FUJIFILM Fiscal Year 2020: Imaging Division Suffers COVID-19, Operating Income Down 51%, Revenue Down 14%, Strong GFX100/X100V/X-Pro3 Sales

Fujifilm has now published its fiscal report for the fiscal year 2020 (1 April 2019 – 31 March 2020).

Fellow FR-reader Mistral has summarized it in French over at the French forum chassimages. In short:

Fujifilm as a whole is still doing well even if it has not reached the expected goals given the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic on its last quarter.

Imaging Solutions is the division with the lowest performance.

Fujifilm records a loss in the last quarter. The decline in sales of digital cameras and their lenses has accelerated throughout the year.

The only positive note: the Fujifilm GFX100 keeps up selling strong, as well as the Fujifilm X100V and Fujifilm X-Pro3 are mentioned positively in the various reports.

Fujifilm Report (Imaging Solution)

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New Firmware Updates for Fujifilm X100V (Overheating Managment) and X-A7 Released

Fujifilm has released firmware updates for Fujifilm X100V and X-A7.

The big one is the AUTO POWER OFF TEMP. Fujifilm writes:

If its temperature rises beyond a certain point, the camera will first display a message and then, if the temperature rise continues, automatically end shooting and power down. Choose the temperature at which the camera turns off automatically.

More details and download link below:

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Top 20 Fujifilm Manager Statments about Fujifilm X-H2, X100V/X-T3 Firmware, Monochrome, Open X Mount, Fixed Lens GFX and More

With the Fujifilm X-T4 about to hit the market (and actually already shipping in some), Fujifilm managers all over the globe are giving tons of interviews to make the world ready for the best camera it has ever seen to date: the Fujifilm X-T4 :).

Of course, I pre-ordered it, too :)

Now, for your convenience, I always provide a practical summary of all manager statements in my various article, and yet, with so many interviews, there might be some statements you might have missed anyway.

So I thought I filter out those statements, that I consider most relevant, and put them all into this article.

However, there is so much more interesting stuff to read, and so I strongly recommend you to check out all the original articles. I will provide all links below.

Manager Statements

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Fujifilm Wins Four TIPA Awards with GFX100, X-Pro3, X100V and Instax Mini Link

Fantastic achievement for Fujifilm!

The TIPA Award is an extremely tough competition, where products are brutally tested by the best experts on the planet. Companies are eager to win the TIPA award, and sometimes they want to pay to get it, but the incorruptible and visionary team of TIPA experts, guided by the one and only goal to deliver the most unbiased and professional feedback to customers, does not bend to the will of multimillion dollar companies. They award only the most prestigious products ever!

Ok, now let’s get serious.

Lots of companies payed again lots of money to win a totally meaningless award. TIPA created as many categories as needed to make everybody happy (who paid). Hence you will find frankly ridiculous category differentiations, such as “best professional APS-C camera” (Fujifilm X-Pro3), “best expert APS-C camera” (Sony A6600) and “best advanced APS-C camera” (Nikon Z50). The whole point of these award commissions is to make money by selling award licenses, meaning the right for companies to use the award logo to promote their products.

All the truth, and how exactly these awards work, in this article.

What a pity… all that money Fujifilm could have spent in firmware updates!

TIPA 2020 Winners

Cameras

Lenses

Mixed Stuff

via tipa

MapCamera: Fujifilm X100V Top Seller, Great X-E3/X-H1/X-Pro3 Sales and APS-C Dominates Full Frame

Just yesterday here we reported how, according to BCN ranking, Fujifilm saw, in March, a huge 115% increase in sales in Japan, while all other camera manufacturers dropped up to 50%.

Now Japanese store MapCameras published their top selling camera rankings.

Keep in mind, though, that this is not representative for overall sales.

The most reliable data we probably have about the worldwide success of various camera brands, is this report from a Techno System Reports, a major marketing research company located in Japan that sells this data at a very high price, but somehow it went public at the Japanese site toyokeizai, and FujiRumors spotted it for you and shared it here.

The data of Techno System Reports reflects the mirrorless camera sales, and it shows that Fujifilm is on the third position, just a tiny margin behind Canon, and substantially behind Sony.

