Fujifilm GFX100 Customer Reviews: “100 MP is Phenomenal, if You can Afford it, Get it”

GFX100 with 110mm F2

After 3 days doing some 5 portrait sessions with it, my initial impression Of the gfx100 for a portrait shooter as below:

IBIS: works well, 1/15 with 45mm and 1/25 with 110mm with above 50 success rate. I’ll rate it at 2 stop advantage over no IBIS on a average usage situation (assuming static subject/model)

AF: in Day light, very good and highly accurate. Can track human moving subjects. In Low light (iso100 1/10 shutter F4 lighting), CAF is not very usable (32-64,45mm), a lot of hunting. SAF is still accurate and relatively fast.

Eye Tracking: doesn’t seem very stable, initial test I think unless you are doing half body and the models hair is really well combed, easily to lose focus due to cover. And The Eye af detection pick up is slower then XT3/30

EVF: Big improvement all round. From latency to resolution is great. Finally you can capture the moment without opening both eyes. Only thing is blackout is still quite bad. (Very noticeable and do break your shooting )

Performance: overall snappy. But GFX50s wasn’t a slouch in general performance and I don’t find any really significant improvement . In fact I find playback alittle slow. Maybe it can be solved with firmware

Image quality: I think this is the biggest thing here. Firstly 100mp is phenomenal. From the basis of cropping capability, the lenses I try (63/45/110) is more then up to the task wide open to produce tack sharp photos almost close to the edge that can be crop. And I’m not sure is it due to the high MP, sharpening can be done better and it gives a slightly more pop effect when sizing down.

Then there is dynamic range, I yet to do a very scientific test, but at the minimum, it felt easier to me for pushing and pulling colours out of shadows and high light . A improvement but it’s probably not as huge.

Lastly ISO, the 100mp does miracle here. Just shot a shoot in iso 3200, it looks really clean cause the final output when size down almost eliminates most of the noise. Makes the photo really usable. Even at the pixel level, I don’t find them any worst off then the 50s at least till 3200iso. And one thing I’m really sure, the colour and DR is much better in high iso. Probably due to the dual gain as I can push and pull photos at iso 3200 like it was iso 400 on the 50s last time.

There is one issue though, Banding in the shadows which I believe is the Phase Detection. It’s actually noticable if you try to push 5 stop exposure in the really dark shadows or shoot into really bright light and try to recover the darkest shadows significantly. But both situation are quite extreme, and the banding can be fixed by just sizing down to make it not obvious easily.

Handling: I think 50s is better. The button placements are quite weird, putting all of them in a column next to the lcd makes it hard to reach. Also there is a lack of button. You can use those buttons in the vertical orientation for some functions but it breaks to usability the moment you go vertical since the buttons are not the same.

And I think the grip on the GFX100 is not deep enough. I felt very confident just one hand hold my 50s and 250mm, but on the 100, I don’t even feel really safe with 110mm. Something about the grip not deep enough or balance. My hands are probably medium/average Asian size. The vertical grip on the other hand is quite bad. I don’t feel safe one hand holding there with any lens. It’s ok for shooting (using two hands) but not great for anything else. And the button placement is bad, not similar to the TOP grip so I really only use it for firing shutter. And the lock switch on the grip is very easily activated. Almost every time I put it in my bag and pull it. Somehow it gets locked. Not a huge deal though but something like Olympus CLock at the back is way better.

Oh but there’s one great handling aspect, the two LCD. Really great. The rear one is good as it actually allows you to review the photos clean screen with all the settings below.

Initial summary, if you can afford it, get it. Even from the perspective of getting your job done or even a hobbyist, it’s much more reliable in AF and with IBIS you open up possibilities. The improve dynamic range, iso and noise control allows you to handle it similar to a DSLR but with more headroom. The fact you can shoot without worrying about the output being blur/out of focus/too noisy is a improvement. For pure studio shooters though, if you are using it for a job, I’ll recommend it. The 50s give me endless headache due to its AF in not so bright conditions. You can’t ask your client to hold and repose all the time.

Mark Kay – shared here

The GFX 100. My first impressions.

I had both the GFX 50s and 50r but sold the later. Today I spent a few hours testing out the GFX100. I have all the GFX lenses but today primarily used the 45mm, 63mm, 110mm and 120mm macro. I also tried a Voigtlander Nokton 58mm f1.4 vII because I had heard it was a good performer on the GFX 50. Here are some points I want to make and will comment on things that I have not seen discussed to any degree.

It is quite a remarkable camera but we all know that.

Battery consumption is substantially greater than the GFX 50S so good there are two batteries.

I personally miss the real shutter speed and Iso dials. I kept accidentally changing the ISO when I meant to change the aperture. There is a way to lock the command dial by pressing it in so that you need to press again to unlock. This is a minor issue and probably most prefer the lack of the dials.. But I wish there were there.

One of the things I wanted to check was how IBIS worked when on a tripod and if it affected Image quality. What I did not have a chance to do is test if how the IS on the lens affects the IBIS etc. So not data yet. I primarily used the Nokton. You can preset the the IBIS for a third party lens using an adapter (I believe you can store 7) and putting in the lens focal length. I shot photos on a tripod using a 2 second timer, MS, EF, ES shutters with the IBIS on and off at shutter speed of 1/10. The MS resulted in camera shake and the results were a bit variable in terms of how much it affected the image regardless of the IBIS status. Otherwise I could not see a real difference between EF or ES with the IBIS off or on (continuous on setting).

I wish when you leave the menu and go back to it– it would send you back to where you were.. ok minor but was getting annoying for me …. need to get more used to Quick menu.. I have not used much prior.

The Nokton lens is impressive. There is vignetting and severe purple fringing at f1.4 but it is gone at the second aperture setting of f2. It is sharper than the GFX 63mm at f2.8 but from f4 to 8 about the same. I would say the Nokton is best at f2 to 5.6. By F11 definitely start to see some image degradation.