I Am Making A Partial Move From Canon To Fuji!

Since mirrorless cameras started to replace DSLR’s, Canon, Nikon and Sony seem to have been intent on trying to produce cameras capable of shooting more and more frames per second and enabling them with amazing auto focus that can track every type of subject that you can think of. And you know what, they have done an amazing job! All 3 companies will know a lot more than me around what their existing customers and new ones want from their cameras, and I am sure that their strategies along with research and development is aligned to meet these expectations, income and market share goals.  There is no comparison with my 5D mk 3 (which I was the first camera that I bought when I got back into photography seriously) to my R5 which I have been using for 3 years now. When the R5 was launched it was an amazing camera and it still is today. It has never missed a beat and has performed brilliantly in every scenario and condition that I have ever put it through. It is a real work horse and trust me it has had a lot of use and abuse! It’s about to be sent off to Canon for a well-deserved service and I have no doubt that it will continue to perform for years to come. Again, in my opinion, the R5 and the RF glass are the best option for Full Frame on the market. With the launch of the R5 mk ii being imminent, then if you are looking for a full frame camera, there could be some amazing deals to be had on the R5. I can’t recommend Canon and the R5 highly enough to you. 

However,…………whilst the R5 is still an amazing camera, in my opinion (for what it is worth) the big 3 camera companies, in their efforts to win the frames per second and auto focus race have forgotten about landscape photographers. 30, 40, 50 frames per second, whilst automatically finding a subject’s eye are amazing for wildlife and sports photographers for me, they make no difference at all. I would much prefer higher megapixels and more dynamic range.

If you cast you mind back to 2015, Canon launched the 5DRr which I believe is still one the finest landscape cameras ever made. Back then it has a 50 mega pixel sensor and the AA filter removed, resulting in some of the sharpest and detailed images that have ever been produced on a full frame camera. Today’s R5 has 45-megapixel sensor.

Ok, I know that 45 megapixels is still a fantastic amount of detail and I hear lots of you saying you don’t need more than that. It’s a great argument. 45 megapixels is also a sweet spot for stills along with the ability to shoot 8k video. However, I sell a lot of images and do promotional work for clients. When I print, the images look superb at A4, A3 and A2 size. When you get up to A1 or even larger than you do start to lose a tiny bit of detail so more megapixels would be of use to me. The second part is that I sometimes need to crop into an image – even when shooting at 500mm there is sometimes the need to do this. The result is that you lose megapixels and detail in the final image.

Canon are about to launch the R5 mk2 which will have a new sensor in it, but again it is rumoured to be about 45 megapixels. Nikon are bringing the Z7 mk 3 out next week which won’t have the resolution I need and Sony’s A7R5 is at about 64 megapixels.

Which is where Fuji comes in. A couple of years ago, I tested the GFX100s medium format camera for a couple of weeks and the image quality was just amazing. At the time there were rumours that Canon were developing an R5s, which would be a 100-megapixel camera. 2 years later nothing has happened. Fuji have just launched the GFX 100s ii which has a new 102-megapixel sensor and will do everything that I need. So, after lots of thinking and research I have placed an order and am super excited. Over the next few weeks, I will be the proud owner of a new GFX 100s ii and a GFX 50s ii (yes I have bought 2 bodies – the 50s ii will be my spare body and what I will do time lapses with). I run lots of workshops both home and abroad and I need to have a spare body in case one fails (unlikely) or I have an accident and something breaks (which has happened in the past!). I have also bought 4 fuji lenses; 20-35mm, 32-64mm, 45–100mm and 100–200mm. Remember that these are medium format so the equivalent focal length when compared to full frame is different. 20mm on medium format is about 16mm on full frame. At the widest end, everything looks perfect. At the longer end 200mm is about 160mm which is a bit short for what I need and that was the compromise that I had to make. However, with 102 mega pixels to play with I can crop in to effectively get 320mm and still have 51 megapixels to play with. There is also another solution!!!!

It is always a huge decision to move camera brands especially when you are invested in the manufacturer’s Eco structure.  There can be a lot of cost involved. My decision was however made a lot easier in that, to coincide with the launch of the GFX 100s ii, Fuji have some amazing deals on their lenses and the GFX 50s ii. The discount that I have got is amazing and it was made even better by getting at 10% discount voucher from Wex earlier in the week. This couldn’t be used against the GFX 100s ii but everything else had another 10% off. The net effect is that I have saved nearly £4000!!!!! This was too good a deal to miss.

I have traded in my Canon Ra which is the astro version of the EOS R and they are impossible to get hold of, I got an amazing price. My RF 24-70mm f2.8, RF 70-200mm f4 and RF 85mm f1.2 have also gone. These sales have given me 50% of the price that I am paying for Fuji kit. That still leaves me with my R5 and EOS R bodies along with my RF 10-20mm f4, RF 15-35mm f2.8, RF 24-105mm f4 and RF 100-500mm f4-7.1, which I have chosen to keep for now. Had I sold everything then it would pretty much have been a like for like swap.

Occasionally, I do wildlife and sports. The R system is also lighter than Fuji so when I go for long hikes this may be my preferred option. I had been saving up to upgrade some kit, so thankfully I have been able to afford to do this. Having kept part of my canon kit, it also allows me to offer clients the opportunity to rent and borrow equipment if needed. Iceland and Norway are harsh environments where weather sealed bodies and lenses are needed, it’s a great option to be able to offer this solution to customers who might not have equipment which will stand up to the challenges that they might face.

So, there you have it – I am moving to Fuji for most of my photography work and am super excited about the change.

Oh, there is one more thing! Let me talk quickly about the solution for the need for longer focal lengths on the Fuji.  Metabones, make an adaptor which allows you to use canon EF lenses on Fuji GF mount bodies. That’s the good news, the bad news is that they cost £789!!!! I am certainly not going to spend that much unless it works perfectly. The adapter can be ordered specially through Wex and they have kindly agreed to order one and let me test it before I make a purchase. I must admit when I started to talk about this option to the guy on the phone from Wex it wasn’t something they had every considered! Once again as a landscape photographer, pretty much all my workflow is done in manual so if the auto focus isn’t quite as fast or you don’t get perfect eye detect it doesn’t bother me. You do loose 2/3rds of a stop of light but again no big deal there. If there is no image degradation, it will be happy days.

 If all this works, as I am hoping it will, the plan will be to trade in my RF 100-500mm f4-7.1 L lens and buy a second-hand Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-5.6 L ii along with the adaptor. This would give me about 300mm on the GFX 100s ii. I still have my EF to RF adaptor for my Canon cameras, so the 100-400 will also work perfectly with the EOS R and R5. I have owned at EF 100-400 L ii in the past and it was a superb lens. If I do go down this route, I will let you know how I get on.