I'll CERTAINLY ask the weather sealing question... Making 100 MP medium format that mobile isn't meaningful if it won't survive the rigors of serious outdoor use.
Tilt/shift lenses are also very important for close to the car landscape on a heavy tripod. I wouldn't carry the Mighty Robus, my 7 lb monster tripod (I once sat on the thing without damage) backpacking for obvious reasons, but working at most a mile or two from a vehicle, I probably WOULD have it, and t/s lenses would add another degree of large-format flexibility. If Fujifilm goes that way, they'd be the first company to introduce a dedicated mirrorless t/s lens (although both Canon and Nikon SLR lenses are compatible with adapters).
We'll see how much the very high resolution matters - I intend to compare prints against the Z7 and A7r IV (both of which are in my permanent collection), both at large sizes and using my Canon PRO-2000's double-resolution "600 dpi" mode (I'm not sure if it's a true 600 dpi or some trick that takes 600 dpi input and produces somewhat higher resolution output). When I've used the double-resolution mode in other tests, it hasn't made a huge difference (other than on some very old printers where it was directly connected to other quality features) - but this camera is 600 dpi NATIVE at 16x20"! Will it make a medium-size print that has unusual micro-detail?
My suspicion going in is that, if there's an effect, it'll be right on the edge of vision - the way you can't quite define WHY a print from 8x10" film looks different, but it does. I've had a chance to stand very close to a large original print of Ansel Adams' Clearing Winter Storm (which I'm almost sure is an 8x10" negative), and there's something about it that even a very good mechanical reproduction (a fancy art poster produced from a drum scan of an original print) of the same image doesn't capture. I suspect it's partially in the dynamic range of the silver gelatin print, but also partially in some micro-detail that the huge piece of film captured that even the very fine line screen on the press couldn't reproduce. I'm not sure if inkjet printing can capture that micro-detail beyond 300 dpi, but this is the camera to bring it out if it's there...
The full-size JPEG thing seems like it's probably a bug, but it's unfortunately a common one - many cameras do that to you (and shooting raw+ jpeg on high-res bodies is not a nice thing to do to your memory cards - but remember that this thing is operating in a range where, only a few years ago, you got TWO shots per film holder!)...
What's an all-rounder, anyway? This is pretty clearly the worst commonly available camera in the world for sports, and not much better for wildlife. It just may be the best for landscape, architecture and some other things... I don't think there's any question that a Z7/ A7r IV/EOS-R5 is more versatile (and darned good at the things the Fujifilm excels at). The question is whether the extra quality in certain applications is worth the inconvenience (unless someone ONLY works in a few disciplines, this won't be an only camera, but one of a couple of systems in a photographer's bag).
DPReview (usual caveats) had one especially interesting finding in their review... The 100S has about a 2/3 stop DR advantage over the usual Sony-sensored FF suspects at ISO 100 (makes a lot of sense - it has about 1 2/3 times the sensor area). The other camera that has about a 2/3 stop DR advantage over the usual is one of the low-ISO capable Nikons (at ISO 64). Again, this makes sense mathematically - but it's an interesting way to think about it. This is perhaps a lot like a Z7 at its lowest ISO, but with a lot of extra resolution.
In my conversation with Fujifilm's technical expert on the GFX, two very interesting questions/observations came up. One is that, in Fujifilm's opinion (and I'll certainly test this, but it's an interesting benchmark of what to look for), the 100 MP sensor is about as big a jump over high-res FF as high-res FF is over really good APS-C (all else being equal). Mathematically, that makes sense. It's about 1 2/3x the sensor area, and a little over twice the resolution (compared to a Z7 or EOS-R5, the A7r IV is somewhat higher from a resolution standpoint). The jump from an X-T4 to a Z7 is a little more than twice the sensor area and about 1.8x the resolution, so it's the same order of magnitude.
The second question, to which none of us knew the answer, is how inkjet dot gain affects the prints at really high resolution? This may have a lot to do with how well 600 dpi mode works. I know where I can find a LightJet (which has no dot gain), and that'll certainly be part of the test... Not sure the LightJet can keep up with modern 12-color inkjet in terms of color and dynamic range, but the "no dot gain" element is interesting. This may reveal differences among inkjet print heads that we haven't had the resolution to see before, too.
I'll forward the weather sealing and tilt/shift questions to Fujifilm today - I should have the camera in hand the end of next week!
Dan
