Screamin' Sale on Fuji LF

(Fuji calls digital medium format large format, and I agree with and support that term. Nice to have some company as I go tilting at terminological windmills.)

Hmm, look, I did it again. I've got to stop starting posts with parentheticals. I should also stop making Don Quixote references, although it is thought to be the best-selling trade book of the past 13.8 billion years*.

The great news now is that there's a Fuji with the 33x44mm, 51-MP sensor, whatever you want to call it, for fifteen hundred bucks off this holiday season. The 50R is now for sale at a bargain three grand. (I've linked to Amazon because our friends at B&H are off for Shabbat until sundown tomorrow, Saturday—but here's their link too.)

The Fujifilm GFX 50R, here seen with the 50mm-equivalent 63mm lens

The hot and hot-selling Fuji large format camera at the moment is the GFX 50S II, which features the 51-MP sensor in the same body as the 100S and has five-axis sensor-shift image stabilization. However, the 50R (2018) at this nice, nice price would give the newer camera (2021) more than a run for its money if I were the customer.

Of course it's not just three grand. You need another thousand dollars for the 50mm (40mm-e) basic lens I would get. Or $2,300 for the 32–64mm 2X zoom, at 25–50mm-e basically an "adjustable 35mm" as far as I'm concerned. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I'd jump on this if I only could. Screamin' deal.

Mike

*I.e., all time. 13.8 billion years is thought to be the approximate age of the Universe, by current hominid-brain calculations.

Book o' the Week

This is the book that sold 1,100 copies through our links, back when it first came out in 2007. It's essentially a catalogue raisonné of the work of the iconic American landscapist. I suppose it won't sell any more, since everyone already has a copy, but the link can be a portal to Amazon for your holiday shopping. Thank you kindly for helping support The Online Photographer!

The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

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:

Alan Whiting: "Coincidentally, Don Quixote came up for me recently. I tutor High School students, and mentioned DQ to an upper-level Spanish student. He'd never heard of the book or the character. A survey of my students over the next week showed twenty knew nothing of the old knight, to one who had. It's not just cultural; the one student was of Indian extraction, the rest included several of European ancestry. A niece and nephew know nothing about him. Somehow Don Quixote disappeared from American culture across one generation. Would Xander recognise the reference? (I wrote a short blog about this.)"

Earl Dunbar: "Personally, I really like your opening parentheticals—I think they’re fun even if I might tire of them. Eventually. But not right away.

"I’ve never handled a Fuji large format, other than Fujinon LF lenses, so I can’t say how I’d like not having an optical viewfinder. But you are absolutely right to choose the 40mm-e lens. That’s the one I would get and never mount any other."

Patrick Perez: "It does seem like a good price. My question is more about what advantage in the real world the larger sensor would give over a 24x36mm sensor at essentially the same pixel count. I'm guessing that current LF sensors are a step behind the latest FF sensors in technology. Notwithstanding the X-Trans filter array, which may be an advantage or disadvantage for certain photographers, does the larger sensor get you anything? Asking because I might buy my last camera in the next 18–24 months, and want to know how to decide."

Comments

[Robert Roaldi]

I'm surprised they don't call it "fuller-frame".

[Jon Porter]

Calling these Fuji cameras large format, or even medium format, is like calling super slide medium format in the film realm. Yeah, it's 120 film but it's only marginally larger than 35mm – just as the Fuji GFX sensors are only marginally larger than full-frame.

[Andrew L]

One day I will have a camera where the focal length on the lens comes out to something less than the 35mm effective equivalent. One day.

[Eolake Stobblehouse]

“13.8 billion years is thought to be the approximate age of the Universe, by current hominid-brain calculations.”

Well said. I once wrote a spoof post making fun of the presumed precision of that number, they found out it was actually 13.9, and everybody felt betrayed. … I think it’s insane to assume with our current level that we can get anywhere close to understanding the size or age of the universe.

Eolake Stobblehouse

[Richard Parkin]

That book list is pure fiction* isn’t it? I mean LOTR is 3 books so shouldn’t the H Potters be considered as one putting it in excess of 400 million copies which considering it’s only been selling for about 2.5 months compared with the Don’s 13.8 billion years must put it waaay ahead?

