Photography News Issue 41

Photography News | Issue 41 | absolutephoto.com

Camera test 41

Inassociation

Left The touchscreen works well, in particular when previewing shots. With gestures most of us know from using smart devices it is quick to check sharpness. Above Taking off the lens reveals the large sensor. Whether it will suffer from dust problems, time will tell but the wide lens throat and the large sensor makes manual cleaning easier. Below There are options when it comes to using the camera. The standard EVF allows eye-level shooting but that finder can be swapped for a tilt finder, or removed entirely and live view used. The tiltable monitor then means that waist- or low-level shooting is easy.

I touchscreen functionality although inevitably I managed to take a couple of shots of my feet and occasionally the AF point found itself at the extreme of the frame. The only shooting scenario where the camera’s meter got a work out was a boudoir scene lit with continuous lighting, and even here I used manual and the scale in viewfinder. Therefore, judgement on the GFX 50S’s exposure skills will have to wait for the full test. The same applies to ISO. Our cameraswere fullyworking samples but pre-production so that should be borne in mind when viewing the sample pictures here. I shot super fine JPEG and Raw at a variety of ISOsettings up to 12,800, and the images reproduced here are straight-out-of-the-camera JPEGs. No Raw converter was available at the time of writing. File sizes were around 28MB for the JPEGs and the Raws 117MB. Assuming 300ppi, the JPEGs give a printable image measuring 27.5x20.6in so that’s bigger than A2 without interpolation. I made a selection of A2 and A3 prints as well as examining images on screen. Looking at my A3 and A2 prints, there is no doubt the GFX system is capable of delivering excellent quality. An interesting comparison would have been with 35mm full- frame and that will come in the full liked the

test, but there’s no denying that the GFX files showed silky smooth tonality, fine detail was very well resolved and noise was low. Summary Two hours with the Fujifilm GFX 50S was a short time so the final verdict will have to wait. Instead we’ll just discuss some good and less good points from our first experience, starting with the cons. If we compare the GFX system with smaller formats, then it’s expensive, bulky if you want several lenses, the 1/125sec flash sync is limited for daylight flash, the lens range (even when six are available) is limited and continuous shooting speed is modest. That’s not a fair comparison though and if we compare like with like the scenario is different. The GFX 50S is very nicely priced, compact and light; some rivals have equally limited lens options and shooting speed is comparable. The flash sync speed is the remaining con and that is only relevant if you mix daylight with flash and a leaf shutter lens (not currently on the lens roadmap) would resolve that. So what are the overall pros? In my view, image quality, excellent, intuitive and responsive handling, compact for a larger-format camera and price – £7600 for the camera and standard lens is truly great value for what you get.