Fujifilm GFX100 II

Medium format used to mean slow. The GFX100 II broke that: the sensor reads roughly twice as fast as its predecessor, which turns 102 megapixels from a studio format into something you can hand-hold at an event.

What 102 megapixels actually gives you

Not sharpness, exactly. It gives tonal depth — the way a gradient in a sky moves from one value to the next without banding — and it gives crops that stay at full resolution.

The larger sensor also changes how a lens renders. At the same field of view and equivalent aperture, medium format has shallower depth of field and a longer, gentler transition into it. That look is the reason people buy GFX, more than the pixel count.

The speed change

8.7 fps with autofocus, a 9.44 million dot viewfinder that keeps up, and subject detection that works. None of that was true of medium format five years ago.

It is still not a sports camera. But it is now a camera you can use for a wedding, a portrait session with movement, or reportage, which the original GFX100 was not.

Who needs it

Commercial, fashion, landscape and architecture work where the file gets printed large or scrutinised at 100 per cent. Anyone whose clients specify medium format.

If you are buying it for personal work, the GFX100S II gives you the same sensor resolution for two and a half thousand less. The II is for people who need the speed and the viewfinder.