Review the photos discussed in the video on Facebook.
Details of the Fujifilm GFX Trade in Promotion
GFX System Hire Rates at michaels
Credits:
Photography by Hashem McAdam
Nolwenn "The French Hairdresser"
Nora Henroit (model 1)
Sakshi Singh (model 2)
(John Warkentin)
John Warkentin here from Michael’s Camera.
Today I’m joined by Hashem who is one of our Imaging Counter sales associates, and a keen photographer and I sent him out on a bit of a mission on the weekend.
I wanted him to get some hands-on time with the Fuji GFX medium format mirrorless system, which we conveniently hire at Michael’s, and I knew that Hashem had a Time for Print model shoot booked; and I thought that he might like to mix a little bit of digital medium format with his film medium format.
So, Hashem, tell me, what was your first impression with the Fuji GFX on this shoot?
(Hashem)
Okay, so the first impression I had with this camera was because I’d never used it before, and as you know, I’d picked it up with no previous practice time using it.
(John)
Well, I think I showed it to you once when it came in and I think I took your picture, but that was about it.
(Hashem)
Yeah, but showing up to a shoot with it, having never used the camera before, I was initially worried; but then I remembered the great thing about Fuji cameras in general and especially this one, is all you need is three things: I’m shooting in full manual, so just how straight forward it was to use with the direct controls. So, shutter speed on this dial, ISO on this dial, and aperture right on the ring.
[Hashem indicates the dials]
So, the beauty of that is it's exactly like shooting my medium format film cameras, or any good cameras, where it's in the exact same place as you expect everything to be; and I picked it up and used it straight away. So, just the initial setup in the menu, and impression of the image quality, you know, was amazing, as well.
(John)
Well, your response to just picking up and using it was exactly echoed by my sentiments when I first picked it up back in, I think it might have been March. It's just, if you've ever used a manual camera, you've got just manual controls. Now, when you want to dive into the menus on this thing there are a million other functions. But really, at the end of the day, it's a tool to deliver, hopefully, a spectacular image.
And, it just... it's just a natural camera.
It's like the old days when you had an aperture ring on the lens barrel, and it's just amazing that we've got a modern camera that has that; it just feels good.
(Hashem)
It does, it does. And it's not much larger than a DSLR as well, so for me, it was sort of like having just one of my DSLR's with a prime lens on it. And, I was using the 63 mm F/2.8 lens on it outside.
(John)
Yeah, that's exactly what we see here.
(Hashem)
So it's really, I could even use it one handed. I had on a harness and sort of, using one camera on the other side, and it was actually lighter than my medium format film camera; and it just felt really good ergonomically as well.
(John)
Now, how did you find the electronic viewfinder?
(Hashem)
Really responsive. I was worried about that initially, because I thought mirrorless systems are something that I've never really been keen on, having tried Sony's and other systems before; but when I put this to my eye, that changed. It was pretty much instant, and I had that little bit of pleasant surprise initially, so I was like, within five shots, completely forgetting that it was an electronic viewfinder, because it's so crisp and clear that I was shooting it like it was just a DSLR.
(John)
Excellent!
(Hashem)
So that was really good. Really impressed with that.
(John)
Now, did you run any of the advanced features in the viewfinder, like the histogram or anything like that?
(Hashem)
Not through the viewfinder, but I did like how it gave you a quick preview of your shot through the viewfinder.
(John)
Now, that's kind of crazy and that's just sort of so weird: You're looking at the scene and you're looking at the picture you just shot without taking it away from your eye!
(Hashem)
But it's good, because it gives you an idea of what you're getting, without taking it from your eye like you were saying...
(John)
So, without kind of destroying the flow of using it.
(Hashem)
And you keep shooting.
(John)
So it's a different experience than the classic digital camera experience, where you are looking at that LCD on the back, because it's there.
(Hashem)
Yeah.
(John)
I found that... it took me a while to get used to it, but then I really liked it.
The other thing which is amazing is, of course, you can run the menu system through the viewfinder!
(Hashem)
Yeah, that's right.
(John)
So, just this whole experience of using that viewfinder is just a different way of thinking, and actually, I rather enjoy it. And it's definitely a camera on my wish list.
