the black line in the center part has been manually added by Bill from Photons to Photos
Fujifilm GFX100
For years, mirrorless cameras lagged behing DSLRs in terms of autofocus speed.
In order to catch up, companies started to incorporate phase detection pixels on their sensors, and modern cameras have phase detection pixels spread all over the sensors, very much to the delight of photographers, who enjoy fast autofoucs, eye autofocus all over the frame and reliable subject tracking.
But no technology is perfect, and so also phase detection has its downside.
When pushed to the extreme (meaning extreme shadow recovery for example), sensors with phase detection pixels can show some banding.
This has been documented with Nikon, Sony and so forth, and of course Fujifilm is no exception. They all use the same Sony sensor at the end of the day :).
It looks like also the Fujifilm GFX100 is (unsurprisingly) showing the same banding issue, when its RAW files are pushed to the extreme.
In fact, the Fujifilm GFX100 sensor has
a total of 3.78 million phase detection pixels
7,776 PDAF pixels every 18 lines
The more phase detection pixels a sensor has, the more you can use phase detection also in lower light.
Bill Claff from Photons to Photos has published a Fujifilm GFX100 sensor heatmap (via dpreview), showing a short black line every 18 rows (see image above).
Should we panic?
I guess not. Or we could just throw any modern mirrorless camera into the garbage that uses phase detection pixels (unless it’s X-Trans ;) ).
It’s, as always, a tradeoff.
Do you want faster autofocus? Or do you want RAW files that even when pushed to its limits and beyond don’t show banding?
The Solution
First off: Fujifilm is fine tuning the firmware for the Fujifilm GFX100, and of course they are aware of banding. They are working to optimize sensor readout and the final firmware will show, how much banding the camera will really have.
But in any case, there is partially a solution to that, even without optimized and final firmware.
As I told you already months ago, Fujifilm is working to bring pixel shift multishot into the Fujifilm GFX100.
The original goal was to have it ready for GFX100 launch, but it needs a bit more time of development.
But pixel shift mulitshot will come, and as we have seen from other phase detection mirrorless cameras offering this feature, pixel shift reduces or even eliminates banding completely.
So, as long as you are shooting static subjects on a tripod and use pixel shift multishot, you won’t have any issues with banding.
Back in October 2018, I told you the Fujifilm GFX100 will have pixel shift multishot. However, in March 2019 here, I got an update from a source, that pixel shift multishot won’t be ready for launch.
I have asked sources about this feature again, and they told me it is high on Fuji’s To Do list, but it will be only released once working perfectly.
I asked for a time frame, but the source could not give it to me. All it said is that it’s “just a matter of time“.
Pixel shift multishot is easier to achieve with Bayer CFA than with X-Trans CFA, which is why the Fujifilm X-H1 still does not have it, and I would not be surprised to see it coming first to the Fujifilm GFX100.
FYI: Another advantage of Bayer, is that also the electronic image stabilization (available in Fujifilm X-T100) is easier to achieve than with Bayer.
A bit out of topic, but Google just shared a white paper and video explaining their multi-frame super resolution feature that is what powers the Pixels’s night mode for example.
A good reminder that technology is not waiting and will always continue, and that Fujifilm should take note of it!
In case you were wondering about Fujifilm GFX100 and Actus GFX, Cambo said on their facebook page:
“During the last couple of weeks we received a lot of emails regarding the Fuji GFX-100. Will it fit on the Actus-GFX? The answer is yes.
The new GFX is substantially higher than the current 50mp models. We’ve just machined the parts required to fit the 100mp body to the Actus. And as demo cameras are still sparse in Europe, we took the opportunity to try the combination during the grand opening of Calumet’s new store in Frankfurt.
Q: Does camera rotation clear for portrait orientation?
A: In portrait orientation you could actually use the Actus-GFX as it is. Only when used in landscape orientation the new GFX-100 requires more space.”
