Of Course, Size Matters! Fujifilm GFX 50s

Much awaited, the Fujifilm GFX 50s, the company’s ‘super full frame’ medium format mirrorless offering, arrived in India last month. K Madhavan Pillai puts it to the to the test.

- K Madhavan Pillai

Trust Fujifilm to make things exciting for photographers! It took a year to iron out the the import wrinkles, but the GFX 50s is finally here, a year after it was launched. Though this is Fujifilm’s first larger-than-full-frame sensor camera (a mirrorless), they are not new to medium format, and had a lust-worthy range of analogue cameras and lenses. Technically speaking, in terms of dimensions, the new sensor is smaller than smallest traditional medium format film, but larger than 35mm full frame by about 67 percent, prompting Fujifilm to call the GFX a ‘super full frame’ camera at their press conference. Why not regular full frame? Clearly Fujifilm prefers to avoid the crowd, and do things differently. Borrowing from the X series (mostly, it would seem, from the X-T2), the GFX 50s combines retro, analogue handling with a more modern design.

Features

The GFX 50s is an entirely new system and uses a new ‘G’ mount, for which there are already seven lenses available, and more on the way. The 51.4MP CMOS sensor is essentially the same sensor found in the Hasselblad X1D and the Pentax 645Z, and would share the same basic characteristics (I had hoped for X-Trans). Fujifilm has optimised the microlenses for this sensor to deliver sharper results. Besides, a lot of what the sensor delivers is also affected by the processor, in this case, the X Processor Pro, also found in the latest X series cameras.