Which Fuji?

X100VI vs GFX100RF: why I would take the APS-C one

Fujifilm X100VI vs GFX100RF: same equivalent aperture, a third of the price, IBIS, a flash, and an optical finder. The full comparison with owner reports.

By Abu Ashraf Masnun ·

When Fujifilm announced the GFX100RF, my photography feed exploded for about a week. A medium format X100. 102 megapixels in a rangefinder body you could carry all day. I wanted it immediately. I have not handled one, so instead of pretending otherwise I did what I usually do: I read the spec sheet properly, converted the numbers into the same units, and went through what owners were saying once the launch excitement wore off. The want went away somewhere in the middle of that. Here is the argument, with the maths, because on paper these two cameras are far closer than $3,300 of price difference suggests.

The two lenses are the same lens in different units

The GFX100RF has a fixed 35mm f/4. The X100VI has a fixed 23mm f/2. Those look a long way apart until you convert both to full-frame terms, which is the only way to compare across sensor sizes without fooling yourself.

The GFX sensor has a crop factor of 0.79. Multiply through and the RF gives you a 28mm view at an equivalent aperture of f/3.2. APS-C has a crop factor of 1.5. Multiply through and the X100VI gives you a 35mm view at an equivalent f/3.0. Same ballpark on depth of field, same ballpark on total light gathered, and the APS-C camera is fractionally ahead on both. One of them costs $1,599 and the other costs $4,899.

This is why the bokeh arguments in every GFX100RF thread go nowhere. The bigger sensor does not buy subject separation here, because Fujifilm had to pair it with an f/4 lens to keep the body a sane size. You are paying for resolution and dynamic range, not for the look people associate with medium format.

No IBIS is the part that changes how you shoot

The X100VI has six stops of in-body stabilisation. The GFX100RF has none. Pair that with the two-stop-slower lens and the gap in what you can hand-hold is large enough to change which pictures you come home with.

RF owners have worked out their own floor for this. The consensus on r/fujifilm is that the leaf shutter is quiet enough that 1/60 is reliably safe, and one owner reports getting down to about 1/10 using burst mode to pick a sharp frame. That is honest and it works, but the X100VI will hand-hold that same 1/10 without a burst, and it does it two stops brighter. In a dim bar or a museum or an evening street, that is the difference between a frame and a smear.

Another RF owner describes the workaround plainly: underexpose, shoot at a higher shutter speed, and pull the file back in post, which the 102MP raws take well. That works. It is also a workflow, not a camera you point at something.

The small things the X100VI has and the RF does not

  • The hybrid viewfinder. The RF gets a very good 5.76M-dot EVF, but there is no optical finder, and for a lot of X100 shooters the OVF is the entire reason the camera exists.
  • A built-in flash. Small, weak, and genuinely useful for fill at a dinner table. The RF has none.
  • Close focus to 10cm against the RF's 20cm. That is the difference between shooting your food and photographing the table.
  • 11fps against 6fps, and autofocus that people who have used both describe as noticeably quicker to lock on a moving subject.
  • 521g against 735g. Owners who own both point out that the RF is barely wider but noticeably taller and thicker, and does not feel the same in the hand.

What owners actually say

I went looking for people who own both rather than people with opinions about both, and the pattern is consistent. Paraphrasing rather than quoting, since these are their words and their threads are linked at the end.

One r/fujifilm member who owns both says the RF is more pleasurable to use, praises the viewfinder, the build, and the aspect ratio selector, and then says the file sizes are unmanageable and that on screen the image quality difference is not visible to them. Their advice is to think very carefully unless you print big or crop hard. Another owner who handled the RF alongside several GFX bodies found subject tracking slow enough that they would rather carry the X100VI.

The sharpest version of the criticism comes from a commenter who argues the RF should have been a no-compromise camera in the mould of the X100VI or the Leica Q3, and that a faster lens plus the IBIS unit already sitting in the GFX100S II would have removed every objection. Another simply says that shown side by side, most people cannot tell which frame came from which camera.

