Dave Etchells from Imaging Resource met five Japanese Fujifilm managers: Yujiro Igarashi, Makoto Oishi, Jun Watanabe, Kuniko Åo and Shu Amano.

And when 5 managers are needed to answer the questions of 1 single person, you know it’s going to be a very in depth and technical talk.

In fact, it ends up in a 8,000 words interview that I have summed up down below in 1,470 words.

Some notes and considerations ahead of it:

• Fujifilm says they are working on updating the camera remote App, especially to make it work better with older cameras. They did NOT say they are working on an all new App. But FujiRumors has already shared a rumor that there will be an all new App!
• Fujifilm aimed to make the GFX system smaller, and the GFX50R served that purpose. Now the GFX100S is perceived as small enough, and so they see “less need for something even more compact“. But they also add “we always look at the market to see if there’s a need to introduce something“. My impression based on this interview is that they currently have no plans for a GFX100R, but they don’t entirely want to rule out this possibility. And in fact, given how well the GFX100S is selling, Fujifilm has no hurry at all to take decisions right now.

These are just two personal notes on what you’ll read below. But there is really a lot more interesting stuff… like how Fujifilm did work to train the new AF and much more.

The Interview

Japanese Fujifilm manager Jun Watanabe gave an interview in Japanese to Map Camera.

The whole video is in Japanese, but luckily dclife shared a summary of the main points, which you can read in original Japanese here.

Here is the version in Google translated English, with a special note to the headline of the article that reads:

We are working on WOW product development

Does Fujifilm plan to release a Cinema Camera?

I don’t have any plans so far, but this time “X-H2S” has improved considerably including video performance and functions, so first of all, I would like to see the evaluation and reaction using “X-H2S”.
[…] I feel that videos and still images are fusion quite a bit, so this kind of “X-H2” I feel that hybrid cameras like “S” will be the future trend, and hybrid cameras, not cinema-only cameras, will also be mainstream.

Fujifilm is developing commercial lenses and cine lenses for PL mounts and E-mounts for the broadcasting and film industries. Are you thinking of developing lenses for other companies’ mounts?

At the moment, there are no plans to develop other companies’ mount lenses, and we will focus on our own mount lenses. […] there are still places where the lineup of lenses is not enough and there are still places where we have to improve the lens performance, so I would like to focus on our lineup first.

Message from Mr. Watanabe on the 10th anniversary of X-mount

Thank you very much for your continued patronage of our X series. I would like to continue to pay attention to everyone’s expectations and so that everyone, including me, would like to work on offering “WOW” products so that they can say, “I really want to buy this.” I would appreciate it if you could. I look forward to working with you again.

Well, that reference about the WOW products definitely sounds intriguing.

• Fujifilm X-H2S: BHphoto / AmazonUS / Adorama / Moment / Focuscamera
• Fujinon XF150-600mm f/5.6-8: BHphoto / AmazonUS / Adorama / Moment / Focuscamera
• Fujinon XF18-120mm f/4: BHphoto / AmazonUS /  Adorama / Moment / Focuscamera