Reader Comment: “great success with the Fujifilm GFX100S for people”
Related: Fujifilm, Fujifilm GFX100S, Fujifilm medium format, Fujifilm mirrorless, medium format, reader comment, Roy P
My concern about the horizontal white stripes on the Fujifilm GFX100S has little to do with color photography, and (almost) everything to do with being able to make a monochrome rendition for landscape images.
Fujifilm GF 32-64mm f/4 has a $500 rebate as this was written—grab one.
Roy P writes with a testimonial for people photography:
For all its warts, I’ve had great success with the GFX100S for people, street photography and macros (with extension tubes, not with the 120F4 macro, but with any of my other lenses and the Fuji extension tubes – it works very well), which were my intended use cases for this camera. I did my first people event last weekend, with about 70 people attending. It was an engagement party / celebration. I took some 420 photos, using both my Sony A1 and the Fujifilm GFX100S roughly equally.
With the Sony, I used the Sony FE 35/1.4 GM (50%), Sony FE 50/1.2 GM (30%) and Sony FE 70-200/2.8 GM (20%), not counting a couple of shots with the Sony FE 12-24/2.8 GM. With the Fujifilm GFX100S, I ended up using the Fujifilm GF 32-64/4 for about 75% of the shots, and the 110/2 for about 25% of the shots. I also had the Fuji 45-100/4 and 50/3.5 with me, but ended up not using them.
The big advantage of the Fujifilm GFX100S over the Sony A1 is that you can extensively crop and still be left with a lot of pixels. At people events with many people randomly moving about, if you want to take candid shots, you inevitably get a lot of things and people you don’t want in the frame, so you have to crop. You can do that even with the A1, but the GFX100S obviously gives you a lot more material to work with.
I don’t know if a 100MP Sony A7R V is the answer – maybe it will be. But I’m pretty happy with the image quality I get out of the GFX100S for these use cases (color, exposure, even Eye AF). Yes, the Sony lenses buy you more micro contrast and DOF, but I end up softening peoples’ faces anyway – otherwise, it’s brutal, especially on older women!
So net-net, the GFX100S is delivering for me. When the 80/1.7 becomes available again, I plan to get one to replace the defective unit I had to send back. It would be nice if I could also get the $500 off…. Not sure of the 23mm, but I might be tempted by the 250/4 if it goes on sale. It should be lovely for tight head shots.
DIGLLOYD: makes total sense to me. But I’m still wishing for a 100MP landscape camera that doesn’t jeopardize my realization of a high-grade monochrome image in the areas I frequent.
