GFX 100 Medium Format Digital Camera

I recently took my GFX100 to Yellowstone for a 6-day shooting workshop, took my 250+1.4TC and the 45mm 2.8 and 23mm f4. I also used a Sony A7R4 with the 600 FE f4. The 600 F4 is also extraordinary and really works great with the 1.4 TC but the GFX100 lets you crop and the resolution and micro-contrast of the lenses coupled with the IBIS and the big sensor turned it into a monster. The best pictures I have taken in my life. The camera struggled to acquire focus a couple of times and I had to turn it off and onto fix the problem. Maybe it was the temperature of 5 F and the wind. The Sony worked flawlessly but the Fuji is in another league when color detail contrast makes the pictures seem to be so real that you cannot but smile. Using the camera is very easy if you come from other Fuji systems as I do. I have my Nikon D850 with great glass as well as Sony and both are superb. Especially for wildlife and Landscape but unless you are shooting birds, or very far away subjects the Fuji GFX100 is the better choice. I shot most of the time handheld at ISO 100-1200

Nice looking medium format digital cameraI love it

43.8 x 32.9mm is Medium Format

As a long-term Canon 1D series and medium-term Leica M and SL user, I explored Hasselblad and Fuji medium format. Hasselblad looked sexy and svelte but was hideous to handle. The GFX 50S was ugly but good to use. The GFX 100 is a joy to use and the IQ is mind-blowing. The IBIS allowed me to handhold at 1/25 second with the 23mm lens wide open. The above pictures represent hand-held photogfraphs taken in Masai Amboseli, Kenya, in Feb-March 2020. 23mm, 32-64mm, and 250mm lenses.

