Back to the Future

• guest post by Chris Dodkin – dodkin.com
  
• to see the original size of the images, just click on the image

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I first heard about the GFX on 8th January, 2014, when I met these two gentlemen at CES in Las Vegas [see image on top].

Zack is an editorial music photographer based in Atlanta, GA, and a Fuji X System Photographer, and Billy is a Manager for the Product and Marketing Specialist Group – ‎FUJIFILM CANADA INC., and one of the ‘Fuji Guys’ on YouTube.

We met at the Fujifilm stand at the Consumer Electronics Show, with Zack and I both pestering Billy to get a sneak peak of the new, unannounced, Fuji X-T1 camera.

With our sneak-peeks arranged, the conversation turned to ‘what’s next’, and Zack expressed a strong desire for Fuji to look at jumping the legacy 35mm format completely, and for them to take a look at producing a Medium Format mirrorless camera.

Billy was excited by the idea, and we began to discuss the features that the new camera should have.

Zack was all about a MF sensor as the starting point, and Billy suggested that this could then be used to shoot multiple aspect ratios, native in camera.

The camera needed to be mirrorless, to keep size, weight, and cost down, and should undercut the established MF market leaders by a significant margin.

We discussed super-sizing the successful Fuji X-Pro1, to make a digital version of the Fuji 6×9 120 ‘Texas Leica’ Film cameras, and building a more conventionally styled model, with the same accessible controls and styling, to make the camera easy and fun to use.

The Fuji engineers on the stand were excited. I left the show with a strong impression that this was something they wanted to make happen.

I posted about Fuji’s logic of jumping to MF a few times on DPR, with mixed reactions. Most people didn’t believe it would ever happen. Many 35mm format users did’t get it, and still don’t. Fuji see it makes the best economic sense, and takes them past the limitations of the 35mm format market place.

The Present