(Hashem)
Oh, yeah, definitely! Yeah.
(John)
So, yeah, now tell me a little bit about what the shoot was about. What was your mission?
(Hashem)
So, the shoot was mainly just for fun.
It was sort of like a collaborative effort with a friend of mine who is a makeup artist. I'm not really experienced in shooting portraits and models, until recently, I got into wedding photography. So I started to try and get more experience doing portraits. And, we put up an ad for you know, TPF - trade for print - model type shoot, and we had a hair and makeup artist... sorry, a makeup artist, and a hair artist - they were separate - come on board, and we also had someone who did floral art provide a floral crown for the models to wear.
So, we had two models: Nora and (Saatchi).
And we'll show you some of the photos of that soon.
But it was just, you know, a fun shoot for experience; trying out a new camera, and I also wanted to shoot some film to get this really, sort of, natural authentic look to some of the portraits and see how that would look side by side with the GFX as well.
Because I otherwise would have used a 35mm digital, but having the chance to use this was amazing and I jumped on it straight away.
(John)
So, did you take your 35mm digital camera with you at all?
(Hashem)
I did. I took it with me in case I... I thought i was worried I wouldn't be able to pick this up and use it that easily, or if I had any issue with, like, something going wrong, or not liking it, or being too hard to use; but I shot five behind the scenes shots with this one and with the 6D, and then immediately I just put the 6D back in the bag and I was just like, I kept this on my harness and I just used it for the rest of the shoot.
(John)
Well, that's a real testament to, you know, the ease of use of what used to be an extremely complex (body). I mean, medium format digital cameras, quite often there would be a camera operator, along with a photographer on a shoot. You know, they were just these daunting things, and Fuji has just distilled this right down into... it's just a camera, that happens to take these high-resolution 50-megapixel images with just these beautiful tones; a really great set of lenses. Unfortunately, you only got to play with the one so far.
(Hashem)
I did try the other one, actually; I tried the macro, the 100 and...
(John)
It's the 120 f/4 IS, yes.
(Hashem)
Yes, the 120 f/4, but I actually preferred this one. Maybe it suited what I was shooting more, or maybe i just liked the rendering if it, but the lens was amazing. I pretty much had it wide open for the whole shoot, and it was still extremely sharp into the corners, you know, with very little vignetting. And, you know, I just loved that lens. I think that was my favourite.
(John)
Well, the 60... now, this is the 63mm F/2.8, so that's effectively like a 50mm lens on a standard 35mm camera.
(Hashem)
Yeah.
(John)
And in the classic world of portraiture, if you're shooting sort of head and shoulders, or sort of half frame, that's a nice pleasing... or even if you want to step back a little bit and shoot full body, if you're just going to do a head shot it might be a little bit short. But, as you can see, we'll just go over to the collection of pictures that Hashemhas brought here.
So these are mostly half body sort of shots, so 50mm is a very good focal length for that.
[There is a collection of model photos on the screen]
(Hashem)
Yeah, yeah, I didn't bring them all in, but there were some shots where I stepped back, like you said, and got some more environmental shots, and that lens worked fine, and it was perfectly like using a 50mm on 35 mm, or the 75 mm on my 645 film format; so it paired up perfectly..
(John)
Now, were you just using ambient light or did you have any reflectors or anything like that?
(Hashem)
No reflectors!. Funnily enough, I forgot to bring a reflector, and then we just took advantage of using open shade.
We just went to some gardens and shot just with what available light we had; no reflectors, no additional lighting.
(John)
Mmhmm. Well, why don't you walk us through some of the pictures then, Hasheem. I'll just bring up the very first one here.
(Hashem)
Cool.
Image shows a young woman standing under a tree]
So, this is Nora. We just shot under some sort of palm tree setup. I particularly wanted to zoom in to a couple and show you how much detail, but if we go forward to ... see, I might have missed the focus here... is this 100%?
[Zoomed in on the eye]
(John)
Yes, that's at 100%. So, yes, we're focused on the closest eye here, so that's good. Now, do you want to go to the next shot then?
(Hashem)
Yeah. So, same location for this one. But if you go to the next one, that's a different location. So, I really liked the way the light rendered in the background fallout with this one.
