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Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan here. You know, I don’t take the opportunity very often to just talk about how I feel using a camera. I felt very compelled to do this when I shot with the GFX100 II at the Grand Canyon. I wanted to shoot at the Grand Canyon. I was going and I asked Fujifilm if they would send us one. So I took a GFX100 II with me. I used primarily a 63mm lens which is roughly the equivalent of a 50mm or your human eye to do landscapes because I love to shoot and stitch them together. So I just want to talk about that experience, how I found using that camera and shooting in that type of environment.
Obviously I’m outside so I’m carrying it. It was windy sometimes. It was a little rainy a couple times. So I had all those things to deal with. And it was really interesting because the camera itself really is the form factor that makes it a, in your backpack, carry it with you, shoot on location kind of medium format landscape camera. It really is amazing.
I mean, the first thing for me has always been, and as I was shooting I saw it immediately, even on days when the light was so terrible, I saw just beautiful color. 
The images are absolutely gorgeous. You know, with any landscape experience I’m out there shooting, getting up early, get out there and nothing. You know, just horrible. But the last day we got some beautiful light and you just see it in that sensor. You just see great depth. 
You see just a beautiful image. You can blow that up. You can crop it. You can do so many things with it. And that really made that worthwhile, taking that camera out on location like that.
The smaller form factor, it’s not as small as a full frame mirrorless, but it is a mirrorless in a medium format. And it is very small and lightweight. 
So that small lightweight form factor makes it really a winner for me. I felt like that was worth it. It was easy for me to carry around. I shot some with tripod. I shot a lot handheld, which is easy to do. 
When I had that on a strap around my neck I didn’t feel like I was lugging a big heavy camera around with me. I felt like I was carrying pretty much the same as, you know, most of the mirrorless full frame cameras that I carry all the time. So in that way I thought it was really nice and easy to use.
I also loved the fact that it was just, it was very fast. The focus was fast. Everything was, the buttons and everything just gives you a great readout. You can see a great image on the back with the screen. 
Looking through it I love the EVF. I see great detail there. That was easy to use and to work with. So it made that whole experience just kind of seamless for me. I did, that display on the top kept fooling me though because it doesn’t turn off. 
And so I kept thinking my camera was on or I hadn’t turned my camera off. And so I kept thinking that that was, you know, that fooled me a few times. But that being said, I loved having that on top. I just love the fact that I have all that display space up there. I see exactly all the settings of the camera. It’s easy for me to see exactly where everythings at without having to get onto the back, or you know, to go into the Q button. Or you know, to find out exactly what’s going on with the camera. So I love that top screen. I think that top screen is incredible.
The autofocus was really more than adequate for what I was doing, for doing location kind of scenic photography. When I put it on a tripod, I mean that’s a no-brainer. 
The autofocus is absolutely spot on. I can use, either use a single spot, I can use some of the multiple spot types of readings. I use mostly single spot. I kind of like to decide exactly. Sometimes I’ll expand that a little bit so it’s a little bigger area. But I kind of want to know exactly where I’m in focus, what’s in focus. So I use that spot focus when I’m doing landscape stuff a lot. And I kind of leaned on that the most. But the autofocus was incredible. 
I shot a few of the people that were with me and in that mode where you’re shooting people and you start doing multiple frames per second the focus is good, but it struggles just a tiny bit. It’s not going to compete with a high-end Sony you know or high end Canon. 
It’s not quite there. But when I say that it’s not quite there, you can say that, that it’s not quite there. It’s right there. And that is an interesting, there’s a difference there, in that thought. It’s not that it’s so far out that it doesn’t compete. It’s right there. And I think that’s pretty interesting. I’m hoping that we’ll see some firmware updates from Fujifilm that will give us greater capabilities with the camera and the camera will grow.
Our athletes are phenomenal. The, you know, all firefighters are constantly working out. Why? Because they need to be fit. They need to have that strong core in order to do their job every day. I can tell you, we’ve had some other athletes from other sports come out. I’m thinking of a football player in particular, that got up to the top of the tower, came down and that was it. 
