I didn’t expect to fall for the Fujifilm GFX100RF. I’d already decided it wasn’t for me before I even picked it up. On paper, it seemed like a frustrating compromise; fixed wide lens, f/4 maximum aperture and a price that puts it in the 'you’d better be sure' category. But a month with one in my hands changed all that.
This is Fujifilm’s newest medium format camera, but it’s not the hulking studio camera you might imagine. It’s a compact camera, the first digital medium format with a fixed lens – in this case a Fujinon 35mm f/4 (28mm equivalent).
Pair that with a 102MP CMOS sensor and you’ve got a strange hybrid: a camera that slips into your travel bag, but produces files with the kind of depth and tonality that makes full-frame look a little flat-footed.
When it was announced, I even wrote that it should have been my ideal camera, but it wasn’t. I’ll eat those words.
In use, it feels like someone mashed my beloved X100 series into my GFX100, then smoothed over the awkward edges. It’s still a wide lens but, with this much resolution, cropping is guilt-free. The clever digital crop switch enables you to see your framing from 35mm to 80mm (28mm to 63mm equivalents) in real time; a tiny feature that turned out to be a big deal for the way I shoot.
That f/4 aperture? A non-issue. Medium format gives you so much latitude in low light that I stopped thinking about it entirely. And autofocus, once the achilles heel of medium format, is fast, confident and frankly remarkable.
The X-Processor 5, Intelligent Hybrid AF and multi-subject detection just get on with it. People, birds, planes, motorbikes – it felt as quick as my X100 while in the field.
The price, understandably, will make some pause. But when you realise that the new Sony RX1R III, another fixed-lens compact, is $5,099 / £4,200, the GFX100RF’s $5,399 / £4,700 price tag starts looking less outrageous.
For a few hundred more, you’re holding a camera with a sensor that dwarfs full-frame, with 102MP of resolution, Fujifilm’s color science and those addictive Film Simulations.
I took it travelling, thinking I’d have to make excuses for it. Instead, it became the camera I didn’t want to give back.
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Check out our guides to the best compact cameras and the best medium-format cameras.
