Fujifilm GFX100RF Review: Premium Camera, Premium Price
Photos look great right out of the camera. Strange as it may sound to seasoned photo nerds, I went into my trip with the GFX100RF with the intention of shooting JPEGs — essentially using this $5,000 camera the way my parents documented family vacations with their film point-and-shoots.
And guess what? It worked spectacularly well.
This shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone who has used Fujifilm’s X-series cameras, since JPEG shooting is what they’re all about. The company leverages its film history with what it calls “film simulations,” JPEG presets that provide the vibe, if not the exact look, of legacy film stock such as Provia, Astia, and Velvia.
On my trip, I made liberal use of Classic Chrome, which produced a slightly sun-kissed, desaturated look that meshed well with the yellows, browns, and greens of the Mexican landscape. But I also turned to the GFX100RF’s Acros black-and-white modes for dramatic interiors. And I made use of a wide range of “recipes” by third-party creators, some of which are intended to re-create the look of film my parents might have used, such as Kodachrome 64 and Portra 400.
The aspect-ratio dial got constant use. This control — unique to the GFX100RF — can switch between common ratios such as the camera’s native 4:3 and the more-common 3:2, as well as more niche compositions like 65:24 (known as the Xpan crop) and vertical orientations such as 7:6.
Like many pundits, I thought I would never touch it, and it would just take up space. But much to my surprise, I quickly found that I loved composing in the ultra-wide Xpan format. It’s true that I never used most of the dial’s settings, but I still found myself turning it nearly every time I picked up the camera.
My only wish: That the order of the aspect ratios was customizable.
Its massive megapixel count gives you a lot of flexibility. The staggeringly high-res 102-megapixel sensor doesn’t come without downsides: Because the files are huge (around 60 megabytes for JPEGs and 210 megabytes for raw files), they may slow your photo-editing software to a crawl, and you can’t share them on social media without first resizing them.
But the detail! It’s really something to behold.
That massive resolution also allows you to do things like crop ultrawide and still end up with a reasonably large, printable image (an Xpan crop at the native focal length still nets you 50 megapixels). You can also keep the native 4:3 aspect ratio and punch in to crops replicating the field of view of a 45mm, 63mm, or 80mm lens. The narrowest still yields 19.5-megapixel images.
True, you could do all of that in post-processing if you wanted to, but composing in-camera with the framing you have in mind is a more natural, joyful experience.
The lens is sharp enough. The GFX100RF’s 28mm-equivalent lens is very sharp in the center right from f/4, though the corners need some stopping down to reach their full potential. The lens can also focus quite close — 20 centimeters (or a bit under 8 inches) from the sensor. You need to use that close-focusing capability to get much bokeh out of the wide-angle lens, but when you manage to do so, it looks quite nice.
While perfectionist landscape photographers may be annoyed by the lens’s slightly softer corners, that ultra-sharp center is all that most people are likely to need for everyday subjects, especially when shooting at f/4, where the corners are more likely to melt away into depth-of-field-induced blur.
Despite its retro design, it handles well. One downside of virtually all “retro” digital cameras is their lack of a DSLR-style front grip. As the owner of both a Fujifilm X-T5 and a Nikon Z f, I’m very familiar with this phenomenon.
The GFX100RF has a body design similar to those cameras, but its slightly larger body size overall makes its subtle grip proportionally chunkier. Even with my large hands, I was never annoyed while carrying it. Paired with a gentle contour, the textured leatherette on this grip provides just enough purchase in almost any situation.
Of course, if it isn’t enough grip for you, Smallrig and other accessory makers sell add-ons.
It feels like a premium product. Fujifilm’s X100-series cameras have always felt well made, and the GFX100RF, being more or less a big X100 camera, continues that tradition. The body is milled from a single block of aluminum, and the top and bottom plates are also machined aluminum. The power button and all of the dials have a reassuring, heavy tactility.
