Fujifilm GFX 100S II Review: Medium Format Goes Mainstream

Medium format photography has remained niche and expensive for decades, but that might be changing with the Fujifilm GFX 100S ii. Medium format describes a camera which uses film or a digital sensor which is larger than the standard 35mm (full frame), but smaller than large format cameras such as the gigantic view cameras employed by such famous photographers as Ansel Adams. Using a digital medium format camera, you can capture richer, more detailed images than with a camera with a smaller sensor.

Even just a few years ago, getting into digital medium format was pricey, and you had to accept some serious compromises in terms of features and capabilities. For most people, the tradeoffs simply weren't worth it. However, with last year's GFX 100 ii, Fujifilm created a medium format camera which was far more on-par with modern full frame cameras when it came to things like video capture and autofocus. Now with the GFX 100S ii, many of those features have trickled down into a much more affordable body. On paper, this camera may well entice you to make the move to medium format, but does it live up to its potential when put to the test in the real world?

Fujifilm provided a sample of the Fujifilm GFX 100S ii, as well as the Fujifilm Fujinon GF 55mm f/1.7 R WR and the Fujinon GF 500mm f/5.6 R LM OIS WR Lenses for this review.

I didn't expect a medium format camera to be capable of keeping up with quick moving wildlife. The little birds which are my favorite subjects rarely hold still for long, and spend most of their time in crowded, dim environments, which push the limits of any camera system's autofocus and low light shooting capabilities. However, I was pleasantly surprised to find that while the GFX 100S ii doesn't quite measure up to the autofocus of my Nikon Z8, it does come extremely close to doing so. In general, autofocus performance is fast and reliable, and the various intelligent subject detection modes do the trick for nabbing sharp focus on a variety of pre-selected subjects.

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The intelligent autofocus system in the GFX 100S ii does have a few key flaws to be aware of. Each type of subject must be individually selected, so for example if you want to photograph a cat, but you're in bird mode, you've got to swap to animal mode. On my Nikon Z8 and Z9 cameras you also have the ability to select specific subjects, but if you like you can instead simply tell the camera to look for a variety of subjects simultaneously, which is my default setting on those cameras. Fujifilm's system works well, but on a number of occasions I missed shots while I switched from one type of subject to another. The GFX 100S ii also had trouble getting sharp focus on animal eyes in some of my shots. Also, burst mode tops at at 7 fps, which is fast for medium format, but many full frame cameras offer much faster continuous shooting.

With that said, with the exception of Nikon's high end cameras, the GFX 100S ii has one of the best autofocus systems I've used.

The laws of physics are something of a wet blanket when it comes to shooting with a medium format camera, particularly one so capable as the GFX 100S ii. This is nowhere more apparent than when it comes to battery life and how much space it'll hog on your hard drive. If you're shooting mixed media like I do, swapping back and forth between shooting photos and recording video, you're going to burn through that battery rather quickly. Several hours in a wildlife refuge was enough to exhaust the camera's energy reserves, and I'd highly recommend packing a couple extra batteries for a long day's outing.

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If you're going to be shooting RAW photos with the GFX 100S ii (which I always do), be prepared for 200MB or larger files. That fills up even a large SD card fast, so you'd be wise to keep several spares in your camera case. This brings us to perhaps the most significant issue I experienced with the GFX 100S ii, which is that the camera is only compatible with SD cards. The lack of a CFExpress Type-B slot is rather glaring, and I made the mistake at first of shooting with a 100Mbps SD card. This resulted in lengthy loading times after shooting photos, but once I realized the problem and switched to a 200Mbps SD card I only rarely thereafter experienced pauses while the camera stored the massive files it captured to the storage media. This would not have been a problem with CFE cards, and I recommend that you use no card slower than 200Mbps.

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Port selection on the GFX 100S ii is otherwise largely as you'd expect, except for the mini-HDMI port which is not great to say the least. Fujifilm should have included full size HDMI.

While the control scheme of the GFX 100S ii took some getting used to, given my lack of familiarity with GFX cameras, it was nonetheless a short and gentle learning curve for someone who daily-drives Nikon's Z system. Buttons and dials are well laid-out, and after a few days I was able to confidently navigate the camera and began building muscle-memory. By the end of my three weeks of testing it, I was swapping between it and my Nikon without any difficulty.

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The large touchscreen, viewfinder, and top display panel are all very high quality. Navigating menus and selecting focus points on the main screen is fluid and the screen is bright and accurate. The electronic viewfinder is similarly great to use, and the top-mounted display can be customized to show various different useful information.

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I particularly appreciated the articulation of the main display, which allows for it not only to be tilted up and down, but to the side as well for vertical low or high angle shots. The Fujifilm companion app is competently designed and reasonably easy to connect to the camera, and the onboard camera menus were also decent and easy to navigate once I acclimatized to them.

Calling $4,999 "affordable" is certainly worth a raised eyebrow or two, but in context the GFX 100S ii might even be considered a bargain by some comparisons. Other medium format cameras, such as the Hasselblad X2D 100C, will set you back over $8,000, and the higher-end version of Fujifilm GFX 100S ii (the 100 ii) is half-again as expensive as the 100S ii. Given how well the GFX 100S ii compares to more expensive medium format cameras, its price becomes rather attractive.

Even compared to high end full frame cameras, the GFX 100S ii is competitively priced. While you can get a Nikon Z9 for less than $5,000, at launch that camera was significantly more, and it's within the range of flagship devices from Sony and Canon as well. Given this company, opting for the GFX 100S ii is a very valid choice, given that no full frame camera can equal the GFX 100S ii for sheer resolution and image quality, and it doesn't fall too far behind in other aspects.

Regarding lenses and the cost they add to the GFX 100S ii, the Fujinon GF 55mm f/1.7 I tested alongside the camera is $2,299, while the Fujinon GF 500mm f/5.6 is $3,599. That's steep to be sure, but it's also honestly not far beyond full frame equivalents such as the Nikkor Z 50mm f1.2 S and the Nikkor Z 500mm f/4.5 VR S (the crop factor of GFX cameras make these two lenses fairly similar to the aforementioned Fujifilm lenses I tested). While Fujifilm's medium format glass is a bit pricey, they're also a reasonable value, and there are good native third party alternatives, plus the ability to adapt lenses from other systems, including very affordable vintage glass.