Fujifilm GFX 50R Exposure

Saturation & Hue Accuracy
Bright colors with very good hue accuracy.

Saturation. The Fuji GFX 50R produces images with bright, pleasing colors using the standard film simulation (Provia) at default settings. The camera pushes most colors by small amounts, dark red and dark orange by moderate amounts, but undersaturates aqua just a bit. Default mean saturation at the base ISO of 100 was 112.2% (12.2% oversaturated), which is just a bit higher than average these days. You can of course tweak saturation and/or select a different film simulation mode if the default is not to your taste. Mean saturation was quite stable up to ISO 25,600 but fell as ISO was increased from there, ending up at 100.3% at the maximum extended ISO. Most consumer digital cameras produce color that's more highly saturated (more intense) than found in the original subjects. This is simply because most people like their color a bit brighter than life.

Skin tones. The GFX 50R rendered pleasant Caucasian skin tones that were just a touch on the pinkish side when white balance was adjusted to match the light source at base ISO, because of the moderate push in reds. Results were quite pleasing, though, with a natural and healthy look. (Here, too, the 50R's saturation and/or film mode options may come into play for some users, letting them tweak the color of skin tones if they find the default rendering a bit too saturated for their personal tastes. Note that Fujifilm claims their Astia film simulation produces "true-to-life" skin tones.) Where oversaturation is most problematic is on Caucasian skin tones, as it's very easy for these "memory colors" to be seen as too bright, too pink, too yellow, etc.

Hue. The Fuji GFX 50R produced only a few color shifts relative to the ideal reproduction of hues, and has excellent hue accuracy overall. Of note is the virtually no yellow to green shift that we often see from digital cameras. The largest shift is in cyan toward blue, however we think it's a deliberate choice by camera engineers to produce better-looking sky colors. Average "delta-C" color error after correction for saturation at base ISO was only 3.54 (lower numbers are better), which is very good, and hue accuracy remained better than average across the ISO range. Hue is "what color" the color is.

Exposure and White Balance

Indoors, incandescent lighting
Auto and Incandescent white balance were quite warm, but very good results with the Manual setting. Above average exposure compensation required.

Indoors, under typical incandescent lighting, color balance was quite warm using the Auto setting, with a fairly strong red/pink cast. Results with the Incandescent white balance setting were also very warm, with a strong yellow/orange cast. Manual (custom) white balance was quite accurate, though. The Fuji GFX 50R required +0.7 EV exposure compensation here, while most cameras need about +0.3 EV for this scene. Our test lighting for this shot is a mixture of 60 and 100 watt household incandescent bulbs, a pretty yellow light source, but a very common one in typical home settings here in the U.S.

Outdoors, daylight
Very good color and exposure outdoors.

The Fuji GFX 50R produced very nice color in simulated daylight at default settings. The GFX 50R required +0.3 EV exposure compensation for our "Sunlit" Portrait shot. This is better than average exposure accuracy, as most cameras need +0.7 EV to keep the face bright for this shot, but it did lead to a lot of blown highlights in the mannequin's shirt and flowers. Skin tones were pleasing, with a healthy-looking pinkish cast that's not too overdone with Manual white balance, and Auto wasn't much different (though not quite as bright for some reason). See the "Extremes: Sunlit..." section below to see how the GFX 50R's Highlight/Shadow Tone and D-Range settings help with harsh lighting like this.

Resolution
>4000 lines of strong detail.

Our laboratory resolution chart reveals sharp, distinct line patterns all the way up to the 4,000 lines per picture height limit of our chart from both in-camera JPEG and ACR converted RAW files, though the in-camera JPEG shows stronger aliasing in the form of luminance moiré starting at about 3,600 lines. Both show some color moiré/false colors although at different frequencies, however the ACR conversion shows slightly lower luminance moiré.

Sharpness & Detail
Very sharp images at default settings, with only minor edge-enhancement artifacts appearing along high-contrast edges. Very mild noise suppression is visible in the shadows at base ISO.

Sharpness. The Fuji GFX 50R captures very sharp images by default, while producing some minor edge enhancement artifacts along high-contrast edges such as the relatively thin sharpening "haloes" around the lines and letters of the bottle label above left. Excellent results here. Edge enhancement creates the illusion of sharpness by enhancing colors and tones right at the edge of a rapid transition in color or tone.

