Sans Mirror  

Fujifilm today announced the not-so-secret GFX100S and X-E4 cameras plus several new lenses (for both GF and X mounts). 

The big news is (literally), of course, the 100mp GFX100S. Actually, it's also the small(er) news, as the two big pluses to the new camera are that it's much smaller than the original GFX100—which has an integrated vertical grip—and it has a lower cost. Most of the rest of the camera is very similar to the more expensive one I reviewed last year.

It's that price, US$5999, that probably is the big news with the GFX100S. That's US$4000 less than the original GFX100, and only US$500 more than the 50mp GFX50S. With Sony already offering 61mp in a full frame body at US$3500, it seems to me that Fujifilm is trying to drive a price stake in the ground that forms a ceiling for the upcoming higher spec full frame cameras. 

Yes, higher pixel count full frame is coming. Canon is rumored to be thinking in the 100mp range themselves, Nikon is targeting 80mp, and Sony's next plans aren't yet clear, but are likely to be in that same range. Can you sell a US$5000 full frame body with a high pixel count when a medium format one is available at US$6000? We might actually see that fight.

Meanwhile, some differences that account for that lower price include no drive, ISO, metering, or exposure compensation dials. We do get six custom C# settings on the Mode dial, which should prove useful. Strangely, the UX design definitely evokes Nikon here (button+dial). 

Near the other end of the buying spectrum, the Fujifilm X-E4 re-exerts the offset EVF, rangefinder-style body in the APS-C lineup. I'm not a big fan of doubly offset viewfinders—SLRs are singly offset—as when you're following erratic or fast motion you're not only not any axis of the action, but you also have most of the mass on one side of the axis. With long telephoto lenses, that can start to be a problem. 

Of course, the X-E4 isn't really designed for that kind of work. Still, I'm not really understanding the difference between the X-E4, X-S10, and the inevitable X-T40. Yes, the X-E4 just became the smallest X camera in the main lineup, but is that enough to justify it?

Even with the downsize, I'm not really understanding the difference between the X-E3 and X-E4. Yes, I know that one was 24mp with minimal video capability and the newer one is 26mp with higher video capability. I guess I can understand why an EX-2 user might want to upgrade, but I suspect a lot of those folk have already picked another Fujifilm APS-C camera to update to.

In terms of lenses, we get three new ones:

• GF 80mm f/1.7 — a very welcome fast, slightly long, normal lens for the GFX cameras.
• XF 27mm f/2.8 Mark II — oh dear, now we're marking lenses, too ;~). New is an aperture ring and weatherproofing.
• XF 70-300mm f/4-5.6 — another very welcome lens that helps give some telephoto choice to the X mount user base. 

It struck me in reading a number of comments recently that people aren't exactly seeing camera pricing correctly. Part of that has to do with on and off again instant rebates and older generation bodies still littering the market. 

Since we're in a period of relative quiet in terms of rebates at the moment, I thought it might be wise to show where things really are in terms of current model mirrorless camera pricing and make a few comments about that. Here's what I see today (ignoring a few Panasonic instant rebates still in effect):

Black = m4/3, Red = APS-C, Blue = Full Frame, Green = Medium Format

I've left out OM Digital Solutions for the moment, as it's unclear what will be happening even short term with them. Moreover, as part of the transition, there was a temporary change from subsidiary to distributor that's still skewing immediate pricing.

In terms of the Big 3 (Canon, Nikon, Sony), it's actually quite interesting. Canon is skewed lower in price (other than the R5/R6), Sony is skewed higher in price (three models above US$3000), and Nikon is somewhere more in the middle. Nikon's "middle" is skewed high middle, though. 

Meanwhile, the challenge for Fujifilm is to compete against Canon and Sony in crop sensor, but Fujifilm's top models actually price out higher than entry full frame. Sony is using crop sensor to protect the <US$1600 camera market. The Panasonic G's other than perhaps the GH5 all seem a bit too high-priced to me (though many are on discount at the moment still, probably because they don't sell at list price against that larger sensor competition). 

The mirrorless camera market has been flat in volume for the last four years, stuck within spitting distance of 4m units/year. Thus, any loss of market share (Fujifilm, Panasonic, and Sony all have had some during that period) is not a sign that your strategy is compelling against the competition. Indeed, I'm not sure any of the camera maker's strategy at the moment is truly compelling: as I noted many years ago, we have more players fighting in the smaller pool than ever before. (DSLR was the bigger pool until this year, and it had only two viable competitors.) 

