I'm about to head off on a family holiday, to the south of Italy. My role on this trip is not as a photographer, but of course, I can't help myself and I will have to take a camera. Which leads me to the topic of this newsletter: the Fujifilm GFX100RF and whether it's the ideal travel camera to take when you're not taking a camera!

At just 735 grams, it must be the lightest, smallest, large format digital camera around and you can even get a traditional leather strap for it! I can't help but reference D. H. Lawrence's book, Sea and Sardinia, which I am reading just now. While written 100 years ago, if Lawrence weren't such a great writer and had to turn to photography to describe his experiences, I can see one of these cameras hanging over his shoulder as he ventured through the interior of Sardinia.

Okay, so I'm imagining things.

But to continue life as a photographer when you're not allowed to be a photographer, some compromises need to be made. This means maybe you can't take a GFX100S II with a 55mm f1.7 lens along because it will look a little obvious, whereas the diminutive GFX100RF with a fixed lens (the equivalent of 28mm on a ‘full frame’ sensor), might not be noticed!

So, how would it fit in when I'm sitting in one of the popular restaurants where all the beautiful people eat? While at the end of the meal I'll be in the kitchen scrubbing pots to pay for the bill, the camera itself will look great out in the restaurant, sitting on the table while my wife finishes her martini. It’s very stylish with a clean chrome top deck and a traditional ‘leatherette’-like finish. 

More seriously, this is a camera for photographers who already have it all, or who are pursuing a genre like street or travel photography where they don’t want to compromise on image quality, just because their camera is small.

The 35mm f4 is a fixed lens, so unlike the other GFX cameras, you won’t be changing lenses, but if you’re wanting to follow in the footsteps of famous documentary and photojournalism photographers, the lens is plenty wide-enough and there are more than sufficient pixels to allow generous cropping as well. In fact, Fujifilm is encouraging us to crop with a new aspect ratio dial, allowing us to switch between nine different formats, from square to panorama. And there are 20 film simulations so if your aim is to shoot everything ‘in camera’, there should be minimal adjustments required in post-production.

The GFX100RF features Fujifilm’s high-speed 102-megapixel Large Format CMOS II sensor and its X Processor 5. You can also shoot 4K/30P video at 4:2:2 10-bit and the built-in AI subject detection will actually make it a lot easier to shoot from the hip than it was in the old days!

I realise this is not a camera for everyone. But if you'd like to tempt yourself, for further details, click here to visit the Fujifilm website.