Detail. The crop above right shows incredible detail with only mild detail loss due to noise suppression at base ISO. Very few individual strands of hair merge together even when local contrast is low and as shadows deepen, and chroma noise appears to be very effectively controlled. We do however see "jaggies" and other aliasing artifacts thanks to the lack of an optical low-pass filter, though this is expected from cameras without an optical low pass filter. Noise-suppression systems in digital cameras tend to flatten-out detail in areas of subtle contrast. The effects can often be seen in shots of human hair, where the individual strands are lost and an almost "watercolor" look appears.

RAW vs In-Camera JPEGs
As noted above, the GFX 50R produces incredibly sharp and detailed JPEG images at default settings. Let's see how an Adobe Camera Raw conversion compares.

In the table above, we compare an in-camera JPEG taken at base ISO using default noise reduction and sharpening (on the left) to the matching RAW file converted with Adobe Camera Raw 9.1 via DNG Converter 11.2 using default noise reduction with moderate but tight unsharp masking applied in Photoshop (USM of 250%, radius of 0.3 pixels, and a threshold of 0).

As you can see, the ACR RAW conversion did indeed retain some fine detail that was lost in the in-camera JPEG, although overall contrast and saturation is lower at default settings. In the mosaic crop, we can see ACR retained much of the offset printing coloration that is present in the bottle label, although some of the coloration appears to be false or exaggerated. In contrast, the in-camera JPEG crops shows almost no coloration, likely the result of the 50R's very effective chroma noise suppression. You can also see that ACR produced much better contrast in our tricky red-leaf swatch while not boosting the saturation as much as the JPEG engine. As is usually the case, noise is more visible in the ACR converted JPEG at default NR settings, however it is remarkable low.

Bottom line, the Fuji GFX 50R produces stunning JPEGs straight from the camera, though as is usually the case, you can produce even better results when working with RAW files and a good converter.

ISO & Noise Performance
Outstanding high ISO performance.

The Fuji GFX 50R's images are very clean and incredibly detailed with almost no drop in image quality up to ISO 800. At ISO 1600, noise reduction efforts are a little stronger as you'd expect, but noise is quite low and fine detail is still outstanding. ISO 3200 is the first ISO step to show a significant drop in fine detail due to noise and the effects of noise reduction, however detail remains quite good. At ISO 6400 detail is still very good but luminance noise becomes more noticeable, however the noise is still very fine-grained, and chroma noise is still well controlled. Image quality at ISO 12,800 is still pretty good, though noise grain is of course more visible and some mild chroma blotching can be seen in the darker areas. Image quality drops off more rapidly at ISO 25,600 and above, with progressively more visible noise grain, stronger blurring and more noticeable noise reduction artifacts. Image quality at ISO 25,600 is not bad, but fine detail at ISOs 51,200 and especially 102,400 is quite soft with heavy luminance noise accentuated by sharpening artifacts, as well as chrominance noise in the form of large yellow and purple blotches. Still, high ISO performance is outstanding, among the best we've seen from any camera and on par with the 50S.

We're pixel-peeping to the extreme here though, which isn't always representative of what you see in prints. As always, see the Print Quality section below for maximum recommended print sizes at each ISO.

Extremes: Sunlit, dynamic range and low light tests
Mediocre dynamic range in JPEGs at default settings. Very good low-light performance.

Sunlight. The Fuji GFX 50R struggled with the harsh lighting of this test at default settings at the base ISO of 100 (which should be best case). We preferred the +0.3 EV exposure overall, because the exposure at +0.7 EV exposure compensation was too bright with far too many clipped highlights. Even at default exposure (0 EV), quite a few highlights were blown in the mannequin's shirt and flowers. There are quite a few dark shadows as well, though they contain good detail and relatively low noise with the default Provia film simulation. (Note that some other higher-contrast film simulations such as Pro Neg. Hi and especially Velvia frequently blow highlights and crush deep shadows, clipping them abruptly.)

