And the fun only starts there. The ability to recover shadows is nothing short of nuts. I pushed the darks in some deliberately underexposed files by 5 stops, while hardly introducing any noise. With my X-T2 I am limited to two stops before things get ugly. Users of the Sony A7RII or high-end Nikon DSLRs are probably used to this kind of dynamic range and shadow recoverability, but to me it seemed like nothing short of a miracle.

The shots that I took with the GF32-64 and a pre-production GF23 where amazingly sharp all the way into the corners. Even at f22 where you would expect a degree of refraction to kick in. I do overly care about corner sharpness in landscape or portrait photography, but in architecture I certainly appreciate it.

Speaking of landscapes and architecture: Depth of field can be a bit of a challenge, especially when compared to a crop sensor. Having to shoot at a much slower aperture to achieve more depth of field did not cause any issues with sharpness as much as with exposure. With a lower base ISO compared to my X-T2, and 2-3 stops less light due to smaller apertures to achieve comparable depth of field, I had to expose a lot longer than what I was used to. With still-life photography that is not an issue in most situations, but it can become one when moving subjects are introduced. Where certain shutter speeds are required to freeze or blur motion to a particular degree (close-up moving water or blurred people in architecture as in the image below), ISO might have to be pushed a little. This is something I normally avoid at any cost, but the ISO performance of the GFX’s sensor is supposed to be as phenomenal as its dynamic range. I did not test this for myself, though.

Architecture

Amongst other things, Fujifilm advertises the GFX as an architectural camera. As of now there is no word of a tilt/shift lens. The X-system suffers the same hole in its line-up of lenses. The argument has always been that the X-system is not popular enough with architectural or landscape photographers to warrant the substantial R&D cost along with necessarily small production runs of a niche lens.