* ;-)

[My book sold 78 copies before it was even published. If you're going to allow extrapolating infinitely into the future, then all I had to do to have the best-selling book of all time was to never publish it. --Mike]

[Rob de Loe]

This camera is my personal sufficiency benchmark.

For one thing, I can't use any other GFX body on my setup. There's no point in jonesing for a GFX 100S because only the "flat front" 50R works.

More importantly, the 100S doesn't bring anything to the table that will improve my photography, or let me make better photographs.

Having what you need, and knowing that there's no point in "upgrading", is not a bad place to be. The last time I felt like this I was shooting large format film. Everything was nicely sufficient to my needs.

[William A Lewis]

I wouldn't mind being able to afford a large format digital, though I'll admit I have a bad case of technolust for a Hasselblad X1D II 50C rather than the Fuji. Not that I'd kick the Fuji out of bed, metaphorically of course, but the Hassy & their 45/4 pancake? Nummy! And that 80/1.9? Oh, my...

I have to laugh at myself when I realize that I have to "settle for" my Leica M 240! Hah!

[Zyni Moë]

Given universe is (spatially) flat to within measurement error and hence, barring global topological strangeness which seems unlikely, presumably (spatially) infinite, chance of El ingenioso hidalgo don Quixote de la Mancha being best-selling book of any kind is asymptotically zero.

[Richard Man]

I came upon a combination of relatively low price, no interest for 6-months, and no sales tax scenario on a used 907x, and... I pulled the trigger. I am very much looking forward to use the CFV 50C II back (which of course has the same "aged" Sony sensor as all the other 44x33mm MF cameras) with my 203FE, as I have been figuratively drooling over the back for a couple years now.

[Marcin Wuu]

As a film photographer I balk at calling 33x44mm large format.

[David W. Scott]

If I were to move to a camera with a larger sensor, the Fuji GFX 50R would be it. It feels just right in the hand - much smaller than the old Texas Leica, but clearly from the same lineage.

But there is no way I would describe this (or similar) cameras as “large format”. That abandons centuries of photographic history, and muddies the water on many formats *still in active use* (large format i.e. 4x5 and larger sheets or plates, and medium format film).

I wish camera makers and press would be honest and follow the naming convention established over the past 70 years. The Fuji GFX50R should be referred to as a “345” camera. It’s frame size is half the dimension of the previous bar of entry for “medium format” - which was 645.

Sure, producing a sensor with the same area as 645, 6x6 or 6x7 is expensive and verges between rare and unlikely. That doesn’t mean the nomenclature should be tossed out the window.

“Medium format” (which obscures the more precise German of “mittel” or middle format) fits these sizes into a wide range formats, where innovations like 135 format film and sensors were and remain “miniature” formats in comparison to medium format and large format.

“Full frame” as a descriptor is woefully lacking (full frame of what format?) and serves only this specific moment in time when 135 format has dominant mindshare.

Photography is photography, whether done with digital or film or glass plate. Let’s use the correct terms to describe frame sizes that recognizes all formats and does not create additional confusion.

[Larry]

Twenty years ago I think most of us understood what was meant by the terms Large Format, Medium Format, and 35 MM. Of course there were outliers -- 127, 110, etc. -- but among "real" photographers the distinctions were pretty clear. Moving on, I think I'm going to start using D3624, D4433 and D5440 to distinguish between the formats used for the "serious" cameras. I know, this leaves out the APS-x models, those using the three variants of the digital (sort of) half-frame sensors. And it ignores the 4/3 and 1" gang, as well. If those come up call them by name, I guess. But using Large Format for something smaller than the 645 film size which was on the low end of Medium Format just doesn't sound right to me.

[Dennis Ng]

Actually I like my Hasselblad 907x onto my 4x5. As it use the x1d (in fact it is for x1d), no digital back complexity. That is one use the 4x5 as lens with movement, not a camera so many flash cable issues go away. And it is strange but instead of using loupe you use the dot to guide your plane. And for sone you can stitch as well as the pro plane has built in camera movement.

I wonder anyone do fuji to 4x5 adapter … they are higher resolution and cheaper.

[Nick Cvetkovic]

Still very popular on Amazon...
Best Sellers Rank:
#22,929 in Books
#4 in Individual Photographer Books
#16 in Photography Collections & Exhibitions (Books)
#23 in Landscape Photography
(SWAG: Selling around 10 copies/day)