, they’d probably hate the Fujifilm GFX100RF because it is too big to carry around for everyday shooting, which would be the biggest tradeoff of all.
A hybrid viewfinder would have been nice, but I am also fine with a huge and crisp top notch EVF (the GFX100RF has it) instead of a hybrid viewfinder.
And as Fujifilm explained here, the wide lens (plus almost vibration-free leaf shutter) actually allow to shoot at about 1/40th with sharp results. Not to talk of the terrific ISO performance of the GFX system, which also helps to keep shutter speeds higher. But for final judgment here I’ll wait some technical reviews about it. All I have seen demonstrating low shutter speed tests, is a launch video of Vistek (shared in our live blog), in which he showed samples at 1/30th and he was happy with the sharpness. I guess below that it will become harder to get very sharp results handheld.
But if that holds true, then it is indeed a tricky dilemma for Fujifilm: if images are still sharp at 1/30-1/40th of a second, is it still worth to trade off compactness and price for IBIS?
Out of curiosity I checked the shutter speed in my images of my last summer holiday (travels, landscape and city trips with family). When I shot handheld, I have found one image at 1/80th of a second (a picture of my son at sunset in Pienza, Tuscany). Then there are images I shot on tripod anyway because shutter speeds are so low that IBIS can’t help.
So I guess for my use case, IBIS would be nice to have, but the lack of it won’t have a terrible impact on my photography. In most of my images there are people in the frame (my kids, etc), so I can’t go too low with shutter speeds anyway.
Check out the size comparisons below.
Down below is the list for the UHS-II type memory cards validated by Fujifilm for the Fujifilm GFX100RF (as well as for GFX100II, GFX100SII, X-H2S and X-H2).
For the best cards for X-T5 check out this article.
*1 Model name could be different depending on the market.
*2 Where xxxx is “JNJIP/GHJIN” in Japan, “ANCIN” in the U.S.A., “CNCIN” in Canada, “ZN4IN” in China, and “GN4IN” for Global.
SmallRig has launched a series of accessories for the Fujifilm GFX100RF.
Pre-orders
One of the biggest critiques to the Fujifilm GFX100RF is the lack of IBIS, especially considering that it has a 100 megapixel medium format sensor.
So why has the Fujifilm GFX100RF no IBIS?
Well, that’s exactly what Thomas and Andreas asked the Japanese product managers of Fujifilm when they met them in Prague, who passed them the chart you can see above (video below).
Let’s take a look:
The important lines in the chart are the black diagonal lines. In that chart you can see that in order to get sharp images with for example a 250mm lens, you need to shoot at about 250th of a second.
On the very top (over the red line) we have the telephoto lenses that need OIS.
The purple on the left is the range where you need a tripod.
The yellow part shows where IBIS works best.
On the right we see the range that does not need IBIS and can be shot handheld without IBIS and yet get sharp images, and they marked the 35mmF4 in that range.
So, looking at the chart, I’d say that if you shoot at 1/40th of a second or higher, then IBIS would be of little use anyway.
And maybe in real world, you might be able to squeeze a bit more out of it. Test samples shared at the German fuji-x-forum.de look still sharp at 1/20th. So probably I personally would feel confident to go down to 1/30th, unless I am on my 7th coffee and my hands shake like crazy ;).
Also the leaf shutter helps to get sharper images, because it does not introduce as many vibrations as the mechanical shutter does.
One more tidbit about IBIS discussed in the video:
implementing IBIS would have made the camera bigger, but not that much.
Apparently the increase in body size would still be acceptable for Fujifilm. The problem would have been the lens, as in order to cover the entire sensor plus the area in which the sensor can move due to IBIS, the lens would have become significantly bigger. And since compactness was paramount for Fujifilm when developing the GFX100RF, they decided not to go with IBIS. The body size increase would have still been acceptable, but not the lens size.
And always keep in mind: whatever moves in your frame at very slow shutter speeds will get blurry anyway, as IBIS only compensate for camera shakes.
I’ve watched the entire Fujifilm X Summit and you can find it summed up here.
But there is a part that I did not sum up because it did not disclose any technically relevant information, and yet it was in my opinion the best and most interesting part of the X Summit, because it told us about the philosphy behind crafting the Fujifilm GFX100RF.
At minute 39 of the Summit, Fujifilm introduces us the work of the legendary photographer Josef Koudelka.
More precisely, they bring us at his exhibition “Ruins“. The images were shot with a 6×17 Fujifilm camera in Koudelka’s favorite format 6×17.
But 6×17 was not always Koudelka’s go-to format.
He fell in love with this format only in 1986 when he was asked to particapte to a project called DATAR to photograph landscape in France.
He noticed a 6×17 Fujifilm panoramic camera sitting on a table and said “maybe I’d like to try that one, can I borrow it for a week?“.
He started shooting with it and an the wide format started an entirely new phase in his photography.
Koudelka will later on say, that the change in format he made in 1986 was absolutely essential for staying fresh and looking at things in a new way.
At this point, we hear Koudelka himself talking about Fuji’s 6×17 camera and how the wide format introduced a big change in his photography: a change that kept him motivated and his photography fresh. Koudelka says:
Many photographers stopped to photograph. But I did not stop to photograph, because I started to use panoramic camera. I realized that I can do something different, and in fact, that it will help me to continue with photography.
Regarding the Fujifilm GFX100RF, Koudelka said:
You made a fantastic camera. I think it is going to be very successful because people are going to discover that they can do something that looks different.
I know that some might argue that cropping in post is sufficient.
However, as Josef Koudelka noted, committing to a specific aspect ratio forces you to see the scene differently. Instead of deciding what works best later, you’ll train your eye to capture the optimal composition on location.
The aspect ratio dial embodies this philosophy.
It’s not just a tool. It’s a visible reminder to rethink your approach every time you shoot. It’s a invitation to change your perspective and capture a fresh view on the world. It’s a challenge to try something new and refresh your creative vision.
Yes, I know. It’s too early to say if Fujifilm has won this bet. The market will decide. But for those, who’ll love it, it might become an important and refreshing part in their photography.
So, how are things going with the Fujifilm GFX100RF?
Well, I don’t know. I don’t have the figures of stores worldwide. The only reliable metric I can compare it to, is the preorders here on FujiRumors.
And looking at that, the Fujifilm GFX100RF is doing very well.
It is already by far the most preordered GFX camera of all time.
But not only that.
It is also about to surpass the X-T4 preorders (could be only a matter of hours), which would then make it the 4th most preordered camera on FujiRumors after the (unreachable) X100VI, X-T5 and X-T3. And even the X-T3 is not that far away anymore, so the GFX100RF is very likely to become the third most pre-ordered camera ever on FujiRumors within a few days from now.
Sure, this is data limited to FujiRumors, and we know they are not indicative for overall sales. But in general, what is well received among the FR community does not become an epic failure on the worldwide market.
Now, I hope Fujifilm is well prepared this time and there won’t be big delays. But if you are in the market for a GFX100RF, maybe, just to be on safe side, I would not wait all too long to place my order.
You can now preorder the Fujifilm GFX100RF at Amazon, too.
Other stores are taking pre-orders since 2 hours already. Amazon just opened them right now, so if you preorder now, you’ll be very high on the waiting list.
The Fujifilm GFX100RF is now reality!!!