So I never talk about the equipment I use, since photography is about the experience. After a lifetime of shooting on Canon equipment (and I love Canon gear) a year ago I picked up a used Fujifilm GFX100 medium format camera. I picked it up because after years of being enticed of a Canon EOS R5s I became frustrated, and when a used Fujifilm GFX100 became available I thought I would give it a try. Now most people won’t appreciate it, but the sensor is 79% larger than the cameras I use, and the resolutyion is more than 2x more, a whooping 102MP. If it was only the change in resolution, it’s mildly exciting but the images go from 14bit to 16 bit files. This means that in the worst conditions, the images have so much more information. But a camera system is only as good as its lenses. Over a year I have picked up several lenses with the best being the Fujifilm GFX 20-35mm f/4 and the 45-100mm f/4. The below image in the Stockholm harbor being shot on the 20-35mm lens
But let’s consider the worst lenses on the GFX line, the 35-70mm variable aperture and the 100-200mm variable aperture. Let’s first consider the 35-70mm variable aperture lens. It is often considered a “kit lens”. Now a kit lens is often considered as cheap with poor optical quality but the 35-70mm lens is not that. Even on a 102MP camera which will stretch any camera to its limits, it is sharp and free of major aberrations. In this image of Sunset Crater (National Monument), the image is acceptable sharp.
And when shown at 100%, the image is free from chromatic aberration
In this image at 100% on a 102MP sensor, no aberration is apparent.
The other tense would be the 100-200mm lens (in this case with a Fujifilm GF1.4 teleconverter which should soften the images). Below is a shot taken at a virtual 280mm, but 221mm in full frame equivalent). Th image is a panorama and looks acceptably sharp.
But when you enlarge the image by 100% the image is still very sharp
With this system, even with the worst lenses available the images are spectacular.
For a camera with a 102MP sensor resolution, the dynamic range is also impressive. In the below shot, the image was exposed for the moon which is 1/100sec, but the foreground was basically black, but the sensor was sensitive enough to recover all the detail (which the same image shot on my Canon EOS R5 really struggled with).
This is why I have added this camera to my system