Reader Comment: Fujifilm GFX100S and Captures for Monochrome
Related: black and white, Contrast and Phase Detect Autofocus, digital artifacts, focusing, Fujifilm, Fujifilm GFX100S, Fujifilm medium format, Fujifilm mirrorless, medium format, Michael K, noise, pattern noise, PDAF banding and striping noise, reader comment, striping pattern noise
Reader Michael K writes:
Can't wait to see your feedback on whether the GFX100S can be pressed into full service for monochrome captures.
If so I would get 3 of them and convert to mono / IF and UV. Expensive but I think I would be good for 10 years of use.
I really don't see much more coming from the dedicated camera companies in the coming years, the market is shrinking so fast under pressure from phones with amazing software, endless cheap images and machine learning /AI, they are all going to be dead or near so in 10 years.
DIGLLOYD: me too! Since I am going to buy a Fujifilm GFX100S.
Fujifilm has a huge hit on their hands with the GFX100S.
GFX100S and GFX100 images I've seen from readers recently suggest that the Fujifilm GFX100 light stripes issue known as PDAF banding has largely been resolved. That would explain why it did not crop up last May with my work on the GFX100.
But with aggressive monochrome conversions from color, there might be some lingering unavoidable patterns that could be color dependent; nothing beats field use under varying conditions to see if the problem is de minimus.
If the problem is indeed licked, then a monochrome sensor conversion of the GFX100S could be awesome, assuming the GFX100S can be converted successfully (chemically stripping off the Bayer matrix).
As for the iPhone stuff: it still produces garbage under the most interesting conditions (dusk etc) and even in raw... the physics won't change much. Yes, it has shrunk the market considerably. OTOH, we are in the golden age of photography both because of phone cameras making photography so easy, and because cameras and lenses have never been so good. And it’s not clear to me that as the phone camera crowd matures that we might in fact see a resurgence of interest in more capable cameras.