When they start out they have at least 50 lbs. of gear on. So they have 50 lbs. of gear along with a 42 lb. high-rise pack, racing up a tower seven flights. It’s not easy. We have many cases. Our timing system is in an SKB case. If something happened to that, that would be the end of our show. 
So we trust it in an SKB case, as well as our speakers, to travel with in SKB cases.
They priced this camera to get it into people’s hands. You might say, oh it’s $7,500. Yeah, but it’s a medium format camera that gives you a 102 megapixel sensor. And so they priced it at that $7,500. It’s less than the GFX100 which was $10,000, you know, which that’s a significant difference there. And with this smaller form factor in that lower price, I think it’s made so people can get this into their hands and start to be a serious camera.
I mean, I have always loved, and if you check out the lesson we did on this, we show the depth of field difference between a full frame and a medium format. Check that lesson out because it really shows you what is so beautiful about a medium format. 
And that is when you have that shallower depth of field. If you’re doing any kind of people or portraiture or fashion that shallow depth of field is just a beautiful look. And at the same f/2.8 on a full frame versus f/2.8 on a medium format, that medium format is significantly more out of focus. 
So check out that comparison we put up that shows that. You’ll see exactly what I’m talking about.
Now when you’re doing landscapes, I’m really about, you know, I don’t want shallow depth of field. I’m shooting, you know, I really want more depth of field. So I’m shooting at f/8. You know, I just want that depth of field to be there so that I can get nice sharp images. 
I’m trying to find the sweet spot for the lens, you know, which is somewhere around f/5.6 to f/8. I think I was getting really nice images sharp images on that 63mm lens from Fujifilm. The lenses for this camera are also incredible. They’re sharp. They give you great edge to edge. They’re not vignetting, at least the lens I used, a 63mm lens was incredible.
So that’s my experience. Look at some of these images. I love stitching these together. You can see, here’s some individual frames. Then we stitched them together in those panoramics. It’s just great. I wish we’d had better light for more days. We got a couple hours one morning when it was beautiful. And that’s the way landscape photography is. You know, you go out at 4:00 in the morning. You get up at 4:30 in the morning and you go out there and you get nothing. You go for sunset and it’s just nothing. And then you go, “I’m not going back out again. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m not going to do it. Okay, I’ll do it one more.” 
And then you get beautiful light. And that’s what we got on the very last day.
So it was a lot of fun to shoot with this camera. I enjoyed it immensely. I don’t think you would be disappointed with this camera. If you’re into medium format and you bought any of the others, the 100s, I think this is an upgrade. Definitely for the 100s. 
The autofocus is better. It’s just a better price compared to the 100. I think you have a lot of advantages with this camera that really makes it a purchase that I don’t think you’ll be disappointed in.
I didn’t really talk about video. I didn’t shoot a lot of video on this trip. It was really, stills is what I was after. 
But you know, with that CFexpress type B card it gives you fast enough card read speeds to be able to handle the video capabilities of this camera on a medium format. 
Because you’ve got Pro-Res 422 light. Internally you can record on the camera. Which gives you a great video image. 
And that, I think, needed that faster card. This camera crosses over into that video kind of world as well. Which again is just a really interesting world when you look at video from a shallower depth of field. 
That medium format, it’s a beautiful, beautiful image. We got a video up about that we shot in the past showing the difference between medium format and full frame.
So great video specs. Great still specs. I think this camera is really the combination of several cameras building and growing and getting to a point where they’ve got a great camera. I’m thinking with the updates they are going to do this camera will become more and more refined. 
And you know, maybe the next reiteration of this camera will become the king of them all. You can’t overstate the most important feature of this camera and that is a 102 megapixel medium format sensor.
The detail is absolutely, is stunning. Look when you punch in on one of these images. There is so much detail there. It just is really what this camera is all about. But anyway, love the camera, love the images. Here’s a few more images and keep those cameras rollin’ keep on clickin’!