I really like the GFX 100, but I wish it were even better. I have had the camera for 2 months now, I shot 3 campaigns and another dozen models and catalogs.First, it is the most advanced modern camera I have used. The features are incredible. As a mostly Canon (5DS, 5D Mark IV) and Hasselblad digital (H4D, X1D) shooter for 13+ years, I have been jealous of the features I have seen with companies like Sony. I now feel like I have those modern features like IBIS stabilization and Eye tracking Focus. These features sometimes work amazing. But at other times I am baffled that features like the eye tracking do not seem to work at all. Constantly, the eye tracking is working amazing for 30 seconds or 2 minutes, then nothing changes and it doesn't work at all. I haven't pressed anything. I turn the feature on and off, and it sometimes goes back to working perfectly??? Sometimes, it doesn't and I cannot see why from the conditions. And it does affect my shooting as I stop the model from posing and try to get my focus back on them.The autofocus in general is fantastic for medium format. Night and day difference between my older Hasselblad H series camera and much much faster than my Hasselblad X1D camera. And when it works, it it better/faster than many Canons. But it is definitely not as good as the eye tracking from the newer Sony cameras like the A74 (which is amazing for eye tracking focus). But the GFX100 is also glitchy. I am not sure if others are experiencing this and I am going to call Fuji. But I cannot figure out why I cannot always accurately move the focus dot on the subject's eye when needed. For example, I will be shooting a waist up shot on a model and have the eye detection on. It is working great. Suddenly, it goes off and my focus dot is on the background. I use the focus stick to move the dot onto the model's face, only to see the dot move immediately back to the background before I can shoot. The focus dot is jumping back and it will do it over and over. If I remove the camera from my eye and look at the back screen, I can do the same action and get it to work. But how weird. Happens 10 times a shoot and I tried shooting through it once on pressure filled shoot and got like 10 shoots out of focus in a row. Really stunk. *****Updated****** I think I found the fix for the focus issues. I believe the pressure of my cheek against the touch screen was freezing the the focusing. I didn't think it was my cheek originally as it wasn't trying to focus where my cheek was. But I think that is was disabling the eye focus and then not letting the focus dot stay when I moved the focus lever. I am still exploring if this is the cause and haven't tested it enough, and will update again if the fix doesn't work 100% of the time. Basically, you only need to touch the screen in the corner and click til it says off in the right place to disable the touch screen focusing and easy to turn back on. So possibly an easy fix to a problem that was really upsetting and no one at the camera stores or the Fuji hotline seemed to know why I was having a problem.The IBIS stabilization seems to work great. It does not fix all motion problems, but I literally handheld a campaign photo that would be blown up for a poster at ISO 3200 and 1/15sec at 50mm and it looked workable. It was super lowlight on the beach and I was desperate to get in 1 more dress. I didn't think it would be usable as a print (I assumed it would be fine for Instagram), but incredibly it is. There are some videos on Youtube where it does a reasonable job in video, but I haven't tested it yet.You will need to read the instruction manual (which is well done). There are a lot of buttons and it is very very very customizable. But you can be totally lost. I even recommend downloading the PDF of the manual, so you can key word search queries. I own a lot of cameras, and this one has too many features to be intuitive. I literally couldn't figure out how to put the camera in manual model for 15 minutes as the shutter speed was in a lock mode out of the box.Ergonomically the camera is nice, and I normally shoot with bigger cameras and like a vertical grip. But this camera is big and can be pretty heavy with lenses. I shot today with the 110mm and put in 1000 handheld photos and my arms were really tired. Feels heavier than my Canon with an 85mm. If you are use to a Sony or a camera without a vertical grip, you might be in for a shock. The new Sony A7R IV is so much smaller. That said, people do think the FUJI GFX is impressive looking. More so than I expected as I often have Hasselblads and cool cameras around the studio. But there is a wow factor in person from clients and models.Colors have been a huge issue with this camera as I have been struggling with finding color profiles I really like. Fuji, in a very cool way, has put in 15 simulations of their old films (Provia, Astia, Velvia, Pro Neg Hi, Pro Neg Std, Acros Black & White, etc) as color profiles that you can choose from. It is kind of awesome. But it also isn't working well enough. I am mainly shooting tethered with Capture One and having difficulty getting poppy accurate colors for clothing with nice skin tones. My digital tech and I have been trying to mess with a lot of settings, but I am finding it harder than with Canon or Hasselblad. With my Hasselblad, we literally just set the color balance from a card and a contrast of like 6, and my clients are think I am mostly very accurate on most clothing pieces. But the Fuji is tough with me struggling on both clothing colors and skin tones. I am learning more than I ever wanted about ICC profiles and bought the newest x-rite Colorchecker 2, so I can make my own profiles. But I am getting mixed results. I have been emailing Capture One, and I don't know if I am really going to get accurate colors in my workflow and will need later Photoshop to get there. One client Friday did think that the Fuji was more accurate and vibrant on Oranges and Red based colors than my Canon 5Ds I normally photograph their clothing line with. But they preferred Greens and Blues with Canon. I feel that Astia and Provia are sometimes too Orange on the skin. The Pro Negative standard is way too washy and subdued on clothing, while the Pro Negative Hi is too contrasty and still doesn't quite get the clothing color. No other profiles are normal enough to be used in this situation. Even tweaking them in Capture One isn't going great, but I am still working on it. I spoke with the Fuji service line, and the guy said no one else is complaining about this and thought Fuji was the easiest to work with. I think the problem has to do with Fuji speaking about color in terms of your "memory" instead of accuracy. My job requires accuracy. I