FUJIFILM GFX100S II for Music Photography – My Impressions

The FUJIFILM GFX100S II was announced in mid May 2024 and I was fortunate enough to get a loaner from the wonderful people at Fujifilm Nordic shortly after that – to use mainly for the epic The Minds of 99 at Parken Stadium project in June 2024. I previously tested the GFX100 in 2019 (more here) and the GFX100S in 2021 (more here). I was really looking forward to using the GFX100S II which promised the same spectacular GFX image quality but in a much, much faster camera!

Yes, I have had the pleasure of being an official ambassador for FUJIFILM for almost 12 years, so of course I am biased, I like using FUJIFILM cameras. This is not a review, just my impressions, and I would never tell anyone what to buy. Get any camera, make awesome stuff!

The words in this post are all mine though and there will be many! This will be long and chaotic but also feature some nice GFX music pictures – so if you couldn’t care less about my ramblings about the camera, you can just scroll down and view some memories from some epic concerts! At the end of this post you will also find a do-not-miss graphic and explanation of why big sensors are so great for wide angle photography!

FUJIFILM GFX100S II – a few of my impressions

Since this is a successor to the original GFX100S with the same camera body I am not going to repeat all my impressions of that camera, for that I have a few older YT movies you can watch, here and here. I will just touch on a few things about the camera and lenses, and then go through some of the main gigs I used the GFX100S II for.

Speed. We felt the need, the need for speed – and we got it! The GFX100S II is a huge improvement on the original, it is now so fast in operation that I barely feel the difference from my X-T5. It can shoot up to 7 frames per second with near zero blackout, plenty frames for me, and it has good autofocus speed and precision. Considering it is working with a 102megapixel sensor, it is insane we can have a medium format camera that is this fast! I would happily shoot gigs with 2 x GFX100S II cameras.

Image Quality. Legendary! The GFX files are just unreal, the level of detail, the color depth and the dynamic range are all incredible. And honestly, concerts are a great way to test this, yes you won’t get the files looking at their 100% perfect best because it will all be high ISO but for a real life test and pushed to the limits concerts are awesome testing grounds! This is when cameras really show what they can do and especially the superior dynamic range of the GFX becomes so apparent when shooting low light very contrasty scenes. You can check out some image comparisons at the end of this post to see just how much detail can be retrieved from a GFX file at high ISO.

ISO. Or more accurately High ISO. It is totally fine. I have no problems shooting at ISO 12800, many of the pictures below are ISO6400-12800. And here is the thing: I don’t care about ISO. ISO is not a thing that has any bearing at all on what makes a good picture. I love Auto ISO. I have mine set to go from ISO160 to ISO12800. I don’t care about ISO, it can just do its auto thing while I control shutter speed and aperture and by far the most important bit: try to be in the right spot at the right time to capture the perfect energetic emotional moment.

Cinematic. The word is overused, but I love movies, I love studying cinematography and I want my stills to look like moments from a movie and I often crop to 16:9 or even wider. The GFX loves to be cinematic! The ‘see wide at normal focal lengths’ look from the big sensor and the 102mp makes cropping to a panoramic format look immersive and spectacular, and the color depth, dynamic range and smooth falloff means the pictures have this medium format cinema camera ‘Alexa’ look.

IBIS. The Image Stabilization works so well. Thank goodness for the IBIS or I would never get a sharp GFX picture as I can’t stand still when the music is playing and I love slow shutter to introduce a bit of motion blur in the movements of the artists.

Sensor sensitivity and lens apertures. For concerts, the challenge with the GFX can sometimes be that the GF zoom lenses are generally not as fast (no F2.8 zooms) as the XF lenses – but this is somewhat compensated by the fact that the GFX sensor is generally more light-sensitive. I feel that F4 on the GFX roughly ends up equivalent to F2.8 on an X camera so it was never really an issue in the concerts I shot but also, they were all mostly really large stages with lots of light.