Because that's the beauty of shooting a larger than 35 mm format, is that transition from in focus to to out of focus areas is really pleasing.
[Image shows the model standing up against a tree with white flowers a little bit in shadow]
And that's something that you can immediately tell the difference from when you're shooting like other small sensors.
(John)
Now, let's zoom in on this one here. And we'll just take it up to the eyes... and just an immense amount of detail that we're seeing.
Now, you've worked from the RAW files, correct?
(Hashem)
Yes, so I've actually exported the RAW files to jpgs; so the RAW file probably had a much larger size to it that even this does.
(John)
Okay.
(Hashem)
But, jpgs are convenient, so I brought the jpgs in. And even the in-camera jpgs had really nice, pleasing colours straight off the bat.
[Zoomed in on the eyes]
(John)
Yeah, so this is an immense amount of detail in the eye, I mean, and if this was, you know, CSI, we would just keep zooming in and enhancing the image and eventually we'd see Hashemand the rest of the city in the eyeball! [Laughs]
(Hashem)
Yes!
[Image shows a straight on shot of the model]
And this one, it's a slightly tighter crop, so if we zoom into this one, I think I had nailed the focus and there was no movement whatsoever, but you can see every single little pore and makeup and I was just blown away the first time I zoomed into the file, because I've never shot anything larger than 23 megapixels, let alone medium format digital.
[Zoomed in on the eyes it is crystal clear]
(John)
Yeah, there's no doubt about it - the resolution on this camera is very addictive!
(Hashem)
Yeah!
(John)
So, now we've got a little bit more light in the background here.
[Image shows another model, laughing, with a soft green background out of focus]
(Hashem)
Yeah, (Saatchi) was our second model, and we shot a bit later in the day, so it's a bit higher contrast. The funny thing is I didn't really do much adjustment to these files.
I went to load them into Lightroom and do my usual sort of curves adjustment that I do for my RAW files on Canon, and the feeling I found is that, as soon as I played around with it even a little bit it was going to be too much. The contrast from the lens was already really good, and the colours were really, really good, so I went to change white balance or anything and I was actually finding, no, it's fine, I'm ruining it by changing it.
So the camera did a really good job of getting the white balance right, the contrast and everything out, straight from the camera. The only thing I might have adjusted was a bit of shadow detail and you know...
(John)
Well, Fuji is very well known for producing a great in-camera jpg. Now, I believe I set it up into the standard profile before I sent you out with the camera .
(Hashem)
That's right. Yup.
(John)
Which is...
(Hashem)
Provia.
(John)
Yes, the Provia set up. The other thing which is, I am blown away by this camera, the auto white balance is just spot on.
(Hashem)
It's spot on! It's really good!
(John)
And I've also found, when I used it in auto-exposure mode, the exposure metering is bloody brilliant on this thing!
(Hashem)
Yeah! yeah!
(John)
It's just an extremely usable camera! So, if you're ever interested in, you know, having a play with medium format, or even in purchasing, this is a contender. For a first iteration of a camera, an extremely workable design.
And, of course, we've got it for hire here at Michael's!
We've got the complete range of lenses; we've got all the accessories. Even if you had some Hasselblad H-mount lenses, we've got the adapter; we'll set you up.
So, if you're interested in this Fuji GFX system it has never been a better time to try it out; and of course, until the end of September, Fuji is running a $900 trade-in bonus on a selected list of cameras and they can be working or non-working.
At the same time, if you want to hire one of the GFX systems from Michael's, 100% of the hire value we will apply to the purchase if you purchase before the end of September.
So, it's really a no-risk time to dip your toes into the water of medium format.
I mean, these pictures are just stunning and from my experience with printing these files, they were just... you could print them massive, wall-sized, with no problem at all.
(Hashem)
Yeah. think it was almost like, overkill for what I was doing, but it was great fun to use it! Anyone who was doing fine art printing, or commercial use or studio; it's amazing.
[Image of the second model looking over her shoulder at the camera]
And the good thing is, like you said, the exposure metering is really spot on. I like to kind of overexpose a little bit sometimes, on a shoot like this just to bring more light to the skin tones, and that was easy as just, like, flicking the little wheel here to add half a stop or whatever, in shutter speed.
And this was a really good demonstration of a back-lit shot.
