Before You Click Buy On The New & Shiny Thing…: GFX100, RF & S.

Subtitle: Hamish was right.

Hamish, of 35mmc by the way.

As stated in an earlier post,…

So… The Fujifilm GFX100RF: Great… But Is It The Right GFX Camera For Me?

…in an email exchange where I was blathering a bit about my decision to trade a bunch of gear for the newly announced FUJIFILM GFX100 RF,…

…he stopped me cold with this:

“I dunno man, I’m not convinced for myself… I think if I was going to go MF digital, I’d want to be able to mount random lenses to it.”

This changed the course of my gear purchase. I ignored the latest and greatest and landed on an option much better suited to me.

In short, Hamish was right. To wit I gather they have the same sensor, but…

A slightly longer focal length of 50mm better suits my needs compared to the RF’s 40mm lens.
A slightly brighter f/3.5 aperture better suits my needs compared to the RF’s f/4 lens.
S has IBIS, where the RF does not.
S and 50mm f/3.5 used cost slightly less. But most importantly…
The ability to use other lenses.

To counter, here are the S downsides.

RF is newer and cooler.
- This is a legitimate consideration, and I would not fault anyone for going with the latest, coolest-looking kit. If it motivates you to get out there and create, have at it.
Significantly larger.
- So if compactness is your main aim, then RF it is. But compactness and medium format do seem an odd feature set when I think about it. But if that is what you are after, FUJIFILM has you covered.

Me?

I do like me a cool looking camera, so I get it.

Newest does not move the needle much for me however.

I kind of get a kick out of making use of older gear to fit my purpose.

And even the newest kit will soon be considered old news, and constantly chasing after the newest releases does not sound like a good time for me… once I think about it.

Which is why I appreciate friends like Hamish who respectfully speak their minds instead of cheering me on.

But I recently had a thought. Dangerous, I know.

While I snapped up a comparable 50mm f/3.5 as the first lens because of it coming so close to the lens spec of the RF, I almost immediately pivoted to adapted…

35mm M Glass On GFX Medium Format (1 of 2): Voigtländer 28mm f/2.0 Ultron Vintage Aspherical VM Lens Type I.

35mm M Glass On GFX Medium Format (2 of 2): Voigtländer Nokton 40mm f/1.2 Aspherical.

…and faster glass…

Lens I Had Was Fine Until It Wasn’t: FUJIFILM GF 80mm f/1.7 R WR Preview.

I wondered how I would have gotten on with the RF. So I decided to make myself use only the 50mm f/3.5 for a few days. I did leave IBIS on however. I am not a savage.

Here are the results of those couple of days with thoughts afterward.

Rollei 35AF — Heavy crop. This is something that is handy about this pairing. Knowing I had 100MP at my disposal I took this pic wider than I wanted to as close as I could instead of swapping to a closer focus lens or a different camera and lens since I could just crop later. Which is what I did. The same could be done for a portrait. So, to a certain degree there is flexibility to be had with just one lens.

Thoughts.

These are perfectly good pictures. With a GFX100RF I could have created very similar results, even without IBIS.

I do not really count things like crops accessed by a dedicated lever because these are things that could be set to a shortcut on the S or easily done in post. Nice. But hard to count it as an asset.

But now that I have had access to more glass with the S, like adapted fast glass…

…and more significantly a lens perfectly suited to my main reason for wanting a medium format camera, portraits. Specifically the GF 80mm f/1.7.

As much as I like the RF it is not made to do that. Not a failing of the camera. That is not what it is made for. But not only that the 80mm f/1.7 is great for interesting photos outside of formal portraits.

So… RF… It is not you, it’s me.

I was looking for something else. And I found it in a camera released by the same company in 2021, which is currently going for half its original asking price when new. And other than the lack of a claim to latest and greatest and having the fairest, most beautiful GF in the land, you can have a near RF experience with the GF 50mm f/3.5 if you wish. It is almost all upside where I am concerned. One could argue a slightly better overall experience when you take the slightly longer focal length, slightly brighter aperture, IBIS, and lower price into consideration.

Nice.

It just confirms what I have been saying in this space for a while now. Current camera gear releases have surpassed my use case. I do not argue that they are technical marvels. They are. But for a guy like me that is perfectly happy playing with rudimentary, decades old film cameras…