About a year ago, I published a blog post called 'Honoured, humbled, frightened and excited'. These words best described my feelings when I was invited by Fujifilm to test a pre-production sample of the X-Pro 2.
Fast forward to November 2016. I got a call from the Belgian Fujifilm office, inviting me to participate in the GFX Challenge: a limited number of photographers worldwide would get the opportunity to test drive a preproduction sample of the long-awaited and even longer-rumoured Fujifilm Mirrorless Medium Format camera, the 50 megapixel GFX 50 S.
So I was feeling humbled, honoured, frightened and excited all over again. Well, maybe even a little more humbled and honoured and definitely a lot more frightened, as the group consisted of only 20 photographers. Compared to last year, we not only were supposed to make images with the camera, but we were also asked to produce a short video clip. Other than that, we were free to do choose how, where and what we wanted to photograph.
I thought it would be cool to see how a camera that is thought of by most people as a typical studio camera, would behave outside of its natural habitat. So I rustled up fellow Fujifilm photographers Matt Brandon and Serge Van Cauwenbergh as cameramen and within days of being asked, we were on a plane to one of my favourite places to shoot: Varanasi, India.
Below is the clip on the official Fujifilm Youtube channel (with Japanese subtitles). It was filmed entirely in 4K with X-T2 cameras, by the way. For now, that is all I can share. More pictures and a more detailed account of my experience with the GFX will follow when Fujifilm releases the embargo.
In case your Japanese or your English are a little rusty, below is the clip on my Vimeo account. It's the same, but it gives you a choice of Dutch and English subtitles.
A huge thanks to Serge, Matt, Matt's wife Alou (who acted as my voice activated light stand) and our guide/fixer/translator Manoj. This would not have been possible without you, guys (and gal)! Further thanks are obviously due to Fujifilm Japan and Fujifilm Belgium and finally also a big thank you to Ruth and Noah for letting me embark on this unexpected journey on such short notice.
Join Matt Brandon and me in Varanasi in 2018.
If seeing this video got you excited about Fujifilm and/or photographing in India, know that Matt and I will be leading another Location Portraiture and Lighting Masterclass there in 2018. The 2017 edition of this workshop sold out in just one hour. We'll be releasing details about the 2018 one within the coming weeks. If you want to be notified as soon as dates and details are available, you can sign up for information via the form below. Please make sure to click on the link in the confirmationi email you receive.
Young meets old in the narrow alleyways of Varanasi. An orange-gelled Cactus RF60 was fired through a gridded SMDV70 Speedbox to produce this image.