[Image of the model wearing a flower garland standing in a garden with light coming in from behind her]
So, the sun was sort of coming in from behind her here, and the good thing is, even though I sort of exposed for the skin tones, the foreground, the background didn't really blow out completely; you got this really nice sort of bokeh here, especially the background. It's got the almost swirly medium format effect. so that's at f/2.8.
(John)
So, let's just zoom in on this one.
(Hashem)
ISO 100, I'm guessing.
[Zooms in on eyes of the model in the image]
(John)
Oh, the out of focus areas are just beautiful. All the details in the hair here, in the floral crown. And again, the eye.
[Zooms in close to the eye]
I mean, you can count the number of eyelashes that this young lady has got. This is just impressive.
And, of course, the distance between the near eye and the far eye is only a few centimeters, but at 2.8 it's just falling off beautifully; you just nailed it.
(Hashem)
It feels like probably using an f/1.6 or 8 maybe on 35 mm? So even though you know, people might say you know it only opens up to 2.8, that's still going to give you really perfect transition from getting the face in focus, from the chin to the crown, and you get that really nice falloff straight away. So, I left it on 2.8 for most of the shoot, maybe stepped up a few times in other situations where there might have been a bit of an angle.
But, it's really, really good at focusing and just locking it in; it's almost like the camera knows what you're trying to focus on and it's easy to change the AF point, just with the little joystick here.
So, if I was shooting portrait, just a quick few bumps up on the joystick, set the AF point higher up where the eye is, and then just snap. That easy.
(John)
I think there are something like 477 auto focus points and they go right to the edge of the sensor. Some of the earlier medium format digital systems only had one focus point in the center, so if you wanted to use auto-focus, you had to focus and recompose; and of course, with low depth of field shooting, when you focus and recompose you've moved the camera along a bit of an arc and you can very easily take your subject out of focus.
And, of course, if the subject has moved ever so slightly, it can be a real hit and miss process; so having this vast number of focus points that you can just place anywhere in the frame where necessary... and this thing just seems to know how to focus on eyes! I mean, I just had great success with it when I used it.
(John)
Yeah, I think that's the general consensus - it's just set up perfectly for especially things like portraits.
(John)
Yeah, I think you've delivered a beauty body of work.
[Image of the second model standing in the garden]
Now, what have been the reactions from your colleagues? Was everybody excited by what you brought out?
(Hashem)
I haven't shown it to too many people, but it's because I haven't had a chance to sit there and edit the files yet, and I was funny enough...
(John)
Truth be told, I kind of had Hashemrush on this one here, because he only works two days a week with us and I needed to get this interview done today on Tuesday. So it was only on Saturday you did the shoot.
(Hashem)
So, I just picked out six of my immediate favourites and I just sort of, tweaked the colours to my liking just to kind of match the filmic kind of look I usually go for. And funnily enough, on this particular shot I used sort of a Fuji 400 H preset, which is a medium format film just to compare how that would look compared to what I'm used to when I shoot that film in medium format, and it was really nice.
Like, hardly any adjustment needed to the files to correct them, but it's all just to taste after that.
(John)
So now, on your film camera that you used on the day, what stock did you use?
(Hashem)
I actually used portrait 400, but the reason for choosing Fuji preset with this was because I just wanted to mess around and see how it looks from the memory of what I... and i know Fuji you know, has their own film simulations in there, like Provia being the standard one and Velvia being saturated and all that. So I just wanted to see how they might look and I just tweaked around and messed around with the little time I had.
But I shot portrait 400 just because it's what I had.
(John)
Yes.
(Hashem)
And a bit of black and white as well.
(John)
Now, Lightroom supports the Fuji GFX RAW files, and has since about two weeks after the camera was shipped; and in the camera calibration tab in Lightroom (and unfortunately, we don't have Lightroom running here) all of the Fuji film simulations are there in your camera calibration tab, so you can just play with them to your heart's content.
(Hashem)
Ah, in the procal files?
(John)
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, the RAW files are ready to go and you can do an awful lot with them.
When I first played with the camera, I was diving into the jpgs and they were spectacular; then when I finally, two weeks in, had a chance to decode the RAW files I just couldn't believe the immense amount of detail that was in them.
