GFX100RF: The midlife crisis camera

My favourite camera of all time is the X100. I have never tried so much as a full-frame camera.

Naturally then, I've dreamt about a fixed lens GFX for years. Something small and light, without the expense or commitment of entering a new system.

When I heard the first rumours of dream becoming reality, I had my own thoughts and wishes about what such a camera could look like. And now with the announcement the GFX100RF, this superposition of a fantasy collapsed into a real, €5500 proposition.

In some ways the final specs fell short of the camera that lived in my minds eye, free of reality's physical constraints.

I was forced to reconcile €5.5k with the sluggish f4 lens, finally coming to the practical realisation that if it were any faster I'd be reconciling the €5.5k with a camera that was larger and heavier than I'd dreamed, just another complaint about a reality that literally could never exist.

Luckily, the RF arrived just in time for my midlife crisis. With no Porsche on the horizon, my list of pros and cons and backs and forths and arguments and counterarguments ultimately boiled down to: "Fuck it".

I've now had the camera for one day, for one photowalk, so here are my very initial impressions.

If you're interested in this camera, you've probably consumed everything YouTube has to offer. So I'll try and keep this specifically from the perspective of someone like me, a casual Fuji shooter who has never shot full frame (or above), who has bounced between the X100 and XT for over a decade, and who probably shouldn't have spent 5k on a new camera.

Imposter

The first thing to get out the way is the very obvious. This is a ridiculous purchase. No camera is worth €5.5k, it just isn't.

I'm also not under any illusion that a GFX will make my photos "better" as such. I don't feel like I've hit a limit with the X-Series. And honestly, because of this, picking the RF up for the first time, I felt kinda stupid, like I wasn't worthy of owning such an expensive camera.

Ultimately, buying this camera is just a treat to myself to enjoy, which I think is okay sometimes in life. It's not deeper than that, and once I'd taken just a couple shots I was having such a blast that I quickly put these thoughts behind me, where they belong.

Design

As said, the X100 is my favourite camera. I've owned two, the S and the V. The fixie GFX of my dreams was literally an upscaled X100.

Well, tada.

Looking at the two cameras side-by-side, it's ridiculous, almost a caricature. It's beyond homage - the original X100 CAD files must be in the version history itself.

Everything that's the same, is the same. But a touch bigger. The shutter is the same, but a touch bigger. The dials are the same, bigger. The back screen, the thumbstick. Everything.

All the design language and curves and straight lines are present here. I love this.

Everything is refined too. The aperture ring is just that bit more satisfying, with an addictive clunkiness. The focus ring is deeper and easier to use.

It's almost comical, even OVF/EVF toggle is here. But there's no OVF.

The EVF though, honestly for me if everything else was literally an X100, the EVF alone would be worth a good deal of the price. I've always felt the Fuji EVFs to be serviceable but this thing is like standing in front of The Night Watch by comparison. The detail and color reproduction are so good that I'm starting to think about dabbling in manual focus. It is very enjoyable.

The camera comes with a "premium" strap that, as someone who is picky about straps, was lovely. It had just enough grip that the camera wasn't swing forward from my back, and it was easy to use as a wrist strap. The interface is a little inflexible however, getting in the way of a comfortable shutter grip.

Because the RF's visual identity is so rooted in the X100, the things that have been removed feel very conspicuous by their absence.

Specifically, the missing EVF and flash leave the new taller "forehead" looking especially bare. I think the camera overall is gorgeous, but there's something a little clinical-feeling here.

Medium format

There's a few aspects of the medium format sensor that I've always been attracted to.

I often shoot at night, so the enhanced light gathering is one. The lack of IBIS on this camera, for me, is completely fine. I rarely go below 1/30, ever. But when spending so much money it's hard to swallow that the slow f4 lens will undo most gains vs my X100V.

