Why would anyone replace a GFX 50S with another 50 MP GFX?
Upgrading from a GFX50S to a GFX50S II seems irrational. The sensor is essentially the same 50 MP Sony device, the image quality is identical. If you’re deciding between a used GFX50S II and a 100S, this article won’t answer that question.
But I have my reasons. My priorities are long exposures, infrared and manual lenses, which led me deliberately towards the 50 MP sensor.
I have had a GFX50s for a few years (purchased used). I’m not made of money, nor the kind of person who thinks £5000 for a camera is “affordable” and even a used, early generation Fuji medium format camera was quite expensive for me, a bit of an extravagance I bought myself as a retirement present. I originally bought it to explore the medium format experience, but eventually it found its primary niche as a long exposure camera, a role in which it excels.
But I’ve had a love-hate relationship with the camera.
On the one hand, beautiful 50MP images from the large sensor, freedom from noise and hot pixels in multi-minute exposures and the extended shutter speeds available in T mode provide a fairly friction-free long exposure experience. On the other hand, the weight and bulk, and the awkwardness of the oddly-shaped form factor always reminded me I was lugging a medium format camera.
I have been casting envious eyes at the newer generation Fuji’s for some time, the much more svelte body shape and the addition of IBIS seemed to promise a more full-frame style experience. However, the 100MP bodies come with a couple of disadvantages (aside from the price) – the PDAF pixels that provided the speedier autofocus also came with an increased risk of striped patterning in more extreme conditions (such as long exposures and IR work) and the denser sensor seemed more prone to hot pixels which can be a pain to remove. For most photographers these aren’t significant concerns. For someone who shoots multi-minute exposures and infrared photography, they are.
The release of the GFX50s II promised an improvement in usability without the drawbacks of the 100MP sensor. However, it is a lot of money for a camera that is just a refinement on what I already had. The files are the same. Dynamic range is the same. Colour is the same. Long exposure quality is the same. If you expected noticeably better image quality you’ll be disappointed. As a result I ignored it – until this year when used prices fell to what seems like a more reasonable level (for a medium format camera) and I took the plunge and emptied my photography savings account.
This article is not a full review or a brief first impressions, but a look at the things I like and dislike about the mark II.
Things I like
1. The new shape
The original GFX50s (I’ll call it the mark I from now on) is, let’s be honest, awkwardly shaped.
While it is small and light compared to traditional medium format digital cameras like Phase One or Pentax, when compared to a modern mirrorless full frame or APS-C, it is bulky. Ugly, awkward.
It has that hump at the back which holds the large battery. This forces the EVF to be large in order to stretch back over the hump. The body is quite thick and for my hands, even though the grip is substantial, it still felt inadequate in a way that many of the earlier Sony A7 series always seemed to have a slightly too small grip for perfect comfort. I bulked the grip on mine out with a half-case, but even then it never quite felt thick enough for such a large body with such large lenses. And even though the EVF eyepiece sticks out like a telescope eyepiece, my nose is still mashed against the back screen.
The mark II in comparison, is svelte. The hump is gone, the back is flat, the battery moved to the handgrip in the conventional position. Maybe not so convenient for tripod work, but better for handholding.
The EVF eyepiece is now compact, much smaller and lower profile than the mark I, and no longer needs to jut out at the back like a sniper scope. There is a small trade off in that the viewfinder image is smaller (I don’t mind that, it is still quite large) and the EVF unit is now non-removable and integrated into the body shell, rather than a clip-on device. This means mark II users no longer have access to the tilt and swivel accessory. Some people will genuinely miss this, but not me, because I never had one.
The grip is not massively different but the indentation for the second finger is deeper which is an improvement. It could be deeper still, mind you. If it were a little deeper you could almost hang the camera from your second finger, but alas, it is not quite deep enough for that. Whether or not the body is actually slimmer, it feels slimmer in the hand. The camera feels more manageable held in one hand. The thumb rest on the back has been dramatically reduced in size which doesn’t negatively affect gripability – which suggests the general balance of the camera is improved.
