David Imel gets it.

Finally. A new camera that puts aspect ratio options front and center! Not since the Panasonic LX line have you been able to change your pictures aspect ratio with a physical control on the camera. I have been opining for years that this was one of the features I missed most from my LX5. On those cameras the aspect ratio switch physically cropped the sensor, giving you more horizontal resolution when in 16:9 than 4:3, but more vertical resolution in 4:3 than 16:9, however this sacrificed the full resolution of the sensor.

This new GFX 100RF uses the full sensor resolution and only crops digitally; raw files retain the full sensor readout.

Yes, you can set crops on just about any digital camera, but they’re often limited to just 2:3, 4:3, 1:1, and 16:9. Yawn. I’ll often crop my 45 megapixel Canon R5 to more common cinema aspect ratios such as 2.35:1, or wider like 6:17... but I have to do that in post—I never really get to see it in the field while I take the photo unless I’m tethered to a computer where I can set my crop. By setting this to a dial, Fujifilm is giving you the freedom up front, while giving you a lot more options than the typical camera.

I know there’s a lot of photographers who refuse to crop because they don’t want to loose resolution. This is dumb. If you’re shooting in raw and editing your shots, you’re not sticking with the color profiles your camera manufacturer chose for you. Why then would you stick with the aspect ratio they chose? I say refuse the aspect ratio that Canon or Nikon or Sony decided for you and choose the aspect ratio that suits you!

I’ll add, while I don’t shoot on a GFX myself, I know several photographers that do and have seen from first hand experience—they all crop the shit out of their frames. Because you can and the files hold up.

Like David says here, I hope they add this control to all future GFX cameras, or at least let you set a custom dial to cycle aspect ratios. Furthermore, I’d love to see a digital shift option—if you’re cropping the GFX sensor from its native 4:3 to the wider, full frame aspect ratio of 2:3, then you could choose to crop from the top of the frame rather than right in the middle... say to preserve your verticals like you would do with a tilt shift lens. How cool would it be to be able to dial in a shift once you set a crop? Further furthermore, why not let users set custom aspect ratios?

Will I be buying one of these? No, because they’re $5000 and I’m just a photographer... However, if I were a dentist, I’d be sorely, sorely tempted.