As a matter of fact, since there is no anti-aliasing filter on this sensor, I found that I was over-sharpening with my standard sharpening preset, so I backed it down a bit.
(Hashem)
Yeah, it's set to 25. Yeah, I did the same because it's set to 25 by default, it's too much, I found on this camera; it's already really, really sharp, even wide open. So I dropped it down to like 10 or something and there was a built in lens correction profile, in the lens, so when I opened it up in Lightroom there wasn't any need to correct any vignetting or distortion; it was just ready to go. Yeah.
(John)
Yeah.
The other thing, I did some lens tests - not on the prime 63 mm here, but on the zoom - I went right through the complete aperture range and I was just blown away by how sharp the lenses were from pretty well end to end; no distortion in them, no chromatic aberrations, the vignetting very controlled. The lenses are really the unsung hero of this system.
Everybody is always concentrating on the body and all these features and you know, what it is and what it isn't, but Fuji has produced a just incredible set of lenses and of course, they've got a road map out and it's just going to expand with time.
So right now there are five lenses for the system: There is a 32-64 f/4 (close) and aperture zoom - so that's about a 25 to 50 mm range - there's the 63 f/2.8 which we've got here which is again about a 50 mm, well, you were saying it sort of feels a bit a 50 mm...
(Hashem)
Yeah, a 50 mm equivalent.
(John)
Yeah, yeah, it feels a bit like a 1.6 to you, you were saying?
(Hashem)
Aperture wise, yeah. Because it's also not just the numbers that count, it's also how the lens transitions the in focus points to the out of focus, so medium format already by default is going to give you a nicer transition to out of focus areas, and then 2.8 might not be as wide open as 1.4 n terms of letting light in, but even in times when I had to crank up the ISO I didn't notice any noise or anything pop up.
(John)
Yeah, yeah.
Then there's a 110 f/2 portrait lens. I haven't had a chance to play with that one yet, but I think I'd like to send you out with it.
(Hashem)
I wanted to try that one, actually, i don't think it was available at the time.
But that sounded really good.
I think it's, you know, the macro is definitely good for fine detail work and you need stabilisation and the f/2 sounds really good.
(John)
Now, that one doesn't have stabilisation; the macro has the stabilisation. So that's a 120 mm f/4 macro.
And then the last of the series of five that are currently available is the 23 mm F/4, and that's equivalent to about an 18 mm in 35 mm speak.
And then the next lens that's coming is a 45 mm f/2.8, and that will be kind of like a 35 mm.
And then, we don't have the specs yet, but there's going to be a sort of a short telephoto, so maybe - I don't know, I'm just guessing - it could be somewhere in the 180 to 200 mm range.
(Hashem)
Isn't there already a zoom, like a short zoom?
(John)
Ah, well, the short zoom is the 25 to... sorry, the 32 to 60.
(Hashem)
So, 32 to 60, so like 24 to 50 or something.
(John)
Yeah, yeah, about that.
So, it's a system that's got pretty well everything you need right now and it's going to grow.
The lenses are spectacular; the body right out of the box, anybody can just pick this camera up and use it; it's just a remarkable beast.
There's an angle finder for the viewfinder, so you can tilt it all around up and down, and of course, the screen tilts and folds.
Actually, I might just actually demonstrate that.
[John takes the camera and shows the various ways the viewfinder tilts and folds]
Let me see if I can do this... It tilts up and then you can also just it this way.
(Hashem)
It's a touch screen as well.
(John)
You can do an awful lot. So if you want to shoot from the waist in portrait, you can do that.
(Hashem)
See, I didn't know it was a touch screen initially and I was just like, touching the screen by accident and I was swiping through photos.
(John)
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
(Hashem)
It was really cool.
(John)
So, I mean, it's got the full gamut of modern features in an area where medium format cameras have always been lacking in a lot of these features and people have always sacrificed in order to get that ultra-high resolution. Well, now, with the Fuji GFX there's no real sacrifices. it's a camera that almost anyone who has used a modern camera can be very familiar with.
And if you hire the kit at Michael's we've got the Fuji-specific case for it, which has got nice foam cut inserts in it and it holds the body, the grip and three lenses; so if you want to get a collection of items in the GFX line and take it out on a shoot to evaluate, we've got that beautiful case that goes with it.
