The EVF adds a small amount of bulk and
weight. Fujifilm’s design makes it easy to
adopt a better viewfinder in the future,
giving the GFX 50S body a longer life cycle.Magnesium alloy bodyshell is fully
sealed against wet weather, dust
and sub-zero temperatures. Note
the cover which protects the EVF’s
hotshoe coupling.LCD monitor screen is tiltable
regardless of the camera’s
orientation. Touchscreen controls
are more extensive than has been
previously seen from Fujifilm.EVF eyepiece has built-in
strength adjustment and
a proximity sensor for
auto switching between
the viewfinder and the
monitor screen.Dual SD
memory card
slots are both
compatible
with UHS-II
speed devices.Menu design and
layout is borrowed
straight from the
X Mount cameras.3737
ON TRIAL FUJIFILM GFX 50S
of its refl ex confi guration, and just
as with the 120/220 RF camera
revival of the 1990s, handling
and ergonomics are important
considerations in terms of
increasing the appeal beyond
the professionals.
That said, neither the Fujifi lm
GFX 50S nor the Hasselblad
X1D-50c are exactly small, and
big sensors demand big lenses
because of the larger imaging
circle, but both are much more
manageable in terms of their
overall designs and comparative
sizes. Even in a 6x4.5cm format
SLR, the mirror box and optical
eyelevel viewfi nder took up a
lot of space.CREDENTIALS
Not surprisingly, there’s a fair
amount of X Mount DNA in the
GFX 50S, but it’s worth being re-
minded again that Fujifi lm was the
most adventurous of the medium
format fi lm camera makers, build-
ing everything from super-compact
6x4.5cm models to 6x17cm
panorama cameras and, at one
time or another, covering all the
‘mainstream’ rollfi lm formats.
Not all its designs were
successful, but the point to
be made here is that Fujifi lm’s
medium format credentials are
as good as anyone’s – Hasselblad,Phase One, Leica, Mamiya
or Pentax.
At fi rst glance, the GFX 50S
is a pretty imposing machine. It
looks bulkier than it actually is and
that’s mainly because of some
extra body depth created by the
big battery compartment... which
is needed to house the high-
capacity battery pack. There’s an
optional vertical battery grip, but
even with this fi tted, the GX 50S is
still roughly the same size as the
Canon EOS-1D X Mark II or Nikon
D5. The vertical grip can also be
used for recharging and there’s
a monitoring facility for the age
of both battery packs, scaled
from zero (the youngest) to four
(the oldest)... based on the fact
that lithium-ion cells lose capacity
over time.
Straight out of the box, the
Fujifi lm camera lacks an EVF,but don’t panic, it’s in there and
attaches to the body after the
removal of sliding cover (which also
conceals a hotshoe). It might seem
this particular design element
just adds some extra engineering
in the form of the rails needed
for location and the connections- inside the hotshoe in a similar
arrangement to Sony’s ‘Smart
Accessory Terminal’ – but there’s
some long-term thinking at work
here. If you’ve invested quite a lot
in a digital medium format camera
body, you don’t want obsolescence
arriving unexpectedly early via
something fairly minor... such as
a much better EVF. Fujifi lm has
future-proofed the GFX 50S, at
least to some extent, in that when
a higher resolution fi nder comes
along, you don’t have to dump the
camera body – which is likely to
have a pretty long model life – in
order to adopt it. There are some
more immediate benefi ts from the
interchangeable EVF too... without
it fi tted, the camera body is a little
more compact and much easier to
pack. There may well be situations
where you don’t need to use it
either, such as when shooting in
a studio situation or an indoors
location. In these cases, Fujifi lm
has maximised the usefulness of
the LCD monitor screen by making
it tiltable in both the horizontal and
vertical orientations, just as with
the X-T2. You can tilt the EVF too,
although for this you need a little
optional accessory called the EVF-
TL1. The supplied EVF unit houses
a 3.69 megadots half-inch OLED
panel which provides 100 percent
subject coverage and has a 35mm-
equivalent magnifi cation of 0.85x.
The eyepiece has a built-in strength
adjustment (with a wide -4 to +2NOT SURPRISINGLY,
THERE’S A FAIR
AMOUNT OF X
MOUNT DNA IN
THE GFX 50S, BUT
IT’S WORTH BEING
REMINDED AGAIN
THAT FUJIFILM
WAS THE MOST
ADVENTUROUS
OF THE MEDIUM
FORMAT FILM
CAMERA MAKERS.
CamMayJune17_036-045 Fujifilm.indd 37 13/04/2017 9:59 AM