Some things to note:

• There's a big gap in the Canon full frame pricing. I fully expect Canon to fill that gap.
• Nikon's full frame is tightly grouped. I expect them to move higher, and maybe lower, by expanding the lineup.
• Sony's full frame lineup has a strange gap in the US$2000-3000 range. I expect them to spread their models a bit better in the future.
• APS-C is US$500 to US$2000. I'm not convinced that the two ends of that range are going to be long-term productive. Sony is better positioned than Canon and Fujifilm if I'm correct.

It used to be that the pro sports photographers and photojournalists all used Canon or Nikon DSLRs with single digit numbers in their name. Then Sony came along with the A9 in 2017 and joined the party. 

The thing that distinguished all those cameras is that they were optimized for speed and low light, not pixel count. The Canon 1DX Mark III and Nikon D6—the current models in a long lineage—are 20mp, while the Sony A9 Mark II (also current model) is 24mp. The Nikon D6, in particular, has sensor design that particularly suits high ISO work, to the point that it actually impairs dynamic range some in the lower ISO range.

Rumors—and not just about the upcoming Sony A9 iteration—seem to indicate that the days of low pixel count but high speed are nearing an end. Nikon's upcoming high-end mirrorless camera is also rumored to be a high pixel count camera. Meanwhile, the recent Canon R5 will happily fire away its 45mp at 20 fps. 

What happened?

Three things are driving the trend line now:

1. With BSI and other advances, the light collection on a full frame sensor is about the same whether the sensor has 20, 24, 36, or 45mp. If you're talking about output that isn't stretching pixels out into visibility (e.g. almost all news reporting and even sports photography such as the Sports Illustrated magazine spreads), then the visible noise is the same. But what about cropping to get the sports image, you ask? Same thing applies, as if you don't have enough lens, you'd be cropping both a 20mp and a 45mp image.
2. With copper, stacked silicon, and smaller process size, among other things, bandwidth has improved and will continue to do so. Add in faster and better SoC (Bionz, Digic, Expeed) and sometimes dual SoC, and you can handle that bandwidth just fine.
3. The overall market collapse coupled with the pricing pressure on photographers has made the "just buy every model you need for specific purposes" notion fly out the window. Not many are buying multiple cameras now, and the ones that are tend to be looking at video features, not still features. Meanwhile, camera companies can't afford to have huge model lines where every specific need is filled.

So while the top of the DSLR market maxed out with the 20mp Canon 1DX Mark III and Nikon D6, the mirrorless market is likely to top out differently, with the Canon R5, Nikon Z9, and Sony A9 Mark III all around the 45mp mark. It's a good thing we've moved to the faster CFe cards, as we need big cards that perform really fast, particularly on ingest to our computers. And yes, that means that your old computer might not keep up and you'll need more storage and backup for it. The price of progress.

But this trend isn't going to stop with just the top-end cameras, either. I think the mid-level cameras will rise up in pixel count, too. The Sony A7 Mark IV is rumored to be coming in at 30-32mp.  I'll say this, too: the only thing I don't like about the Canon R6 is that it's just 20mp. It's the highest priced in the "basic" full frame model competition (R6, Z6 II, S5, A7), and it has the lowest pixel count. That will work against it over time, I think. 

So, Olympus has turned over the Imaging group to a new company, OM Digital Solutions. Only problem? omdigitalsolutions.com is a Web site of an Indian SEO company. omdigitalservices.com is also taken. Ditto omcameras.com and omdigital.com. 

Here's a little help for JIT and their new company. The following Web site name is still available: omimaging.com. So is om43.com and omdimaging.com. Meanwhile, the domain name of om.com is for sale. 

Why do I get the feeling that the Web site will become an issue? For the time being, the Olympus Web sites still have camera info, and it appears that getolympus.com—the online sales site—will be back on Monday, though I suspect under new ownership. However, if OM Digital Solutions doesn't have rights to the Olympus name past a certain point, how does that work?

The devil's always in the details.

Update: the company picked om-digitalsolutions.com. So now a firm in India is going to get a lot of traffic when people omit the hyphen... The new Web site is pretty barren. Clicking on the Product/Support tab takes you to the old Olympus Asia product pages.