The Fuji GFG670 medium format film camera
Fuji Manager Takeshi Ueno confessed in an interview with Bjp-online that they are seriouly considering to make a digital medium format camera! He says:
“We are in a very good position to make a medium format camera, as we make camera bodies, sensors and lenses. We already make the lenses for Hasselblad, so we have that expertise.
At the moment Fuji is not planning to launch a medium format camera, but we are conducting research and testing sensors in this area.
We have a good history in the medium format market, and I think we would be successful again. We have the technology to make a very modern and high quality camera, but right now we are only investigating.”“Ueno agreed that now would be a very good time for Fuji to enter the market, but it seems that not everyone in the company is quite as convinced.”
That would be exciting! The Full Frame mirrorless battle is something that will become crowded once Nikon and Canon will enter it. Going Medium format may be a smart move to stay out of the battle. But of course the question is if Fuji can keep the costs down and still make profits out of it.
via Fujirumors.
Reminder: Fuji announced all their new products:
X-PRO2 specs and preorders at BHphoto, Amazon, Adorama. In Eu at CameraWorld.
XF 100-400mm specs and preorders at BHphoto, Amazon, Adorama. In Eu at CameraWorld.
X-E2s specs and preorders at BHphoto, Amazon, Adorama. In Eu at CameraWorld.
X-70 specs and preorders at BHphoto, Amazon, Adorama. In Eu at CameraWorld.
28 Responses
You are not going to win by staying out of the battle. If Canon and Nikon with their marketing and R&D resources don’t go there, it means there is no money to be made there.
Fuji allready makes the Hasselblad lenses. They have perfect insight in the MF market and the know how and plants and allready make money in the market. But that also means they will not ruin the partnership with HB. A fuji MF would thus be something complete different that doesnt compete with Hasselblad. Both fixed lens rangefinder style cameras like the ga645, folders like the gw670 and tilt shift monsters like the gx680 has been up their alley before.
Don’t forget that Fuji back in the film days had the only AF Medium Format Point and Shoot is the GA645i, GA645Wi and the GA645Zi. They certainly in their archives have enough info to give them the leg up on a MF Mirrorless even if they started with the same approach as they did with the X-Cameras. I fully expect them to BTW. I shoot MF (Pentax 645Z) and would love something like the GA645i in digital form.
The ga645 is the perfect winter p&s, they fit in the pockets of my (swedish) winter jacket and the plastic doesn’t get to cold to hold comfortably. I have two, one 60mm with fast b&w film and one 45mm with portra160.
hi there, out of curiosity, have you got some pics of the bw 60mm online?
Actually no, i have had the wide one for years and have quite a few with that one online. The 60mm, i got this christmus, and its only on its second roll. I might develop the first one tomorrow so its coming soon.
OK, here we go. It may not have been my finest day in the darkroom, pushing t-max two steps in finol was a bit over the top as you can see from the lack of details in the shadows.
Anyway, here are the pics from the first strip i scanned.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/44032y6kf7730wb/AADBRa-0rMhSXS9MBQ9LqaF_a?dl=0&preview=ga645_1-1.jpg
Btw, it is hard to measure company sizes of japaneese conglometates. I wrote this text in a mail a while ago, ill simply port it here for you.
If you look at the number of emplyees, revenue and operating income Nikon is the smallest, with fuji 3 times and canon 8 times as big as nikon.
However, Fuji and Canon are not owned by anyone, Nikon is owned by Mitsubishi which is a much much bigger company. That can be a blessing as well as a curse. In Nikons case it was a blessing during the hard years when they didnt really manage to transform their busness into digital as well as Canon did. But now, not so much anymore, as Mitsubishi hasnt increased R&D funding for nikon in 10 years or so. Thus they are pretty much in maintainance mode until Mitsubishi decides otherwise.
Canon and Fuji are quite alike, they do other business as well apart from selling cameras and lenses. Canon, however, are a lot more depending on the shrinking digital camera business. Their profit is not good and its hard to invest in R&D when there is no profit to invest. For example, they have not been able to upgrade their sensor factories for years and years and are falling behind in both performance and the cost per unit of making sensors. Once the digital camera market stops shrinking it will be a lot easier for them to calculate return of investment and they may start trying to catch up. For now, they pretty much save what profit is possible while trying not to loose too much market shares.