Overall, the Fuji GFX 50R's JPEGs performed below average here without the help of any highlight and shadow adjustments, nor any dynamic range enhancement applied (see below). The good news is the blown highlights and detail in dark shadows in the above test scene are easily recoverable in the RAF RAW files, so the dynamic range captured by the GFX 50R's sensor appears to be excellent.

Because digital cameras are more like slide film than negative film (in that they tend to have a more limited tonal range), we test them in the harshest situations to see how they handle scenes with bright highlights and dark shadows, as well as what kind of sensitivity they have in low light. The shot above is designed to mimic the very harsh, contrasty effect of direct noonday sunlight, a very tough challenge for most digital cameras. (You can read details of this test here.)

Face Detection
The Fuji GFX 50R not only offers face detection to optimize focus and exposure for human faces, but also eye detection, and you can even specify which eye gets priority (right, left, or auto).

As you can see above there are subtle improvements in exposure, with face detect enabled being brighter than without, and eye detect being slightly brighter still. However all of them are still somewhat underexposed in the face, which is a bit disappointing. Focus is better with face detect enabled as well, keeping the eyes in sharp focus. Given the GFX 50R's very high resolution and the format's shallower depth of field, this feature should come in handy to help focus on the eyes in portraits when shooting at wide apertures.

Contrast Adjustment
The Fuji GFX 50R does not offer a traditional contrast adjustment. Instead, it offers Shadow and Highlight Tone settings, which let you adjust contrast in highlights and shadows independently. There are seven settings each on the GFX 50R, ranging from -2 to +5.

Shadow and Highlight Tone. Above you can see the effects the seven settings for Highlight and Shadow Tone control on our high-contrast "Sunlit" Portrait. Mouse over the links to load the associated thumbnail and click on the links to visit the full resolution image.

Notice how the Highlight settings mainly affect the brighter portions of the image, while the Shadow settings impact the darker areas. Both settings can be used simultaneously, giving more flexibility to tune the tone curve at both ends compared to a single contrast setting. Nice.

D-Range is Fuji's name for their dynamic range enhancement technology. D-Range is designed to preserve hot highlights, by exposing for highlights and then boosting mid-tones and shadows. There are three levels: DR100 100% (default), DR200 200%, DR400 400%, as well as an Auto mode which can select DR100 or DR200. DR200 is available at ISO 200 and above while DR400 is available at ISO 400 and above, so all the examples above were taken at different ISOs. Mouse over the links above to load the corresponding thumbnail image. Click on the links to get to the full resolution images.

As you can see the images above, the Fuji GFX 50R's higher D-Range settings were effective at toning down highlights without impacting shadows and midtones significantly. As they say, though, there's no free lunch, because improved highlight retention comes at a cost of increased noise. This is because the camera's sensitivity needs to be raised to take advantage of the D-Range feature, though that's really not much of penalty because the GFX 50R's ISO performance is so good. (Note that the Fuji GFX 50R does not offer a multi-shot in-camera HDR mode.)

Dynamic Range Analysis
We've switched to using DxOMark's dynamic range results because cameras were starting to exceed what we could measure ourselves with a standard Stouffer T4110 step chart, however DxOMark no longer publishes test results for Fuji sensors so we have no DxOMark results to share.

Looking at base ISO RAW files, though, it appears that the Fuji GFX 50R's peak dynamic range is excellent; very similar to the 50S'. And if we look at the Photons to Photos website, their "Photographic" dynamic range results (which are not directly comparable to DxOMark's numbers) confirm the GFX 50R indeed offers nearly identical dynamic range to its sibling's.

Low Light AF
The Fuji GFX 50R's contrast-detect autofocus system was able to focus in fairly low light. With our low-contrast AF target, the camera was able to focus down to about -2.9 EV, and with our new high-contrast AF target, the GFX 50R was able to autofocus down to about -4.5 EV unassisted with an f/2.8 lens, which is very good. We test this on a sturdy tripod, though, so hand-held results may differ significantly. Unlike the 50S, the 50R has a built-in AF assist lamp which allows it to focus in complete darkness as long as the subject is within range and has sufficient contrast.

How bright is this? The one foot-candle light level that this test begins at roughly corresponds to the brightness of typical city street-lighting at night. Cameras performing well at that level should be able to snap good-looking photos of street-lit scenes.

