My First Impression on Fujifilm GFX 50S

Updated: Jul 8, 2020

During last week's Fujifilm Festival in Venice Beach, California, I had a chance to loan the GFX 50s with GF 63mm F2.8 to play around a little bit thanks to Fujifilm. I want to share with you some of my thoughts about this medium format camera. This was my first time to use a medium format camera.

Color

I love the original colors from the GFX 50s. The jpeg color out of the camera is richer than the X-T series. I guess maybe because it has a different type of sensor. Below is an example of the original jpeg photo from my shoot with Alex.

Model: @chiefwolfblood 63mm F2.8 GFX 50s

Shutter

Because it's a medium format camera and it has a huge sensor, there was a shutter lag when I pressed the shutter. However, I really like the sound from the shutter and it sounded like an old vintage camera. This camera is not intended to capture moving subjects or sports, the max frame rate is like 3 frames per second. I challenged myself to use this camera in Omar's dance workshop and used a single frame per shutter. I learned how to time the dance move and learned from Omar's lecture. Below are the results that I used the GFX 50s for the dance workshop.

Model: @maxinehupy 63mm F2.8 GFX 50s

Model: @itsandiebartol @stephaniekim5 63mm F2.8 GFX 50s

Model: @stephaniekim5 63mm F2.8 GFX 50s

I love the image quality from the GFX 50s. After this dance workshop, I have learned that how fast is the camera to capture the movement, it's about understanding the dance move and time it perfectly.

Backlight

As many of you may know, I have to do a backlight test on any new camera I test because I love backlight so much :) So I chose an alley and found some backlight to shoot portraits with. The result from 63mm F2.8 turned out nicely. I love how the bokeh/blur smoothly transition into the sharpness. (See below for example)

Model: @chiefwolfblood 63mm F2.8 GFX 50s

The overall rendering feel is different than my X-T3's rendering. Below I will show one from my X-T3:

Model: @chiefwolfblood 35mm F1.4 X-T3

Price

Price is an important factor for me, the GFX 50s currently costs $5499 in Amazon, and the 63mm F2.8 costs $1265. Total price is about $6700 dollars. Even though it's the cheapest within the medium format, for my current budget, it's very expensive for my personal use. I will probably ask Fujifilm to loan me one to create content and comparison later on this year.

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