FUJ I F I LM GFX1 00 | USER REVI EW
RIGHT The GFX100 is clearly not designed for use as a video camera, but has true abilities in this market
ne hundred and two megapixels! That’s a hell of a headline for a stills camera. It seems that
Fujifilm has thrown everything at its new GFX100 – that huge pixel count on a back-side illuminated sensor that measures a whopping 43.8x32.9mm; 3.76 million phase detection pixels, spread across the sensor for super-fast autofocus; the 5.76 million dot EVF from the GFX 50S – all wrapped up in a lightweight but sturdy DSLR body with a built-in battery grip, featuring duplicate controls for vertical shooting. And it captures video. FEATURES Of course, everything captures video now right? The question is, how good is that video? Can it live up to the astonishing capabilities of the rest of the camera? First things first, the GFX100 is a DSLR. It’s in the class known as ‘medium format’ – a hangover from the good old days of 120 roll film – but it looks and handles like a normal high-end DSLR. Being mirrorless, it has some interesting features, like the removable OLED viewfinder, which is surprisingly good. In fact, this works better as a video viewfinder than it’s ‘primary’
“THERE ARE FLEXIBLE ZEBRA SETTINGS AND FOCUS PEAKING”
on-screen tally to show you that you aren’t seeing the full frame). The buttons on the camera are software mappable, so I assigned a couple to these video-specific functions. The user configuration of the camera is, in general, excellent. The rear touchscreen LCD is on a two-axis mount, so you can flip it up for low-angle shots, down for high-angle and sideways… for filming round corners? The top-plate LCD is usually inverted (white characters on a black background) and is on all the time – when you click on its backlight, it flips to non-inverted. As well as the usual display of focus modes and aperture settings, this LCD can also display a full-screen histogram – nice if you prefer to keep the viewfinder uncluttered. LENS MOUNT In general, the controls are all well laid out and logical. In fact, I enjoyed using this camera more than any previous Fujifilm DSLR. The GFX100 does away with the manual setting rings of previous cameras which, bizarrely, I prefer – I always found these a little confusing, as it seemed you could override them in software, making them worse than useless. The G lens mount was developed by Fujifilm for the medium format sensor size. The wide throat and short flange- to-focal-plane distance should enable plenty of third-party lens adapters. Indeed, Kipon makes one
role – it has too high contrast and flickers annoyingly when shooting stills, but (other than a tiny bit of aliasing on near horizontal/vertical lines) it feels like a ground-glass screen in video mode. There are flexible zebra settings and focus peaking, as well as a focus viewfinder zoom (with an
BELOW The G lens mount was developed by Fujifilm for the medium format sensor size
SEPTEMBER 20 1 9 | DEF I N I T ION 95
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