Taylor-René, Precision Camera – Austin, Texas

I’m doing a short intermission on the Disney coverage by featuring some portraits that I made recently. About two weeks ago, Matt, our regional Fuji representative, was in town showing off the new, juicy Fujifilm GFX 100S. This is the latest and greatest medium format camera with 100 Megapixels of resolution. I jumped at the chance of playing with it.

Matt set up a complete studio environment at Precision Camera, including two giant, high-end Profoto softboxes. Taylor-René was ready to go. I switched the lens to the GF 110mm F2, the quintessential portrait lens for the GFX. All I had to do was compose and fire.

I have to admit that technically, these are the highest quality portraits I ever made. With the professional lighting setup, an experienced model, and the powerful GFX 100S, it didn’t require much skill on my end. I quickly shot 2 dozen poses, and nearly all of them came out perfect.

There’s not much to say about the Fujifilm GFX 100S other than it worked with ease. It’s like having a 100-megapixel medium format camera with the able focusing system of Fuji X-T3 plus image stabilization. I turned on eye-autofocus, and nearly every picture came out tack sharp.

Taylor-René in Capture One – Austin, Texas

Here is a 100% screenshot of Taylor-René in Capture One. I shot with JPEG + RAW. I don’t have the RAW converter — already available in Capture One 21 — since I’m using the slightly older Capture One 20. These portraits are JPEGs that I lightly edited.

With 100 megapixels of resolution, I have headroom to crop. The image up top is as I shot it. These two pictures are crops of the original. The last photo, despite the extensive crop, is still at 30MP. One advantage of having a lot of resolution is making multiple no-compromise crops from a single image.

As you may know, I currently use the Fujifilm GFX 50R. The GF lenses that I own work perfectly on the GFX 100S. I told the Fuji rep that it was inevitable that I will move to the 100S. The question is when.

If I were a professional photographer making portraits for a living, I would move to the GFX 100S right now. The face and eye-tracking are noticeably better than my 50R. The in-body image stabilization and focusing are what I like most about this camera. Having a 100MP resolution is not as critical since, for now, 50MP is more than enough.

As an amateur, I’m more than happy with the GFX 50R. But, there is no denying that the GFX 100S is enticing — someday.

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