CP+ interview with Toshihisa Iida and Makoto Oishi from Fuji

Here is FujiAddict's recap of the CP+ interview with Toshihisa Iida and Makoto Oishi from Fuji:

Canon believes that the camera market will contract by half, over the next two years, but Fujifilm believes it could grow given the right innovations.
The Asian market is huge so some markets might grow a lot while others contract, especially China where many don’t own a digital camera yet.
Fujifilm thinks that full-frame is probably one-third of the market by value.
“Two-thirds of the market is non-full frame, which is predominantly APS-C, Micro Four Thirds, and some medium-format as well.”
Fujifilm sees this fact as an opportunity to grow their APS-C and Medium format camera base
Their recent financial results show around 10% growth for them in the camera market.
They attribute this growth to the Fujifilm X-T3 and Fujifilm GFX50R
Fujifilm X-T3 sold better than expected
It even sold 40% better than the very popular X-T2 during the same period
Fujifilm isn’t convinced that most customers pick a system on sensor size alone
The Fujifilm X-T3 was designed from the beginning to drive the starting price down $200
The Fujifilm X-T3 and X-H1 cannibalize each other’s sales a little, but they repriced the X-H1 so it made sense again
The X-H line will continue on and it is not just about IBIS, but also form factor.
The X-T will continue being compact with dials, but the X-H lets them get a little bulky and add things like the top LCD
The Fujinon XF200 f/2 isn’t just for sports and they do not want to market it that way
The Fujinon XF200 f/2 is great for portraiture, concerts and more
Fujifilm wants to have a presence at the 2020 Olympics, but they mention video is just as important as photography at the event.
They want to support photographers and videographers and broadcasters.
The Fujifilm GFX 50R is selling better than expected and the Sendai factory is very busy
The Fujifilm GFX100Mpx is almost final hardware, but the firmware is still very early and IBIS isn’t even working yet.
The IBIS system is proving to be very challenging
Photokina 2018 just had a mockup
They are still working on image quality
We should see Fujifilm GFX100Mpx before the end of June/first half of 2019
Now they are saying around $10k
The Fujinon GF32-64mmF4 is popular with the GFX50S
The Fujinon GF45mmF2.8 is popular with the GFX50R
Street photographers are into the GFX50R
GFX50S owners tend to have more lenses than GFX50R owners
Fujinon GF45-100mmF4 coming in 2020
They are considering GFX lenses with faster apertures in the future
Fujifilm tries to make lenses for everyone, but some requests like an XF100mm f/1.1 would be very expensive
We can expect to see XF AF speed in future GF lenses
The GFX100Mpx has the same kind of sensor design as the X-T3 with copper wiring that makes for higher readout speeds and lower power consumption.
The GFX100Mpx also has similar phase-detection pixel coverage and structure as the X-T3 for it’s PDAF pixels
The sensor in the GFX100Mpx is a huge leap over the GFX50
The Fujifilm X-T30 already has the improved AF software that will be coming to the X-T3 soon.
Picking horizontal or vertical PDAF pixels is easiest with CMOS sensors, but vertical are used the most so it is pretty much the standard with mirrorless cameras.
They could do a cross type like Olympus if they felt it was needed
The resolution of the vertical PDAF is good enough that you don’t really need cross type, plus you can just tilt the camera a little and it will track like a cross type if necessary.
There is some vertical sensitivity already from their sensor design
CMOS sensors read the entire scene before making adjustments
Their current sensor can read signal and phase pixel separately
This is good for video because they can optimize the signal level for the phase-detect pixels without affecting the exposure of the image pixels
Over two million out of 26 million are now used for PDAF
The amount of PDAF pixels is why low light AF is getting better and is why high-frequency subjects like textures focus better now
X-T3 AF has twice as many PDAF pixels as the X-T2 and it processes them with twice as much spatial frequencies
The X-T3 is dealing with about 4 times as much PDAF data as the X-T2
Since they read all the data before making adjustments they could make it do cross type
Their AF is basically limited by their algorithm and processing power, but right now it’s more limited by processing power.
ZA/ZB pairs are close horizontally, but not vertically so AF resolution would not be equal
Vertical AF correlation hasn’t really been a need yet also
Fujifilm can also bin their PDAF pixel data to read better in low light
Fujifilm doesn’t really think anyone has a competing camera to go up against the Fujifilm GFX100Mpx
Fujifilm isn’t sure they want to do a multi-shot high-res mode because moving the huge sensor isn’t very easy
Not sure how many stops of IBIS performance they can get with the GFX100Mpx
Fujifilm GFX and X are being developed together because they do not separate their teams
So their hardware and software is developed across systems
Both teams also have one budget
Fujifilm’s team will make more GF or more X lenses based on customer feedback
When designing XF lenses the challenge is making the lens small
When designing GF lenses the challenge is aberrations
Lenses like the XF33mm f/1.0 are a different kind of challenge to design
Fujifilm designs their lenses to have a super sharp point when focusing and not to just have a generally sharp area like others, which is one of the advantages of mirrorless.
DSLR need a general focus region because they aren’t as accurate at AF
Easier to make contract detect AF lenses work with PDAF than PDAF lenses work with contrast detect

Via Imaging Resource

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