feel like I might figure out some custom profiles, but I am getting less confident the more I work on it and will have to settle. I do think that Fuji needs a better out of the box neutral/accurate color setting instead of imposing kind of strong effects. I will personally be lobbying them to come up with an accurate/neutral profile.The quality, which I think is a major selling point with this camera, is amazing at points, but again I find mixed results. First, if you haven't shot medium format digital, then I think you will see a large increase in quality. The difference between the GFX 100 and my Canon 5Ds 50mp with an 85mm 1.2 new version lens is crazy; almost not comparable. I was shocked to see the difference as the Canon is just bad in comparison. But my gut says the Nikon D850 would fare much better than the Canon from what I have seen. The Nikon D850 and The Sony A7R IV are just sharper full frame cameras/lenses than my Canon 5Ds. However, my 6 year old 50mp Hasselblad H4D CCD sensor, seems just as sharp as the 100mp Fuji. I haven't done extensive tests, and the one I did wasn't fare to the Fuji. But I photographed a model in a very detailed dress for a catalog with the Hasselblad and tried to take a few quick shots with the Fuji so I could compare it in the same conditions. The Hasselblad 50mp beat the Fuji, BUT I was on F20 with the Fuji on the 32-64mm zoom lens and I should have probably been at F8, where the lens is probably sharpest. And that could have really disadvantaged the Fuji. But that said, I don't think there is a big difference in the studio between the cameras, quality wise. I would put money on the Hasselblad 100mp or Phase to be slightly higher in quality with the bigger sensor and larger pixels, but the Fuji much more versatile. Imaging-Resource's comparometer seemed to have the GFX100 near the same quality as the Phase One 100mp when you view full res files side by side. But I don't think I am seeing those same results. *****Update***** Also, I need to explore the shooting modes more. I was mostly shooting on Mechanical shutter like an old school camera, but I think you get sharper handheld images with electronic front curtain selected. It is not the same as electronic shutter and can be used with flash and moving subjects up to 1/1250sec. But I think this help mitigate shake from the shutter. Very hard when you get this camera to know what the best settings are and I had read the manual, google info and watch reviews and tip specifically for the Fuji GFX.Natural light is a different story. The Fuji is mostly amazing, with some inexplicable times it has less quality (could be that I was on mechanical shutter instead of EF Curtain). It really took down the Hasselblad X1D on my location campaign shoot and I thought the X1D had great quality in natural light. I was principally shooting with X1D for a client and had the Fuji as a backup. But my lighting conditions got tough as the sun was setting and it drop behind heavy clouds. I saw myself switching to Fuji more and more. The shoot was rushed and I mainly compared the files after the shoot, and I thought the Fuji destroyed the X1D quality wise, and easy of shooting. When choosing shots with the client for poster printing, I had fingers crossed they would pick the models posing in the Fuji versions as I knew those would print with better quality. The Fuji is amazing at ISO 800. I feel like I am at ISO 100 with it. After that, I am getting mixed results. Sometimes, 1600 looks great and I have been super impressed. And other times I feel it getting blocky and a little cartoonish around 1600. I need to explore more. I mentioned above, I have a campaign photo taken at 3200, so I have mixed feelings. I have some thoughts about which lighting conditions and if slight model movements are being noticed more which you might expect with 100 megapixels. I was also shooting on mechanical shutter, and I might have to move to Electronic Front Curtain which is not the same as electronic shutter, but lessens the shutter causing shake. The camera does also have electronic Shutter.Overall, the camera seems to resolve a lot of detail, but that doesn't always mean a better photo. Sometimes, looking at my Hasselblad X1D files, they looked more pleasing and real world sharp. And I see myself sometimes taking down the sharpness on the Fuji as it can look a little digital.The in-camera features like skin smoothing and adding grain are useless to me, even though I do a similar technique in post for some retouching. I tried shooting raw + jpg with the Skin smoothing and a weak grain, hoping I could get my highest quality raw but also get a somewhat "retouched" jpg photo for like immediate posting on social media or make a quick print for a model and I really disliked the results. The skin softening just seemed to take down the quality and make it blocky. I was hoping it would find the skin and just smooth that, but I don't think it worked well. The grain was not as pleasing as I add in Photoshop in the Camera raw feature. I am sure Fuji would tell me to keep trying the feature with more subjects, but I don't think I will try that feature again.Being mirrorless, I think the electronic viewfinder is great. I sometimes even prefer it to an optical viewfinder now as I feel like I am kind of seeing my final photo sometimes. Very little blackout. My X1D had a lot of blackout, so the GFX is great in comparison. Still not as good as Sony's blackout. And if you are coming from a new Sony, you would think it was noticeable, but good/acceptable.Overall, a really great camera with a few glitches that I am trying to iron out. I don't believe most photographers need this camera. And if you have a Nikon D850, I don't think you will become any better photographer or see an incredible quality improvement. But if you are a medium format digital shooter or really want to be and have the clients that demand it, then this is the most modern and usable medium format camera.

Excellent camera for landscape and portrait photography. Sharp. A joy to use.

If all you are looking for is one of the best photo cameras on the market, then yes! For the price you can find these cameras at, I believe this to be one of the best cameras I’ve ever shot with. The quality of the images are unmatched.My first GfX camera was the 50s and then I added the 50r to my arsenal. This 100 is the perfect camera if you can lift it. I think it needs its own whee barrel to carry it around for most people, but I am a big boy and can carry it just fine.

None of the High-end Cameras offer so much image quality, so readily, in so many situations like the 102 MP Fujifilm GFX 100. I am truly impressed, just how much information GFX 100 can record on single shot.