At X-Summit today, Fuji rolled out three "new" cameras (all refreshes, some more major than others), but the real excitement here is around lenses.
With two new F/1.4 autofocus primes, and the announcement of a coming zoom lens designed specifically to be a "one-mule team" video shooter's dream.
The camera offerings are relatively small for X mount shooters—a new X-T3 WW, which is unchanged but now doesn't come with a battery charger, and a mild refresh to the X-T30. For those focused on medium format, there is a new GFX50S Mark II, with its biggest headline being improved autofocus. The GFX100 lineup (bigger body, more features) has been popular with filmmakers and integrates directly into an Atomos recorder for ProRes RAW capture, so the GFX50S Mark II might end up having some motion picture use, especially with that autofocus.
Much more interesting are the new prime F/1.4 autofocus primes, 23mm and 33mm, announced today, and the zoom lens coming soon.
Why are these F/1.4 lenses so interesting to filmmakers? Because we can't leave the sensor open longer like stills shooters do (especially if shooting 60p or 120p), we need a wide aperture to get exposure. While Fuji sticks with a Super 35mm sensor, which gives you a deeper depth of field than full-frame, you'll still end up with a tiny depth of field.
That's where the big improvements we've been seeing in Fuji autofocus come in. These are refreshes of previous models (Fuji has long had some really nice F/1.4 glass) focused on faster autofocus and higher resolution. The primes should make for excellent low-light capture on jobs when you are working without a focus puller and you need to rely on continuous autofocus. Both of these lenses will be really popular with motion shooters and should provide stellar image quality and autofocus performance.
Considering the planned price point under $1,000, these are super exciting releases.
This leads us to the zoom, announced as part of the "roadmap" today and likely to launch in 2022 bundled with the X-H2.
The Fuji MK zooms are among our favorite "affordable" cine zoom lenses (and are truly parfocal) but require taking two lenses out to cover a full zoom range. The new lens is the XF18- 120mm, equivalent to 27-183mm in the 35mm full-frame still format, which is an ideal zoom range for shooting in a wide variety of video situations.
Fuji's press release's phrasing says it should "provide a function to facilitate one-person shooting of full-scale video," and considering the focus on designing lenses for higher-resolution imaging and faster autofocus, the goal here is clearly to be the perfect lens for that purpose.
Right now this really feels like a strong setup for the upcoming X-H2 next year. The press release keeps mentioning "future high-resolution sensors," which most rumors point toward a higher resolution X-Trans V showing up next year in a new X-H body. While we loved the original X-H1, we were apparently the only ones. We've never met another X-H1 owner in the field, though we see X-T3 and X-T4 bodies all over the place.
With rumors heating up for an 8K DCI body shooting 30p or even 60p, and with Fuji working with Atomos ProRes RAW in medium-format bodies, it's possible we could be looking at a real video powerhouse.