Likewise there's the "medium format look" by which I gather people mean the dreamy low depth of field. Most of my photos don't really lean into shallow DoF or bokeh so I'm not fussed about this, but the slow f4 again means this really won't be too different to my X100V and its f2.

That said, there is something about its sensor that intuitively feels different. I couldn't describe it, but when people talk about "full frame equivalent" I believe they're strictly talking field of view (FoV) which is only one aspect of a lens. I don't know enough about this to explain it but I feel like this surely means there's a different relationship with lens length in terms of background compression when moving between sensors. Though, this is more of an aside that is more spidersensual than something I know even the first thing about.

The real meat of this sensor though, is its 100 megapixels. I don't need 100MP and actually in my prediction post I worried that this would just be wasted details and unwieldy files. Mercifully, working with these files on a M3 Air seems completely fine.

My other point on 100MP was wondering if the fixie GFX would come with a wide lens and lean into digital crop. Where the X100 and Leica Q are all about the limitations-as-freedom, prime lens on steroids, leaning into the extreme cropability of the sensor would be a completely different philosophical approach.

Fuji ended up going harder on this than I ever could have imagined, with a new aspect ratio dial and digital zoom lever.

Aspect ratio dial

The first core addition to the camera is the aspect ratio dial. It's a genius piece of UI that elevates crop to prime real estate. When the first rumour of this landed, I almost cheered.

Any Fuji fan who's been targeted by the YouTube algorithm will be aware of the mythology around the XPan, the Fuji/Hassleblad panoramic film camera that takes photos like this:

Surfacing this control essentially makes the RF a digital XPan and, indeed, I found myself bouncing between 4:3 and 65:24 all day.

This would simply not be the same experience if this control was buried in the menus. Or for the "just crop in post" crowd: I am truly jealous of people who can compose this wide ratio in their head. Because I was having trouble doing it in the camera.

Digital zoom lever

The digital zoom lever was also something I was excited for. I have the top function button on my XT5 set to cycle through crop modes but with the much smaller 40mp sensor you really feel comfortable only going one level tighter. Whereas here, even the highest zoom mode will give me an image only slightly smaller than my X100V.

The lever itself is a little spongier than you'd want or expect, given the confidence and responsiveness of the rest of the controls. This is a shame because this is also another manual control that, for exactly the same reasons as the aspect ratio dial, I wanted surfaced. I will play with this a lot.

The two controls together take what is a essentially a one dimensional camera like the X100 and blow it out into a three dimensional experience, where you've been given extra lenses and extra films.

Of course, this completely destroys the traditional experience of using a prime or a fixed lens. But that's the beauty of this camera, the thing that really justifies its own existence. It's not just a higher-resolution X100 or Q3, it's something entirely different.

Conclusion

So it stands to reason that the predominant first reaction of opining YouTubers and FujiRumor commenters is "who is this for?"

It's for me, at least.

In many ways it's a deluxe X100. This alone might be enough for someone to be interested. The EVF, overall feeling of the controls, improved image quality all speak to this.

But all these improvements add up to a completely different kind of experience in a way that is paradoxically nothing at all like the X100 or other existing fixed lens cameras. It's untethered to its own apparent limitations in a way that changes the shooting experience. Suddenly a whole class of photos becomes possible in a way that keeps you mentally engaged, thinking with both zoom and aspect ratio.

All on a camera that's lighter than my XT5 + lens. It's weird, and freeing, and perhaps even a little demanding.

It all lends to an experience that's quite considered. I was thinking a lot more than I usually am on a photowalk. Even when you press the shutter, there's a long blackout that feels like you took a photo at 1/2 when you were really at 1/4000. I'm certain this is a GFX technical limitation rather than a design choice but, if it were a choice, it would really fit.

Is the RF worth €5.5k? Honestly, what is? Beyond a house, I don't think I've spent that much money on anything, ever. But hey. Maybe if you're turning 40, love the X100, and have always wanted a fixed lens GFX.