Toshihisa Iida, General Manager of Fujifilm`s Optical Device and Electronic Imaging Products Division, posing with the new medium-format GFX 50S.
We`re at the CP+ 2017 show, in Yokohama Japan where Fujifilm is preparing to ship its long-awaited medium format GFX 50S.Â
We sat down with three Fujifilm executives, Toshihisa Iida, (general manager of Fujifilm`s Optical Device and Electronic Imaging Products Division), Makoto Oishi, (manager of Fujifilm´s Sales and Marketing Group, Optical Device and Electronic Imaging Products division), and Shinichiro Udono, (Senior Manager for the Sales and Marketing Group of the Optical Device and Electronic Imaging Division), to learn more about the GFX, some of the challenges of creating a medium-format system, and future plans for GX and X series development.
Now that the GFX is ready, and about to ship, this must be quite exciting for you.
Yes, absolutely. For the past four or five years we´ve been concentrating on the APS-C format, and a lot of people were asking us when we´d enter the larger format market. Once some time had passed, and we´d produced a good number of APS-C lenses, we started to look more seriously at large format to attract more customers. That was about two years ago.
The GFX 50S is a mirrorless medium-format camera built around a 43.8 X 32.9mm CMOS sensor. Although the camera borrows a lot of design cues from its smaller X Series cousins, the GFX offers a very different handling experience. Despite being based around such a large sensor, the combination of camera and 63mm prime lens is surprisingly lightweight and very well-balanced.Â
Since the development announcement at Photokina we´ve received a lot of positive feedback from photographers. We started a program called the `GFX Challenge´, where we loaned GFX cameras to photographers from various fields, in order to get feedback. Based on that feedback we refined the camera´s software. No ...
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