The defenders are worth reading too, because they are not arguing the specs, they are arguing the point of the camera. One says a 28mm view was never about shallow depth of field for him, and that he bought it for dynamic range and resolution. Several describe it as a digital XPan, which the 17:6 setting on the aspect ratio dial makes literal, and one calls it a niche camera and a love letter to photography rather than a camera to shoot everything with. That is a fair description, and it is also an argument for owning it as a second body rather than instead of an X100VI.

One more point that comes up repeatedly and deserves credit: an f/4 lens is not a cost-cutting decision. At that sensor size, anything faster stops being a compact camera. Fujifilm did not cheap out. Physics did what physics does.

The files are a real cost, not a bragging right

102 megapixels means you need faster cards, more storage, and a machine that can push those raws around without stalling. The RF supports an external SSD directly, which tells you how Fujifilm expects people to deal with it. The 40MP files off my X-E5 are already beyond what I print, and they open instantly on a laptop that is several years old. If you are a hobbyist, the storage bill is a recurring tax you pay for resolution you will mostly not use.

The film simulations are identical

Both cameras run X-Processor 5 and the same simulations. Classic Chrome out of a GFX100RF and Classic Chrome out of an X100VI are the same recipe. If the reason you want a Fujifilm compact is the colour, that reason costs $1,599, not $4,899. What the extra money buys is resolution, dynamic range, and crop headroom, which are real things that some people genuinely need.

Where the GFX100RF genuinely wins

  • Crop headroom. Take the 17:6 XPan crop and you still have around 50MP left. That is the single most compelling thing about the camera.
  • The aspect ratio dial. Nine ratios, composed in the finder rather than guessed at and cropped later. Owners who shoot panoramic formats describe this as the reason they bought it.
  • Dynamic range and how the files take punishment in post. Underexpose by two stops and pull it back, and it holds.
  • The digital teleconverter, which gives you 45mm, 63mm, and 80mm equivalent framings while still leaving usable resolution.
  • Battery life. 820 shots on the NP-W235 against roughly 450 on the X100VI.
  • A leaf shutter that syncs flash to 1/4000, and an electronic shutter to 1/16000.
  • Big prints. If you print at 40 inches and people walk up to look, you will see it.

Notice what that list is. Landscape, architecture, panoramic work, studio, and printing. If that is what you do, the RF is a specialist tool that does something nothing else does, and I would not argue you out of it.

If you want the X100 look for less

The other thing worth saying is that the X100VI is not the cheapest way into this camera. The X100V has the same 23mm f/2 lens and the same hybrid finder at 478g, and the 26MP sensor is plenty for anything short of heavy cropping. The X100F is older, has no weather sealing and a fixed screen, and still produces files people happily print. Further back, the X100T and X100S have the earlier 23mm design and slower autofocus, but they are cheap now and the rendering has not changed. The original X100 is a period piece with genuinely charming output and autofocus that will test your patience.

Any of those gets you the thing the GFX100RF is imitating, which is a small camera with a fixed 35mm-equivalent lens, a leaf shutter, an optical finder, and Fujifilm colour. That formula is why the X100 line has a waiting list and the RF does not.

So which one

If you shoot handheld, in mixed light, at a walking pace, and you want one camera that comes everywhere, the X100VI is the better camera and it is not close. It is lighter, it is stabilised, it focuses closer, it has a flash and an optical finder, and it costs a third as much. The medium format sensor in the RF does not buy you shallower depth of field here, because the lens gives back everything the sensor gains.

If you shoot landscapes and panoramas, print large, and were already going to buy into GFX, the RF is a lovely thing and the aspect ratio dial alone might justify it. Buy it as a second camera, though. Almost every happy owner I read describes it that way.

I owned an X100VI and eventually sold it for an X-E5, because I wanted to change lenses. That was a decision about the fixed lens, not about the sensor, and if I were buying a fixed-lens Fujifilm compact tomorrow it would still be the X100VI rather than the RF. When the X100VII eventually shows up, I will be reading the spec sheet with the same calculator, because that is apparently who I am now.

What to buy

Both sides of the argument, with the caveat that prices move constantly and the used market is where several of these make the most sense.

Medium format: the GFX100RF and the bodies around it

APS-C: the X100 line and its close relatives

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