With that said, if big retailers share their sales data, it might not be representative for the overall market, but it can still give an approximate indication of what the market wants.

With that said, here are the top sellers at MapCameras for March 2020.

SALES RANKING

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Fujifilm X100V Gets Gold Award at DPReview: “The Most Capable Prime-lens Compact Camera, Ever”

DPReview has just published their Fujifilm X100V review, and it gets the gold award with a 86% rating.

In their conclusions they write:

The Fujifilm X100V is the most ambitious X100-series model yet, and arguably the most important, second only to the original. With the X100V comes a new (and much improved) lens, the addition of touchscreen control, and a tilting rear LCD. Meanwhile, a suite of powerful video features brings it into line with models in Fujifilm’s XT-series. The end result is a better and more powerful camera, more suited for use alongside a modern ILC than its (understandably highly popular) predecessors. It’s the priciest of the X100 series to date, but in my opinion the extra cost is justified

You can read the full review at dpreview.

→ Top X100 Community: Fujifilm X100 facebook group

What we like What we don’t
  • Updated 26MP sensor offers good noise performance and fast readout
  • Excellent, highly tunable JPEG engine with good detail and noise reduction
  • Multiple film simulations with truly pleasing color output
  • Redesigned lens removes close-up ‘haze’ of previous models and improves corner performance
  • Class-leading 4K video capabilities
  • Tilting touchscreen
  • Great electronic / optical viewfinder
  • Good build quality, optional weather-sealing
  • Impressive low-light autofocus
  • Limited customizable buttons with elimination of four-way controller (Touchscreen function swipes won’t be to everyone’s taste)
  • Outright autofocus speed is still on the slow side
  • Face-and-eye detection UI a bit clunky
  • Full weather-sealing requires additional purchase
  • Some odd customization limitations, particularly for My Menu
  • Menus are getting overly complex
  • AF performance is less effective in OVF
  • Redesigned OVF makes it harder to anticipate AF point location

Fujifilm X100V vs X100F Lens Comparison

For the first time since the launch of the original Fujifilm X100, Fujifilm has re-designed the 23mm f/2 lens on the camera with the launch of the Fujifilm X100V.

Now DPReview made a comparison between the Fujifilm X100F and X100V lens performance. They write:

Probably the most important change is the addition of a second aspherical element, which Fujifilm claims increases corner sharpness, and greatly improves image quality at close focusing distances at wide apertures.

INFINITY: The X100V’s new lens delivers comparable peak sharpness to that of the X100F, but superior sharpness and contrast towards the edges of the frame. Even at F5.6 and F8 the new lens out-resolves the old design across most of the frame, making the X100V more useful than the X100F for landscapes and cityscapes. For optimal cross-frame sharpness at wide apertures though, both cameras (but especially the X100F) reward some experimentation with exact focus position.
MEDIUM FOCUS: At a medium focus distance of the sort you might be working at for a typical portrait, the X100V’s lens is a close match to the X100F in terms of resolution at equivalent apertures, but offers higher contrast and slightly smoother out of focus areas. This results in the impression of fractionally less depth of field from the newer lens. In practical use, the biggest challenge to successful wide-aperture portraits on both cameras is focus accuracy.

CLOSE FOCUS: Again, the higher contrast and better edge-to-edge consistency of the X100V’s files makes them more attractive than equivalent images shot on the X100F. While neither camera delivers bitingly sharp images when shot wide open, files from the X100V are more consistent, with little of the ‘haze’ at wide apertures which is characteristic of the original 23mm F2 found in the X100F.

MINIMUM FOCUS: Ultimately, we wouldn’t recommend either camera for extreme closeup photography, (neither is really ‘sharp’ anywhere until F4-5.6) but for practical purposes, despite its slightly lower peak resolution, the new lens in the X100V is clearly more capable. There’s little of the haziness which X100-series users have come to expect, which makes images much more usable for everything barring critical applications.

You can read the full article and see the sample images at dpreview.

Fujifilm X100V: BHphoto / AmazonUS / Adorama / Focuscamera

→ Top X100 Community: Fujifilm X100 facebook group