You can tell Photokina’s coming. The announcement rumours are coming through thick and fast right now. Since the Nikon Z6/Z7 announcement, we’ve seen full frame mirrorlesss announcement rumours for Canon and Panasonic. And we’ve already seen one from Fuji for the impending X-T3. But it looks like Fuji has another trick up their sleeve. The Fujifilm GFX 50R, a new “affordable” medium format mirrorless camera. Fuji Addict reports that it’s expected to be announced on September 23rd, and the first photo of the new camera has been leaked on Weibo.
The photo doesn’t really show much, except that it’s called the GFX 50R and it uses Fuji’s GF medium format lenses.
The news of this camera’s future was first reported by Fuji Addict way back in December 2017, with either an announcement or shipping expected to arrive around the time of Photokina 2018. Well, that starts in just over 3 weeks and we’ve not had an announcement yet, so it looks like that may be what’s happening. Along with the leak of the photo, PhotoRumors has “confirmed” that the announcement date for the new camera will be September 23rd. As PR notes, though, this is a little odd, given that it’s a Sunday. (See update at the end of this page). There’s no word on specs yet, but Fuji Addict believes that it will have the same 50MP Sony IMX161 sensor found in the GFX 50S. This would make sense if Sony’s medium format sensor roadmap is on track and this is to be a “budget” medium format camera. Last year Sony was expecting to launch the IMX461, a 100MP backside illuminated upgrade over the IMX161. But it does also suggest that they don’t really care about GFX 50S sales anymore. So, this may mean that a GFX 100S might also be on the way very soon, too. We won’t really know until we hear solid specs, though. There’s more to a camera than just its sensor. Fuji Addict says that the price for the GFX 50R is expected to be somewhere between $3,900 and $4,300. A pretty significant price drop compared to their current GFX 50S, as well as the Hasselblad X1D. Update: Since posting this article, we’ve heard from a very reliable source that the September 23rd date is incorrect. Fuji Rumors is also reporting that the September 23rd announcement date is wrong. We’ll keep you posted as we find out more. Update 2: A comment on the original leaked image by the person who posted it says that the camera will be released (as in shipping, not announcing) as soon as October. [via Fuji Rumors / Fuji Addict]
