The above photo isn’t something you get to see everyday in real life unless you work in the industry, but Leica and Leica Store Miami were great hosts for the Miami Street Photography Festival event Wednesday night and I really wanted to see how these systems compared with their best fast fifties attached. The size difference is pretty astounding in some ways if you think about how small the Leica S is with a mirror and large sensor and it really made me double down hard that the Leica SL should have had a medium format sensor inside.
The Fujifilm GFX and Leica SL are very close in size with the SL being a little smaller. Out of all the medium format cameras I have touched the Leica S is the only competitor to the Fujifilm GFX made today that can meet and beat it in the speed/feature department, which is why if they can get the Leica S inside a SL type/size boy at a resonable price point before the GFX becomes too big it could be huge for Leica. The funny thing is the GFX was the star of the show in many ways and everyone was interested to see it and touch it, which lead to many side by side shots in the store with the S and SL, but very few people were interested in the new Sony a7RIII.
Fujifilm is gaining a ton of recognition thanks to the GFX and it’s a huge attention getter at photograhy events that can quickly lead to a crowd, which is very Leica like and most photographers I spoke too do not mind the price point. Yet, looking back at the pictures it makes me think about how Leica could really become a leader in the world of photography again with the proper guidance and engineering. They do so much right with the limited amount of buttons on their cameras and the way features are impliments, but then they do really dumb things too like put the GPS adapter in the EVF on the new Leica M10, which kills the camera for a photographer like me. They should have just made a sleak adapter.
I am glad Leica is doing well financially, but I think Fujifilm is going to continue to eat into everyones market thanks to everything they learned from Leica. Time and time again they out Leica, Leica and that’s great news for Fujifilm and bad news for Leica.
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Fujifilm GFX 50S: B&H Photo / Amazon / Adorama