2. The controls
This is a bit of a controversial area for some who love Fuji for the traditional dials, but the mark II, along with the 100MP models, has moved back to a PASM user interface model. Both have their strengths and weaknesses, but lovers of the traditional dials will rue this. I think I would have preferred the traditional dials, but honestly, PASM is fine. It’s practical if you are used to the approach most modern cameras use.
I have set mine up so that the rear command wheel is configured to exposure compensation, with aperture on the front dial. The rear wheel is larger and more prominent than on the Mark I and I find this a significant improvement. The wheel remains clickable and dual function (as is the front wheel). I have it set so that clicking it zooms in for manual focus or image inspection in playback mode. Clicking the front wheel switches it to ISO setting. You have options for how you assign the wheels, so various customisations are possible and there are 6 custom positions on the mode dial. No shortage of ways you can set the camera up to your preferred way of working.
The mark I has extended shutter speeds available so you can shoot exposure up to an hour without needing a remote release. This is good. But they were hidden away on the T setting on the shutter speed dial. The mark II does away with the shutter speed dial and the T setting, but moved the extended speeds to the Manual mode. That makes sense.
There are also 6 custom buttons that can be set: the tiny exposure compensation button next to the shutter button, two larger buttons to the right of the top plate display, the AF ON button on the rear, the AEL button on the back plate and a custom button on the front plate.
You have a lot of options for these buttons, although given the unfortunate way that the rear command wheel works when assigned to exposure compensation, you have to reserve the +/- button for occasionally re-setting exposure compensation to that rear wheel because it intermittently forgets. So effectively 5 custom buttons.
I have my camera set up so the big top plate buttons are assigned to enable the Giant Preview Histogram mode (capital letters because it really is a giant histogram) and aspect ratios. These settings are all very personal so don’t read that as a recommendation, choose your own favourite configuration. I have AF ON set to switch eye detect mode on and off. This is experimental at the moment, I use AF in a very rudimentary way and may reconfigure this later, but for now it stays. I have the AEL button set to film simulation. I don’t use film simulations, I am a raw shooter, but it is the only way I have found with Fuji to set the EVF to B&W when I am shooting B&W. I have set the front panel button to toggle the self time for when I am shooting long exposures on a tripod.
There are a couple of other useful buttons. The Q button displays a customisable menu. You can define the contents using a menu setting. I think of this as a kind of backup custom button. I wouldn’t want to use it frequently, but I can store extra settings there when I run out of custom buttons. Currently I have it set very minimally to show shutter type. There are also 3 other settings because 4 is the minimum number of options on the Q button, but those are just place holders. No doubt in time, I’ll figure out how to use the Q menu more effectively. There is also a toggle switch for switching between Movie/Still. This enables video shooting mode and also changes the menu system to hide still settings from video options and vice versa. A thoughtful touch, as the menus are pretty complex, and anything that can cut them down a bit is a good idea. Maybe a third setting for raw that would hide the multitude of jpeg options as well might be useful?
The button set is rounded out by a drive button and the standard Fuji focus mode 3-way switch. The latter is much better positioned than on the mark I and falls easily under the thumb. And, of course, the standard Fuji Menu/OK and Disp/back buttons. The drive button now features a pixel shift option and a much more comprehensive multiple exposure option. The joystick selector…well, we’ll talk about that later.
3. The EVF options
This is unchanged from the mark I, but I like it so I’ll mention it. Fuji provide a dedicated sub menu where you can select/deselect every icon for both EVF and rear LCD. This allows you to customise the viewfinder to taste. In my experience, many manufacturers tend to give you display presets and I find there is always something you don’t want or something missing from the presets. Having fine granular control is good. Also, there is an option for making the viewfinder text bigger. As a person of a certain age, I like that.