EVF/LCD ‘refresh’ in rapidly changing lights is my main issue (with all GFX cameras). In moments with rapidly changing light levels, could be strobe lights or just all lights blinking on/off meaning the camera constantly have to adjust from blackout to lots of light and back again several times per second – in these moments, the X-T5 reacts much faster, it can meter light and update the EVF/LCD with no issues, I can always see what I am doing and keep shooting. The GFX100S II cannot keep up, there are some moments with strobes etc where I just cannot see anything in the GFX100S II LCD/EVF, it just starts to lag and I have to shoot blind and at some point I just had to point it at the floor to let the poor camera recover. All previous GFX cameras have the same issue, just even worse. I don’t know if it’s processor power, sensor read out speed or whatever, I am not a camera tech. Probably a combination, I mean it has to read a 102megapixel sensor so it makes sense it’s slower. This is where I notice the biggest difference between GFX and X where the X-T5 can keep up with everything. But this will hopefully get better as the GFX firmware is optimized, the X-T5 had some of the same issue when it was released and it has been fixed now so fingers crossed.

The GF20-35mm lens is a fantastic wide-angle lens that I was really looking forward to using, and it’s an incredible lens that did not disappoint. I also used the ‘standard’ zoom, the GF35-70mm, which also impressed me, and it’s very light and compact. But the GF20-35mm was the lens I used 99% of the time and it really is a perfect wide-angle zoom for the GFX.

In summary: The FUJIFILM GFX100S II is an incredible camera with spectacular image quality and it is fast enough now to be used as a main camera for music photography. The larger and more epic the concert is, the more the GFX really shines, it loves big stages and big productions (and so do I!)

Ok, let’s get to some pictures!

But wait, there is GRAIN?!

Oh yeah! Lots of lovely grain, I love film grain, I love the analog look, I don’t like clean digital files. In all the pictures there are large amounts of grain added, especially the Minds at Parken pictures as they have a unique color and texture grade we specifically developed for that project applied to all the pictures. Actually the GFX files are so clean at low ISO that the sliders in Lightroom don’t go far enough for my taste and I have to add grain layers in Photoshop 😀 So don’t judge the GFX grain/cleanliness on my pictures, I am not a technical shooter, I love slow shutter and grain/texture! I also love the Fujifilm film simulations and all of the pictures below are shot in RAW but developed with a starting look from either Classic Chrome, Classic Neg or Reala Ace film simulations.

Barselona at Tivoli – using the GFX100S II for everything!

When I received the GFX100S II, I thought it would be interesting to photograph an entire concert exclusively on the GFX instead of just using it alongside my X-T5 – and luckily, my friends in the Danish band Barselona were up for the idea! I brought the GFX100S II, GF20-35mm and GF35-70mm zooms and nothing else.

This series of pictures from Barselona’s concert at Tivoli in Copenhagen includes a bit of everything I do at a concert: the large wide-angle panoramas that the GFX format is fantastic for, but also close-ups that gain an extra cinematic 3D quality from the tonality and dynamic range of the GFX. But fortunately, it doesn’t all have to be ‘pretty’; the GFX can also do something I really love: dark, grainy images with slow shutter speed to create a sense of emotion, energy, and motion blur.

The images were shot in RAW format and developed in Lightroom using FUJIFILM’s film simulations, primarily REALA ACE and CLASSIC Neg. I love the film simulations; they are always my starting point when developing a RAW image.

I would still prefer to use the X-T5 and GFX100S II together. For me, it’s a pretty perfect combination to use the GFX with the GF20-35mm for all wide-angle shots and the X-T5 for all medium and telephoto shots in action moments. But it was a really fun and creative exercise to shoot an entire concert on medium format GFX. It offers new possibilities with the 102-megapixel files that can be cropped into any format I want, and at the same time, the camera makes me see and compose in a different way.

There is something about the GFX color depth in that picture above that just makes it feel so 3D to me.

Cinematic! This is what I mean with ‘stills from a movie’, the GFX does this so well.

I think I was walking forward while shooting the above and that introduced a bit of zoom in effect, a happy accident that I totally love!

