Interview with Makoto Oishi, product planner for GFX100.

After years of working on the GFX system, it appears that medium format photography is reaching a wider audience. With this awareness of the power of this larger format, what do you think is the future for the medium format mirrorless?

In the last two years we feel the GFX system has widened the market. The new GFX100 brings a new era GFX with IBIS, PDAF, large format 4K/30p with 100M sensor. So we hope and expect 100M is more popular as one of highest resolution level cameras. It reaches a wider audience.

The design of the GFX100 is very different from the GFX50S or GFX50R. Notably, most dials have disappeared from the top plate. Did the same team that worked on the GFX50S and GFX50R work on the new GFX100? What was the reasoning behind the changes?

It’s the same team. We have two reasons behind the changes:

Minimizing the body size and weight with IBIS, Shutter, and two batteries.
For the professional scene we know the need to change still and movie more quickly in the studio or in any environment. Dials sometime limit the quick change.

There are lots of NEW in this medium format camera: the worldʼs first in-body image stabilization in any medium format camera, first on-board Phase Detection Hybrid AF and first 4K/30p video. Why was it important for the Fujifilm team to implement these solutions in medium format?

Old medium format cameras had limited use in the photographic market with high image quality. But now we have many new technologies to produce mirrorless system cameras with the experience of the X-series. Then we tried to produce the best performance digital large format camera for still and movie even compared with the 35mm format mirrorless cameras for wider use in the market.

Designing this new 100MP BSI sensor, what can you tell us about the difference between it and the previous 50MP sensor other than just megapixels? How will this sensor differ from the competition?

BSI structure has two big benefits in both quality and speed.

BSI photodiode can receive light with even more oblique light incidence. It will be better especially at corner quality with fast aperture.
BSI supports backside wiring; the new copper wiring at the back will support fast reading out from sensor of 100M pixels signal or 4K/30p video signal.

Was it so difficult to implement IBIS along with a larger sensor? Was there a need to design a new co-processor to work with IBIS, or is it basically the same one used in the X-H1? Is it basically the same core system as the X-H1 that has been made larger for medium format, including a shutter dampening system?

The basic system is almost the same especially in terms of the detection of vibration. But because of sensor size and weight, stabilization torque and distance are definitely harder to adjust and manage with more power. Even the shutter dampening system focal plane shutter is totally different for motion and shock. We spent a long time optimizing every system just for the GFX100.

Is it safe to assume you are using the X-Processor IV in the new GFX100, especially to handle the improved AF and video features? Are there any other performance enhancements that this processor can offer the GFX100that is not possible on the X- T3/X-T30 due to sensor size/megapixel limits? For instance, 16bit colour depth for the image files: is this due to the more powerful processor along with the new BSI sensor?

About the “X-Processor IV” — originally, we had started to develop both X and GFX systems. Both systems can bring out 100% performance anyway. And for GFX the number of pixels is totally different from the X-series. So if the same scenes were taken by both systems the level of pixels will be different. One pixel for X is 4 pixels for GFX100. But our processor will process them with optimizing image quality.

Even though pixel shift is not available at launch, can we expect this feature to be added by a software update in the future? In addition, will there be any other new computational photography features?

It will depend on demand. But we can’t say anything now even about other features.

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