Fujis digital imaging division is very small compared to those of Nikanon. I doesnt mean that the are small in photography, though. They make more money from manufacturing for other brands and from the film division than ever. The now have 100% market share on developing labs and chemistry for those labs, they have almost 100% market share of slide film and a good share of negative and x-ray film too. They are through with their film photography downsizing and the film market has now stopped shrinking since a few years ago. They also make lots of large format and TV-lenses. All those things are doing quite well, even the digital imaging division has started to make a profit. But what really makes lots and lots of money is the fall of Polaroid, that opened a big market share with zero competition and they have soon sold 1 billion instax cameras and each frame shot with them sells for more than $1. They also have little or no competition in many of these fields. They and Sony share the luxury of being able to transfer funds from profitable departments to invest in market shares in digital imaging while the main competetors are forced to save money and down size.
This has absolutely nothing to do with their camera/lens market shares, and sizes of their camera divisions.
They’re selling an APS-C sensor camera for 1700€, I don’t even want to guess at what price they would like to sell a medium format version!
Um…. that is very affordable.
Yes, but Pentax is the one to look to for “affordable” medium format prices. I’d love if Fuji should manage to release a relatively affordable medium format camera (let’s say <5000€?), especially because I shot with every single Fuji medium format film camera but one (the gigantic GX680) and I loved each and every one of them.
Andddd you do know what Phase One and Hasselblad charge for a medium format digital right?
If the rest of the brands would focus a bit more on making mirrorless aps-c cameras instead of mirrorless aps-c gadgets, maybe they could sell them for that much money too.
Hey!
That may even turn into competition so that the price goes down a bit.
Don’t get me wrong, as cameras the Fuji are awesome. I’m just a tad weary of the price (from a marketing perspective) given they sport after all an aps-c sensor, considering now in the market there are cheaper aps-c competitors and even full frame ones.
They will go down when the pruduction catches up with demand. Right now the x-pro1 is first on the amazone sales top 20, so if anything the introduction price maybe could have been even higher.
Well, x-pro1 owners had 4 years to save up the money 😉
Add a 0?
🙂
Would love to see a digital Fuji 617 with two Sony 100mp sensors mounted side by side 🙂
And would you pay the $60k+ that such a system would cost?
LOL, I know, but it would still be cool!
I’d rather like samsung to do a mf camera, so after one year it would go on sale at 30% of its initial price.
Fuji and Olympus should make a digital Medium Format camera, not a pseudo-one like Hasselblad, PhaseOne etc.
The sensor should be true 6×4.5cm at least, more preferred as 6x6cm so you can crop the ratios you want in either direction without need to turn camera.
The Mpix could be something like a 40-50Mpix range that would give excellent low light capability and a good image sizes to handle.
And then just give few good lenses to cover the wide angle, normal and telephoto needs.
50mpix for each color channel? ok!
I disagree. Its a mistake to ignore the full frame market. While many of us are all happy to shoot APSC and convince ourselves there is not much to be lost by the smaller sensor, we would likely jump all over a fuji full frame. But how many of us would really buy a fuji medium format, especially when you take into consideration the costs – body + lenses? Its a boutique market whereas full frame for a mirrorless system is dominated by one player with a characterless gadget replete with an uninspiring lens line up. If Leica could get some of their cameras around the 3k mark then Sony would have some competition. Until then, there is a giant hole in the market. I just don’t understand why Fuji dithers and would gamble on MF.
Id love to see 24×24 with the existing mount. Most of the lenses would work great and one could turn every shot inte square, portrait or landscape in post, just like good old 6×6.
Better off working on giving customers medium format quality without the 10K entry cost to digital medium format by making a roll film scanner that can do 135 and 120 format in the 8K range and scale output to 4K. Work on scanning software designed on film (i.e. all those docs they got from Kodak) so everyone will not have to rely on crappy Adobe based on digital cameras. Yes, a Fuji film scanner instead of a new medium format digital camera. Only crazy fools need a medium format digital camera, and even then they can’t make good use of it. Better to work on selling film and a scanner to those who use film now for their creative medium format efforts. Let the medium format digital cameras be the tools of the trade for corporate fools that get these purchased by departments within the corporation for them. Individuals are using film and looking for a good scanner that’s fast and effective with film.