The Fuji GFX 50S II: "Rebel"?

Lowest Price: Various cameras set price landmarks in passing. The one I remember is the Canon Digital Rebel, also called the EOS 300D. Introduced at roughly this time of year 18 years ago(!), it broke new ground as the very first DSLR under $1,000. Less memorable now but important at the time was the Sony A850 (a stripped down version of the A900 I've passed along to my son), which was the first "full-frame" camera to break the $2,000 barrier. That one came along in 2009—yep, also at about this same time of year. Now, the Fuji GFX 50S II is the very first "medium format" camera (O, unhappy terminology) to come in below $4,000.

It's a weird sort of distinction: a cheap expensive thing. Four thousand dollars is still a lot of money to most people. It is to me, anyway. Jumbling our clarity about it is that those landmarks are arbitrary: $4,000 now would have been only $2,700 the year the Canon Digital Rebel came out, and the Digital Rebel's $900 body-only price in 2003 would be $1,335 now. No longer nice round numbers. (Round numbers are false landmarks anyway, but think about the origin of the term "landmark": you have to choose something as a landmark if you're going to navigate successfully.)

Anyway. The Fuji GFX 50S II is, as of this writing, the least expensive medium-format digital camera ever.

Twins: And its biggest new feature: well, first we must mention that the 50S II body is identical (or as near as I can tell) to the existing GFX 100S, the less expensive version of the 100-MP GFX 100. Same weight, too.

IBIS: ...Now we move along to the biggest thing the 50S II has that the 50S doesn't: in-body image stabilization (IBIS), which the lookalike 100S has also and which the 50S II seems to have inherited from that camera along with its looks.

I have a strange relationship to IBIS these days. It's one of the camera features that made the biggest impressions on me in my whole life; in the 2004 Konica-Minolta 7D (called Dynax in Europe and Maxxum here), the camera with which I took those two pictures of Lulu I posted the other day, it was a revelation. Its practical advantages as expressed in that camera were very clear to me. It gave me confidence and I had great trust in it, and I became a strenuous advocate of the technology.

Strangely, perhaps, I have to admit that I have never had another camera that made me feel the same way about IBIS. It worked inconsistently in early Pentax DSLRs (most of the ones I used were pre-production models sent to me by Pentax); in some other cameras such as the Panasonic GX7 the feature seemed almost not to work; and it certain other ones it frustratingly worked on some shots and not on others, which inspired the opposite of trust.

But I still have a provisional allegiance to the feature, and I'm always glad to see it available.

We'll continue our tour of the new Fuji after B&H comes back from Rosh Hashana and you can actually preorder it again.

Mike

Book o' the Week:

The second edition of old friend Bruce Barnbaum's The Essence of Photography is just out. Bruce wrote for Photo Techniques when I was Editor. I always enjoy his insights into the art and craft, even if his technique isn't the same as mine. I still learn. Mastery is fun to read about.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Here's the new edition of The Essence of Photography at The Book Depository. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Ken Bennett: "Hey, Mike, I have a GFX100 (the big one), and also the original GFX50S, and the IBIS in the larger camera makes a huge difference, especially for handheld portrait photography. Given the slow flash sync speed of these cameras, I can't count how many photos were ruined by small amounts of camera shake with the 50S. Even at 1/125 sec., using the 110mm lens, there is a lot of movement that is totally corrected in the newer cameras with IBIS. So I am a big fan.  :-)  "

Mike replies: Thanks for chiming in Ken. It's great to hear the opinion of a pro who actually owns both those cameras. 

Albert Smith: "And so it begins...again: 'Fujifilm Announces Delivery Delay for GFX50S II with GF35-70mm Kit Due to Pre-Orders Exceeding Expectations.'"

Mike replies: Yes, that's why I rather hurriedly posted on Sunday, so people who are interested could get their pre-orders in before B&H closed for Rosh Hashana.

Comments

[Michael Hill]

Like you, I have an 'allegiance' to IBIS and the Minolta 7D was my first serious digital camera for exactly that reason. Pre-digital I shot almost entirely with Kodachrome 25. Anything that allowed me an extra stop or three was more than a blessing ... it was nothing short of miraculous. Now we have cameras that are 'clean' at ISO 6400 or even better (8 stops from K25) and I am in heaven. Perhaps IBIS is not so important anymore but in my mind it is if only because it was the first technological development that woke me up to the real advance in possibilities that digital provides. It is a good time to be a photographer to be sure!

[Andy F]

As far as I can remember, the K-M 7D has a handy little meter thing that showed how hard the IBIS system was working, which meant you could better predict how well it was actually going to stabilise your shot.

[John Krumm]

Regarding IBIS, I will say that in my X-T4 it is good but not outstanding (not Olympus level). It handles my shaky hands well. I rely on it for sharp shots between about 1/10 of a second and 1/60. I often shoot at those speeds in the woods.

The big Fuji's still haven't reached my personal "Rebel" price point. I'm quite happy with ASPC so far, though I do oooh and aaah over the detail and richness of the sample files from the medium format. If they come out with a rangefinder style version at $2999 with a nicer viewfinder and IBIS that might push me over the edge...

[Ramón Acosta]

The Canon camera was the 300D, it was the camera which got me in the Canon system. And now I have more lenses than I can carry. But I still have the 18-55 that came with the next camera I got the 400D or “xti”.

[Thanks for the correction. I blame my fingers! My brain was thinking the correct thing but my fingers did their own thing. :-) --Mike]

[Richard Man]

I am thinking that the 50SII + the Metabones 0.71x speed booster is the best solution to get the most out of Hasselblad lenses. Certainly I am looking at that option.

[David Brown]

Still using my Sony a850!

[Moose]

". . . in some other cameras such as the Panasonic GX7 the feature seemed almost not to work;"

Early µ4/3 cameras had a real problem, shutter induced vibration. On my first trip using an Oly and a long lens, I got confusing, frustrating results; this shot fine, that one with motion blur. Oly had a solution hidden in their menus, shutter delay, from the beginning, but never referred to it. Panny had no answer until shutter redesigns and Electronic First Curtain capability.

With the GX7, Panny introduced both shutter delay and electronic shutter.

Shooting an Oly E-M5 and GX7 side-by-side, extensively, with the Oly shutter shake supression and the Panny ES on, I concluded that the two IBIS systems were equally effective.

You were probably experiencing shutter vibration blurring, and attributing it to poor IBIS.

All old news now.

[Dave]

Mike,

Sorry to hear you didn't have a great experience with the Pentax IBIS. My K1-II IBIS has always worked, unless my hands were shaking too much. (It won't work miracles.)

Pre-production cameras wouldn't have the final software tweaks, nor any updates. I'm not sure if a software problem caused sub-optimal results. By the time I bought the K1-II, Pentax probably had all the bugs worked out.

One great advantage of IBIS is that I can use old Pentax screw mount lenses with the adapter (always get the Pentax adapter) and IBIS works with them too.

Now, the autofocus set to automatic and using the entire field doesn't reliably focus on the subject I want to be in focus. I use the spot-focus setting and manually focus the lens. If in doubt about the focus in dim light, I rely on the in-focus light in the viewfinder display.

[Oh no, the ones I was talking about were MUCH earlier than the K-1. Things like the K-7 of 2009. --Mike]