4. IBIS
Shake reduction, whether in-lens or in-body has been around for a good long while, but neither of the other two 50MP bodies have IBIS and many of the GF lenses don’t have stabilisation. I can’t stress enough how useful it is for allowing you to keep the ISO low and get the most out of the sensor. I won’t go into the exact number of stops it provides or even whether the official numbers make any sense, I’ll just say that it works and it is useful. It is difficult to overstate – IBIS makes a medium format camera much more viable as a handheld device, and I’m very happy the mark II has it. It also allows the provision of pixel shift. PS is controversial in some circles but companies like Panasonic have shown the way in providing genuinely useful implementations. I haven’t yet tried the Fuji PS implementation, but I’ve read that it is very finicky and difficult to avoid motion artefacts. If you place a premium on PS functionality you might want to do some research about how well it works in this camera.
5. Aspect ratios
Most mirrorless cameras embrace the provision of aspect ratios. EVFs make this simple to do and I find having a range of aspect ratio crops that I can use to preview a composition very useful. Fuji GFX provides a larger number of options than most.
Things I don’t like
None of these are a show stopper but some are irritants that could be improved.
1. The grip
The grip is an improvement over the mark I. But it could be better still. The grip is a bit skinny, it could be thicker. The cut out for the second finger seems to have been deepened slightly compared to the mark I but it could usefully be deeper still, and the top plate that positions the shutter release could protrude a fraction more. That way you could hang the weight of the camera vertically on the second finger. Cameras that do this simply handle better. I am using a half case on the mark II and it helps.
2. The inability to set the EVF to B&W or different aspect ratios without enabling raw+jpeg.
I shoot raw, I don’t need jpegs but if I want to preview B&W in the EVF or use the many excellent aspect ratio options, I have to enable jpeg. I can understand why it seems logical, but it is an inconvenience because I have to do the extra step of deleting all the jpegs.
3. The lack of an instant review histogram
Fuji are consistent across their models in this, but it annoys me a lot. Every other mirrorless brand I’ve tried allows you to set the review histogram to appear automatically in the EVF post-capture (if you want it to). I find this very useful for checking exposure and for highlight clipping. Fuji have extensive preview histogram and blinkies but no automatic post capture histogram. Instead, they provide a histogramless post capture review that can be used for checking focus but not exposure. This means I have to wait for the file to save and press the play button to chimp the histogram. It’s not the end of the world, but it is a friction I could do without.
4. The joystick toggle and the loss of the 4 way arrow buttons
I have no idea why Fuji chose to remove those very useful arrow keys. It made navigating multipanel menus and scrolling through images a lot simpler than the joystick. And the operation of the joystick is horrible. It has a tiny delay which encourages you to give it one extra push….and it is balky. Sometime it works, sometimes it doesn’t. The physical form of the joystick is improved over the mark I (larger and more prominent) but its operation is nasty. Minus points here, Fuji, for a control you chose to make critical!
5. The absence of a dedicated exposure compensation wheel
If the much smaller Sony A7 series can provide a dedicated exposure compensation dial and a rear command wheel, I have no idea why Fuji couldn’t. You can use the rear command wheel as a dedicated exposure compensation wheel but to do so you have to press the +/- button to toggle it on. Once on, it nearly stays on, but sometimes for reasons unknown it switches off being the exposure compensation wheel. You can switch it on again easily enough with a quick press of the +/- button but that mysterious tendency to occasionally disable itself means you have to dedicate that button to the job and you can’t repurpose it. This wouldn’t be a problem it there was a separate dedicated exp comp button.
6. Aspect ratios
This is a complaint I am aiming at every manufacturer of mirrorless cameras. If you can provide preset aspect ratio options, why can’t you provide a custom aspect ratio option? Let us choose our own aspect ratio! You could it quite well with a knob or wheel like the GFX100RF has, Turn it to the left to choose vertical dimension and to the right to choose horizontal. That way we could fine tune the viewfinder to the scene and not have to guess or compromise when lining up a composition. For raw shooters, just save the chosen settings in the raw file exif.
Overall
I expect in the fullness of time I’ll find more things I like and dislike and I may revisit and update this article. But for now, I think the mark II, for all its little niggles and despite offering no sensor upgrade over its predecessor, is a better camera for me. The little changes remove friction, it is easier to handhold, and the IBIS is a game-changer.
The GFX50S II hasn’t changed my photographs very much. It has changed how much I enjoy carrying the camera that makes them.