Fujifilm Photography News and Rumors

DPReview interviewed some Fujifilm senior executives at CP+. Below are some excerpts:

GFX and The Market

• Medium Format and Full-Frame will exist side by side
• The GFX50R expanded the medium format audience
• Full-Frame is about 1/3 of the market
• Medium format was 1% of the market and Fujifilm has doubled its size
• No target for the size of the market
• 70% of GFX buyers were coming from other brands DSLRs
• 20% of GFX owners are professionals the other 80% are not
• Fujifilm wants to increase its appeal to professionals
• The GFX100 gives photographers a look at the future of photography
• Full-Frame can probably reach 70-80MP
• GFX lets Fujifilm surpass Full-Frame’s limitations and shows off their glass, which was designed for 100MP
• GFX100 will be released before the end of June
• GF lenses are heavily influenced by X lenses more than their other large format offerings
• GFX100 is targeted at commercial photographers and fashion/landscape, but will also it will help full-frame photographers on other systems see GFX as a serious option for their work
• X Photographers tend to be general purpose and GFX photographers like the look of medium format
• GFX100 is one of the first cameras to have 16-bit RAW but you will only really notice it at low ISO in dark shadow details
• 16-bit RAW has 4x the information and will take longer to edit
• 16-bit isn’t really appropriate for APS-C

APS-C

• Fujifilm plans to keep up with their pace of innovation and will be focused on speed going forward
• X-Series offers speed/size/weight advantages over Full-Frame
• Fujifilm doesn’t consider if their firmware updates harm sales their goal is to support the customer so they trust the brand

Fujifilm on Video

• 4 or 5 years ago Fujifilm ignored video and as they slowly improved the feature customers asked for it on cameras like the X-Pro2 unexpectedly where users wanted 4k instead of 1080p
• Fujifilm might consider a dedicated video camera in the future
• Fujifilm sees a market for their MK glass and they designed it for X and E mount to make it a better investment
• You need good glass designed for video for good video so Fujifilm will continue to support their video features with glass designed for video
• MK lens sales were in line with expectations
• MK lenses are selling to the rental market and directly because of there reasonable prices

Lens Design Discussion

• Fujifilm designs their lenses to minimize digital corrections and maximize optical quality
• This makes their lenses bigger, but any digital correction has an impact on image quality
• Fujifilm only turns to digital corrections if a lens design gets too big or heavy
• The original XF35 f/1.4 had great optical quality, but slow AF because the entire optical assembly had to move to focus
• If Fujifilm released a new XF35 f/1.4 they would take a different approach and balance the optical quality and AF, because they have new actuators and optical tech today
• Fujifilm is using more automation their assembly line now
• First generation X lenses didn’t have Nano GI coatings they also weren’t designed for video
• Fujifilm wants to be a major player in sports and wildlife photography
• Fujifilm is tweaking everything for speed now, which will benefit them

X100

• There are many opinions about how the X100 could be improved
• The top request is probably better optics since they are still using the same lens as the original 12MP X100 with a 24MP sensor
• The second most requested is probably a tilting screen
• Then maybe 4k and weather-sealing
• Photographers just don’t want the style/size of the X100 to change at all
• X100 has a big customer base and Fujifilm doesn’t want to let them down

X-Mount

• No reason to open X-Mount because they already have 31 great lenses
• Fujifilm is not against choice for customers and understands lens makers reverse engineering their mount to make AF lenses

Big in The Future

• Global shutter is one big thing coming
• More computational AI tech in cameras will improve photography too
• Modular GFX joke
• Global shutter would give Fujifilm more freedom to design and no rolling shutter so more shooting possibilities
• AI and deep learning will let photographers just press a button and let the camera do the work
• Cameras without controls could be created with AI and deep learning

You can read the full interview at DPR here.

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