NOTE: This low light test is conducted with a stationary subject, and the camera mounted on a sturdy tripod. Most digital cameras will fail miserably when faced with a moving subject in dim lighting. (For example, a child's ballet recital or a holiday pageant in a gymnasium.) Thanks to its much larger sensor, cameras like the Fuji GFX 50R tend to do better than point & shoots, but you still shouldn't expect a quick autofocus lock with moving subjects.

Print Quality
Wonderfully detailed 30 x 40-inch prints up to ISO 3200; Usable 11 x 14-inch prints up to ISO 25,600; Nice 8 x 10-inch prints all the way until ISO 51,200!

ISO 50 through 3200 images are, much like its GFX 50S sibling's, packed with a fantastic level of detail and resolution, and offer really clean noise behavior as the ISO rises. As with the 50S, the 50R here is easily capable of providing sharp, clear prints all the way up to 30 x 40 inches -- or larger, depending on how large of a print you need or how much you're willing to push the resolving power of the 51MP sensor. 30 x 40 is just the largest print size we can test. Up to ISO 400, images are pretty much identical, and we only start to see a hint of fine-grained shadow noise at ISO 800, which doesn't negatively affect the print quality size. Throughout this ISO range, prints are super crisp with tons of resolution, and colors are pleasing and nicely saturated. A stunning print quality performance from the GFX 50R!

When you reach ISO 3200, we do see a bit more shadow noise, though it's still very finely-grained and not distracting nor impacting fine detail or color. At this ISO, the camera still produces an excellent 30 x 40-inch print. Unlike the lower ISO levels where prints larger than 30 x 40 are possible, here we'd recommend stopping right at 30 x 40 inches; any larger and noise might become an issue.

ISO 6400 images start to show more visible noise as well as signs of noise reduction processing, reducing very fine detail to some degree. The noise itself remains film-like and finely grained, though. Despite the seemingly high ISO, the level of noise is still well controlled overall, and there is still a ton of crisp, fine detail, easily allowing for prints up to an impressively large 24 x 36 inches. Detail is excellent, and despite the increase in shadow/background noise, it's not likely to have a negative effect given the typical viewing distance for a print of this size.

ISO 12,800 prints top-out at 16 x 20 inches; an impressively large print for this sensitivity. Color is still rich, and the prints still have nice contrast. However, noise has noticeably increased and has reduced fine detail in some lower-contrast areas, which make printing larger sizes not recommended.

ISO 25,600 images just pass the mark at 11 x 14 inches, which is still quite remarkable. We've now reached into the GFX 50R's expanded ISO range, and noise is noticeably stronger now, taking its toll on subtler, finer detail.

ISO 51,200 prints match the benchmark reached by the GFX 50S: 8 x 10 inches. At this print size, noise is surprisingly well controlled and the print has lots of detail throughout. In the shadows, a combination of noise and noise reduction processing reduces fine detail to a degree, displaying a somewhat mottled appearance in some areas. Colors also appear slightly less vibrant.

ISO 102,400 images finally reach the breaking point, displaying too much noise and too little detail for us to consider acceptable when it comes to prints. Perhaps a 4 x 6-inch print would work for less critical applications, but we'd rather avoid this ISO if possible.

Just like the bigger GFX 50S, the rangefinder-esque GFX 50R is an absolutely fantastic camera for printmaking, which shouldn't be surprising, given its medium-format sensor. This 51MP camera packs an incredible amount of resolving power and refined image processing, making it capable of fantastic prints at up to 30 x 40 images all the way up to ISO 3200! Below ISO 3200, you could make even larger prints, but we hit the size limit of our testing. As the ISO increases, the GFX 50R displays excellent noise control, with very gradual increases in noise; and the noise that we do see is very finely-grained. As such, the camera is capable of impressive feats, such as a 24 x 36 inch print at ISO 6400 and an 11 x 14 inch print at ISO 25,600. At ISO 51,200, the GFX 50R manages a shockingly usable 8 x 10 despite this super-high ISO sensitivity -- an achievement shared only by GFX 50S in our tests. At the maximum expanded ISO of 102,400, however, images are too noisy and soft for our taste, and this ISO should be avoided for serious prints.