Last week we had the privilege of getting a FujiFilm GFX 50S camera to play with. I would like to just start by saying that this is not a formal review of the camera by any means, thoughat the moment there are many good reviews floating around out there on the interwebs. All the same we wanted to talk about some of the things that we absolutely loved about this camera – for those interested in our experience with it!
We would love to thank Fujifilm South Africa for letting us try it out the Fujifilm GFX 50S medium format camera with the 120mm f4 lens.
It was a last minute rush to arrange as many shoots as we could and give it a proper field test but also a great challenge, and so exciting! Today 2017 09 03 I looked it up to see what it retails for in the US , it’s no surprise that it is the no #1 best seller on www.bhphotovideo.com in NY which is usually my benchmark for pricing worldwide.- (the largest online resource for photographic equipment)
I should mention that this is the first time that we have really had time to use a mirrorless for more then half an hour and shoot something meaningful with it, let alone a digital medium format camera.
It took a little getting used to as one would expect but we both found ourselves falling in love with the camera and lens. Originally we hadn’t bargained on getting such a long lens for what we were hoping and planning to shoot (which was studio stuff mostly), but we were pleasantly surprised by the versatility of it and how close we could still get to our subject. We had shot on cameras with similar resolutions to this before (51.4mp) which is a huge file ,but didn’t expect the additional boost of resolution from the Lens system is astounding! There does feel like a small delay from pressing the button to capturing the image but it is a fraction of a second which I think you get used to, of course depending on what you are shooting this could be frustrating (0.108 of a second) might be small in studio but it doesn’t go unnoticed.
I personally felt like by the end of the week on my last shoot I was suddenly noticing more and more things which I love about the camera, For those interested here are a few things in no particular order:
- The Colour rendition and auto white balance seemed to get really close to what we were actually seeing in real life- most of the time!
- Dynamic range of 14 stops is pretty great in studio didn’t notice this so much but when we took this camera outside to shoot some cars it was quite significant.
- The edge to edge focus points are such a pleasure to shoot with, especially for product shots or very precise in camera cropping!
- Shooting witha Black and white filter is really great, though I didn’t think I would like this so much when I first spotted it, I do often shoot in BW mode on my DSLR but seeing it through the viewfinder is quite different and really one of my best features on a Mirrorless camera!
- The “what you see is what you get factor” ,when shooting natural light, of course in studio with strobes or flashes you actually need to turn off the exposure/wb preview though.
- I liked being able to change the crop dimensions in camera but the function only seems possible in JPEG mode, I like to shoot RAW all the way so would have liked to see some further options here!
- Very little to noticeable distortion on this system.
- It sports a huge iso Range with little noise.
- I feel like there is a lot of room for customization on the camera which I missed out on due to having it for such a short time.
- Buttons for Shutter ISO and an Aperture ring which really changes the way you shoot, but you can still set these with the dials or change most of these settings digitally which is also beneficial.
- The Lens hood with which locks in place. which is handy and lens cap fits on the hood when reversed which I also like with a little door for turning your lens mounted filters at the bottom.
- Battery pops out the side (which is nice for when it’s mounted on a tripod). And it charges pretty quickly, and lasts longer than I expected it would with a digital viewfinder, lasted for 4 hours easily.
- The camera calibration profiles in Lightroom. (when in Adobe Lightroom you will notice a range of colour profiles which bring out the colour of your images so much more than the standard adobe profile. (I added no colour to these images. and did not modify the exposure or white balance on almost every image I shot with this camera)
- Tilt screen, so you can shoot from above or below the camera or shoot from the hip!
In our minds this is a very well designed system which takes into consideration a lot of user experience from real photographers, in many cases this is in the small details but in some of the really big details too and we can see why so many people have completely switched to the Fujifilm system! Over the next few weeks will be posting pictures from our tests with this amazing camera system, and will probably add one or 2 points to this article as or when we think of them.
Here are a few from one of our first shoots with this camera.
Featuring the lovely Garlene van Huyssteen, at the Drawn to Light Studios