Cinematic! GFX files crop so well into panoramas because of the ‘see wide at normal focal lengths’

Christopher at Royal Arena, Copenhagen

A big gorgeous Arena show with massive production, the GFX just loves this stuff!

I shot this using autofocus and face detection and it worked great.

That picture above, that is really really GFX power at it’s finest, ISO12800 and it still retains so much detail in the shadows and such fine color fidelity!

Zar Paulo & Eloq – support acts at The Minds of 99 shows at Parken Stadium

We are in the national Stadium! But let’s warm up with a few support acts before the main event and if you think the GFX was happy in the Arena, it was golden retriever puppy ecstatic in the Stadium!

Sometimes the full height (4:3 format) of the GFX sensor works well to show the height of a venue too.

THE MINDS OF 99 – Parken Stadium

This is the main project I wanted to borrow the GFX for. The biggest project I have ever done and will ever do. Three nights in a row at the stadium, with the best and biggest band in Denmark – The Minds of 99 and close to 150,000 fans. I have already posted a huge photo essay from this project, so go check that out if you want to see much more. Here is just a little taste of my favourite GFX pictures.

The GFX100S II was absolutely crucial in making all of these gorgeous wide angle pictures, and I am so glad I had it, it really made such a difference to the look and quality of these pictures. We designed and added a dramatic colour and texture grade on top of these pictures, and I love this look, and applying a very grade works even better when the GFX files underneath the grade are so incredibly looking.

A lot of these are shot at 20mm and there is just no way I could get the same immersive wide non-distorted view on an X-T5 at 10mm. The GFX made a huge difference to the documentation of these 3 historical concerts!

This panorama really showcases the wide angle ‘see wide at normal focal lengths’ of the GFX sensor. Perfectly straight, immersive, shot at 20mm, no distortion but 108 degree field of view!

A 700m2 screen needs a GFX to capture it properly!

This view from the stage would have needed to be shot at 10mm on the X-T5 and it would have looked a lot different, the GFX gives that immersive wide angle view and insane amounts of detail in the 50,000 people in front of me!

Notice the falloff here, even a 20mm wide angle at F4 will create this smooth medium format falloff when focused on a near object.

Dynamic range example at ISO12800

The following scene is a nightmare for digital sensors, it is super dark, with a few bright red spotlights. But just look at the amount of detail hiding in those GFX shadows, the whole roof and the crowd appear. The superior detail and dynamic range of the GFX really helps in these mad difficult scenes! I exposed these for the highlights as I knew I could recover all the shadow details later.

Why is Medium Format so awesome for wide angle?

I feel this blog post is not quite long enough yet so I need to add why I love the GFX for my wide angle pictures! It’s simply physics, with a larger sensor you are effectively un-cropping a lens, you see wider at the same focal length! A 20mm lens becomes a 16mm lens (in full-frame equivalent) and a 10mm lens on APS-C. Because the GFX sees a lot wider you get less distortion, and I am talking about the ugly wideangle depth distortion where things close to you are massive and the middle and background is tiny and gets pushed far away. If you watch movies, even wide panoramas are usually filmed at 50mm and up, often at anamorphic lenses to get the same effect as your eyes – see wide at a ‘standard’ focal length!

Check out this graphic for what the different sensors would see with the same 20mm focal length. To get the same 108 degree view I would need 16mm on a fullframe, and 10mm on my X-T5. Vice versa at the tele end of the spectrum you could argue APS-C has an advantage as 140mm becomes 200mm. But for wide angle, a crop sensor is a compromise, there is a huge optical difference between 10 and 20mm. I love the XF10-24mm and use it every day, but for wide angle pictures the GFX is just so much better simply because of the much larger sensor. And of course, in wide angle pictures most of the details are small so it really helps to have 102megapixels of resolution. But the main reason why I want to own a GFX is the big sensor sees a lot wider!

It’s the end of the world as we know it

Well not quite, but I think it’s finally the end of this blog post. Please do comment or DM me any questions! And…

Dear Santa, I would like a GFX100SII with GF20-35mm lens. And a Canyon carbon road bike.

§