Camera test 31
Photography News | Issue 62 | photographynews.co.uk
Performance: exposure latitude
Exposure brackets of +/-4EV in one 1EV steps were made and the bracketed shots were exposure corrected in Adobe Lightroom and Capture One Pro v12. This set was processed in Lightroom. Overexposure was handled reasonably well, with the +3EV shot proving to be retrievable with reservations – the strong
highlights were not so good and there was a colour cast. The +2EV and +1EV shots were recovered well. At the other extreme, recovering the underexposed shots was significantly more successful. The -4EV shot gained noise in the shadows, but the result looked fine and the noise wasn’t that significant.
Original image
Above Intense highlights and deep shadows were a challenge but no problemwith some work in processing.
eyepiece is on the far left of the body. Rangefinders suit right-eyed camera users because it allows the left eye to be kept on the scene, but as a left eye user I still found the GFX 50R great to use. There is no issue of inadvertently moving the AF point on the touch monitor with your nose because the AF touch function is disabled with the eye to the viewfinder. The EVF viewfinder itself is excellent, providing a lovely, bright and very detailed image with no issues of smearing when panning. On the left is a pull out dioptre control so it can’t be adjusted unintentionally when pushed in. In the menu there is the option of tailoring the EVF’s view with smaller or larger type size, or you can go for a clean look or just have a few key settings on show. You can fine-tune the monitor’s live view layout in a similar way.
-4EV
-3EV
The EVF viewfinder itself is excellent, providing a lovely, bright and very detailed image with no issues
Thetiltablemonitoristouchscreen and its sensitivity is spot-on. You have to be quite deliberate using it, which meant I didn’t manage to set an AF point or adjust settings with a glancing touch. Autofocus is done with contrast detect so while it is respectably fast, very quiet and accurate it does have the characteristic of such systems where the lens goes past the point of focus and then back again to lock. There is a rapid AF feature, but to be honest I didn’t see any obvious benefit to speed.
In manual focusing you have the help of peaking highlights and focus check by touching the lens’s manual focus barrel, or set to a function button. I had focus check set to the front-mounted Fn2 and that suited me. Usefully, when in manual focus if you have AF touch active you get instant AF by touching the monitor, which is a handy override option. I stuck with zone and single point AF modes and the focus lever or touchscreen for shifting the AF point around and this was fast and positive. The camera’s multi zone metering proved itself accurate and consistently reliable and my shots – mostly in the Velvia FilmSimulation mode – were nicely saturated. Apart from occasions where I expected poor results – a couple of underexposed shots against the sun and a black shed coming out grey – the system performed with credit. Continuous shooting, with a 1/250sec shutter speed, a Samsung 128GB Pro micro SD card and the mechanical shutter, easily delivered the claimed 3fps – it was close to 4fps. In Raw I got 20 full Raws at that rate before slowing to 2fps and soon after to 1fps. In Fine JPEG I got 52 shots at 3fps before any sign of slow down. A full buffer took under nine seconds to clear. The GFX 50R is not designed as an action camera and close to 4fps is more than enough, given the file size and the likely use of the camera.
-2EV
-1EV
0
+1EV
+2EV
+3EV
+4EV
Images The GFX 50R was fitted with a 32-64mm for this nine image exposure bracket shot at +/-1 EV steps. The metered correct exposure was 1/80sec f/11 and ISO 100. Processing and exposure recovery was done in Lightroom.
Above Images of detail rich scenes like this show GFX 50R can do.
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