You can't buy that case, there were only a limited number of those made and they were sent to all the GFX shops for their hire systems.
So, we've got it here for hire at Michael's, and for the month of September - well, it's the end of August right now - but up until the end of September, 100% of your hire fee will be applied if you choose to purchase the camera. And, of course, Fuji is currently running their $900 trade-in offer on a select number of basically, the full-frame 35 mm cameras. If you've got one of those, right back to the old Canon 5D, they'll give you a $900 trade in on the purchase of the GFX body.
So, it's a great time to consider this camera and I think this is a very good example here. Hasheem, with no advance training... I sent you some crib notes I guess in an email.
(Hashem)
Ah, yeah, no it was really easy.
(John)
You just pick it up and you...
(Hashem)
It's notun-intimidating and it uses SD cards, which is great.
(John)
Yeah, a dual slot, so can get jpg and RAW on different cards. OR backups automatically.
(Hashem)
Even the battery life was really good, I found. We include three batteries with the hire kit?
(John)
Yes, we've got three batteries with the hire kit.
(Hashem)
I found I pretty much the whole day hadn't even flattened one battery. It got to a point where it was low to a quarter and I changed it just in case, but it hadn't even finished yet. So, that was really impressive as well.
(John)
Well, I'm really looking forward to putting a few more lenses into your hands.
(Hashem)
SO am I!
(John)
I'd like you to get a chance to use this at a wedding at some point in the near future, because I think that would be very interesting for our viewers, because this is sort of a medium format camera that is applicable to a wedding photographer.
Back in the old days of film, i mean, medium format ruled the wedding market, but then wedding photography changed a little bit and a lot of people were trying to get, you know, more spontaneous shots, tracking shots, and capturing more of the action versus the posted. Well, now we've got a camera that can sort of, bridge that gap.
(Hashem)
Yeah.
(John)
And, you know, it might be a very good second body to have for your real, the hero shots for a wedding photographer.
(Hashem)
Portrait session, yeah.
(John)
Now, it's not a speed demon, but it, you know, it does have continuous shooting modes and what does it run, like three frames per second?
(Hashem)
Three; roughly three, yeah.
(John)
The buffer, you know, it's not the world's biggest buffer, but they are huge files - I think it's like 17 shots or something.
(Hashem)
Yeah, but you don't shoot this camera like that, not this type.
(John)
No, it's not what it was designed for. You're not going to go out and shoot horse racing with the thing.
but, I think an event photographer who needs to get heroic shots, I think it could be quite applicable for it.
The focus engine just doesn't seem to let me down.
I think it's a really, really brilliant package.
Anyway, so thank you so much for joining us, Hasheem.
(Hashem)
No worries, thanks for having me.
(John)
I really like the body of work here.
(Hashem)
Thanks!
(John)
I think everybody in your team is going to be quite excited about it.
And I'd like to see some of these printed out large!
(Hashem)
Yeah! Once I put a few more edits through and pick out some favourites.
We wanted to print a few to give to some of the people who collaborated.
So, you know, that will be interesting to show next time.
(John)
Yeah, so when we get the links for the finished versions of these we'll put them into the comments of the video, and you're going to get some film processed and scanned as well, so we'll have a look and see how the things compare.
(Hashem)
Yeah, I'm keen on comparing that side by side with traditional medium format.
(John)
And that was 645 format?
(Hashem)
Yes, 645, which is a little bit larger than this sensor but not by much.
(John)
The film speed you were running was?
(Hashem)
(John)
400.
(Hashem)
Shooting at 200 to overexpose it.
(John)
Okay. That will be very interesting to see how they compare. What the resolving power is.
Yeah, we look forward to seeing that.
Anyway, thank you so much for joining us here. And we are planning of putting the GFX into the hands of a few more Michael's employees and to see what they can come up with!
We've got the camera here if you're interested in it. You can hire it; you can buy it; and we've got staff members who are experts with this camera.
So, we look forward to hearing from you soon.
And hopefully, you can come on in and have a play with the Fuji GFX 50S medium format mirrorless digital camera.
Take care and we'll see you next time.
(Hashem)
Thank you!
My Cart (0)
