When Apple introduced the iPhone 15 Pro, Greg Joswiak, the company’s senior vice president of worldwide marketing, said the device’s three rear cameras would give consumers “the equivalent of seven camera lenses in their pocket.”
We could spend multiple podcasts debating the technical validity of that statement, but what Joswiak was trying to imply was that the iPhone now had sensors with a resolution that was big and high enough that it could crop in to emulate various focal lengths.
Now, Fujifilm is trying the same thing.
With a 35mm lens stuck to a body shockingly similar to the super-popular X100VI, it would be easy to assume Fuji’s new GFX100RF is the company’s attempt to take a winning strategy and scale it up to medium format.
But while most fixed-lens cameras like the X100VI create intentional limitations and encourage you to shoot more than you think, the GFX100RF is all about flexibility and intentionality. Using its high-resolution 102MP sensor, an all-new aspect ratio dial and four different digital “zoom” modes, Fujifilm aims to replace nine cameras and four lenses with one relatively compact body.
Fujifilm’s GFX100RF is the company’s most compact medium-format camera yet. Housing the same sensor as its flagship GFX100II, the $4,900 camera is hugely capable, delivering the same delightful physical controls and rich colors the brand is known for. There’s a reason people love shooting with Fujifilm cameras, and if you’re looking for more of that experience, the GFX100RF won’t let you down.
The new twist this camera adds to the formula is its aspect ratio dial. This physical dial, mounted to the back of the camera, lets you pick from one of nine different formats to frame your image. As someone who still shoots a lot of old film cameras, it had me geeking out big time. Particularly, because the aspect ratios the camera offers are based on real film cameras Fujifilm manufactured decades ago. It’s a very fun throwback. You can choose between 4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 17:6, 3:4, 1:1, 7:6, 5:4, and, my favorite, 65:24 — an homage to Fujifilm’s legendary TX-1 panoramic camera.
Because Fujifilm didn’t include the hybrid optical viewfinder like you’ll see in the X100VI and X-Pro3, it included three different view modes for composing with those aspect ratios instead. You can see the full scene with frame lines, a 50% opacity mode that lets you see what’s outside your frame, or a full blackout mode that only shows the crop you’re shooting.
After testing this camera for about a month, I’ve started to wonder why every camera doesn’t have a dial like this. Carrying the camera around Utah, it was a ton of fun to jump around different ratios while composing a photo, and in multiple circumstances, an image that I’d only considered ‘good’ in the full 4:3 mode was upgraded to ‘great’ once I found the right crop for it.
Now obviously, when you crop out a large portion of an image, you’re also cropping a decent amount of resolution. But even when using the most-cropped 65×24 ratio, you’re still left with a large 50MP file. And if you shoot RAW in addition to JPG and you edit in Adobe Lightroom, RAW files will be ingested pre-cropped with the option to zoom out to the full 4:3 image. I love that.
The super-high resolution of the sensor has another benefit, though. The GFX100RF offers four virtual focal lengths, which crop into the center of the sensor to deliver a different field of view. The camera offers 35mm, 45mm, 63mm, and 80mm options, which equate to about 28mm, 35mm, 50mm and 63mm in full-frame terms. These “zoom” modes will also cost you resolution too, though, with the full 80mm focal length cropped to 65×24 spitting out a 9MP image.
To make zooming in simple, Fujifilm added a small switch to the front of the camera similar to what you’d see on an old camcorder. And right above that, you’ll find a remappable knurled dial, which strangely wasn’t mapped to anything out of the box on my unit.
It feels like Fujifilm built this camera to do it all, and in a lot of ways, it defies expectations of what a fixed-lens camera is built to do. But unfortunately, the GFX100RF is also limited in two key ways: a relatively slow f/4 aperture and a lack of optical image stabilization.
An f/4 aperture on Fujifilm’s medium format sensor equates to about f/3.16 on a full-frame camera, and while that isn’t horrible by any means, it felt limiting in my time with it. A slower aperture means less light on the sensor, and less light means pushing up the ISO or pulling down the shutter speed. On a camera like the Fujifilm X100VI with optical image stabilization, I could comfortably drop the shutter speed down to a full second hand-held. But on the GFX100RF, the slowest I could comfortably shoot handheld without getting a shaky image was 1/30 — maybe 15th if I was especially steady.
As someone who carries around a tripod nearly every time I go take photos, this wasn’t a huge deal for me. But Fujifillm is positioning this camera as the best everyday camera on the market, and without a faster lens or optical image stabilization, you might have trouble shooting with this camera once the light gets low, unless you use uncomfortably high ISO values. When I had to shoot in lower light, I often switched to Fuji’s excellent Acros black and white simulation, which is made to look quite grainy anyway.
It’s understandable why Fujifilm may not have added optical image stabilization to this camera. The 100RF is only marginally bigger than the Fujifilm X100VI, so it may not have developed a stabilization system compact enough for the body yet. And at $4,899, which is still quite expensive, this camera comes in cheaper than any other GFX body Fujifilm currently sells. Plus, this one includes a lens.
But what perplexes me the most about the camera is the decision to use an f/4 aperture. Taken alone, the lens is shockingly small — smaller than every dedicated GF lens that Fujifilm sells by a long shot. But Fuji also includes a lens hood and filter adapter ring in the box, and, added together, these accessories just about triple the overall footprint of the lens to the point where it’s about as big as the lens on the Leica Q3. And at that point, why not just make a bigger, faster lens?
There’s no doubt the GFX100RF will be consistently compared to Leica’s full-frame Q3 — primarily because, until recently, if you wanted an even remotely new fixed-lens camera with a large sensor, the Q3 was pretty much your only option. And while Fujifilm has Leica beat with its new versatile aspect ratio dial and ultra-high resolution, Leica trades those features for a much faster f/1.7 lens and optical image stabilization. Which features matter to you is probably going to depend on what kind of photographer you are. And, at the very least, I’m glad there’s finally another option available on the market.
I really loved my time with this camera. Composing nearly every aspect of your final image in-camera is a real joy, and I have a soft spot in my heart for physical dials. But for a camera that aspires to do it all with one lens, you’re going to need a tripod to make that a reality.
Photography by David Imel
