Fujifilm GFX Best Settings for Landscape Photography

Versione in Italiano QUI

Introduction

It has been quite some time since I switched to Fujifilm’s medium format system with the GFX 100s and shared my initial thoughts in THIS article. I definitely have nothing to retract from what I wrote back then; on the contrary, with time, I’ve had the opportunity to make even greater use of this system’s potential.

It hasn’t always been smooth sailing (see in particular my thoughts on Fujifilm’s Color Science in THIS article), but I can say with certainty that I have absolutely no regrets about the choice I made. In fact, today I find myself here with the idea of sharing the experience I’ve gained with this camera in the world of landscape photography (and in particular long exposures), so that you too can make the most of it, possibly avoiding some trial and error and frustration.

As always, this article does not claim to represent the absolute truth, but simply my personal experience and point of view, which will likely differ from much of what you’ll find online.

The Sensor of the Fujifilm GFX 100s (and 100s II)

I’ll start from this point, even though I covered it in the previous article, because I believe it’s the key to everything: understanding the sensor means understanding the camera built around it, and therefore having the ability to fully exploit its potential.

I’m also aware that in the meantime the Fujifilm GFX 100s II has been released, but the considerations are absolutely the same because, in the specific field of application that interests us (landscape photography, particularly long exposures), no significant innovations have been introduced. In fact, both cameras feature a 102 MP BSI CMOS sensor from Sony. The Fujifilm GFX 100s is equipped with a Sony IMX461, while the 100s II features a Sony IMX461AQR, an evolution of the same sensor. The only aspect I might envy is a native ISO of 80 instead of 100, but the dynamic range is identical, so once again, the considerations and settings you’ll read about apply to both cameras.

Here’s the key concept I want to convey based on real-world use: compared to even the latest generation full-frame sensors, the GFX sensor handles shadow recovery better, with less banding, especially in the ISO range from 100 (80) to 400. This is crucial in our high-tonal-range landscape work (e.g., seas and skies with subtle transitions).

In fact, even though the measured dynamic range of the GFX 100s (14.8 EV) isn’t far from a solid full-frame camera (14.4 EV from a Sony A7R V or 14.0 EV from a Canon R5 — let’s mercifully skip the Nikon Zs…), the usable range of the GFX sensor in mid and low tones is more exploitable because:

The tonal response is more gradual
The noise floor is lower in the midtones
There is less compression during ADC (Analog to Digital Conversion)

In the real world, I can shoot underexposing by 5 stops, which would be unthinkable with any other camera I’ve used so far, and this allows me to obtain images like the one below in a single exposure (with FILTERS, of course).

In other words, if you purchased a Fujifilm GFX system for landscape photography, I can already tell you that you made an excellent choice.

Let’s now take a look at how to get the most out of this powerhouse.

Basic Settings

I don’t think it’s essential to talk about this since I would use these settings regardless of the camera, but in case someone is interested, I suggest first setting the metering mode to “Multi”, which allows you to get an exposure reading across the entire frame based on an analysis of composition, color, and brightness distribution. This is ideal in landscape photography, where what we normally want is to gather information from the entire scene.

Another very useful setting in my opinion is related to the use of the two memory card slots: I recommend setting the use of the two cards to “Backup” mode, which ensures that each image taken is saved to both cards. This means that if one card fails, you still have the other. If you’re a landscape photographer, believe me, this is not such a rare event—both because of the failure rate of memory cards and the environmental conditions in which you might be using the camera.

Needless to say, we didn’t choose a Medium Format to shoot in JPG, but in addition to setting the image quality to “RAW”, it might be useful to also enable JPG recording (for example, set it to “RAW + Normal”). I say this because sometimes in the field we manage to capture a shot we like for its overall atmosphere or for specific effects (contrast, backlight, etc.), but then when we open the RAW file, we don’t immediately see what we experienced. Having a JPG gives us a kind of visual guide to help us post-process the image in line with what we saw and felt on location. It does require a bit of extra space and some care when importing the images afterward to avoid duplicates, but I believe it’s worth it.

If you’re shooting on a tripod for long exposures (or not), setting a 2-second shutter delay is perfect to avoid camera shake.

IS Mode (Image Stabilization)

If you are a landscape photographer and therefore use a tripod, the very first thing to do on your Fujifilm GFX 100s (but actually on any Fujifilm camera) is to immediately disable image stabilization.

The reason is less obvious than it seems, but fundamental: the IBIS (In-Body Image Stabilization) system is designed to detect and compensate for small involuntary movements of the camera body when shooting handheld. However, when the camera is mounted on a tripod and perfectly still, the system can become counterproductive. In the absence of real vibrations to correct, the mechanism may start searching for “phantom movements” and end up generating microscopic sensor oscillations.

The result? An image that, although it may appear fine in the viewfinder, turns out slightly blurry or “soft” when opened at full resolution. And this becomes even more critical given the level of detail that a 100-megapixel sensor can capture.

I’ve personally seen more than one friend and client ruin entire shooting sessions by forgetting this setting. Try it to believe it.

White Balance

Granted that when shooting in RAW, white balance is absolutely irrelevant since it can always be set or adjusted in post-production, it is also true that having a fairly realistic preview on the camera display is not only pleasant but also useful.

I usually always leave my cameras set to AWB, meaning automatic white balance. The issue is that the Fujifilm GFX 100s has two of them:

WB-W: automatic white balance with white priority, which Fujifilm describes as most suitable “for whiter whites in scenes lit with incandescent bulbs”
WB-A: automatic white balance with ambience priority, which Fujifilm describes as most suitable “for warmer whites in scenes lit with incandescent bulbs”

I think you’ll agree that Fujifilm’s official description is rather cryptic and not very applicable to the real world, and for me, this was a source of frustration in the field for months. As often happens, thanks to a tip from my friend Phillip Vandervoort, the setting I recommend using is WB-W, automatic white balance with white priority.

Film Simulation

As with all cameras, Fujifilm also allows you to immediately apply presets to JPG images or, in our case, to the images shown as previews on the display.

However, unlike other camera manufacturers, Fujifilm’s “Standard” profile is actually a film simulation—specifically, Fujifilm Provia, which was unfortunately quite well-known for a slight magenta-violet cast in the shadows and neutral areas, especially in shaded scenes or those with diffused light. This characteristic has carried over into the digital version, and so, when using this profile, you’ll likely find yourself dealing with violet-tinted clouds and other shadowed areas affected by this color shift.

If you consider this characteristic and combine it with the shooting technique of exposing to the left for long exposures, it makes the Standard profile poorly suited and even misleading—unless you’re specifically going for that effect.

For this reason, I instead recommend using the more neutral “PRO Neg. Std” (PRO Negative Standard) profile during shooting. This profile was originally developed for portraiture, but in my opinion, it’s by far the most suitable for landscape photography and long exposures. The result will be chromatically more neutral and less vivid, but I would say infinitely more realistic and pleasing.

We’ll look at an additional recommendation for the post-processing phase later on.

RAW Recording

Surely, if you have switched (or when you switch) to Medium Format, you probably weren’t particularly thrilled about the size of the RAW files. To put it into real numbers, with my old and beloved Nikon D850, which has a 48 MP sensor, I used to generate files of about 52 MB, while with the Fujifilm GFX 100S, a single file weighs around 220 MB.

Fortunately, we can mitigate this through the RAW recording settings. There are three available options: Uncompressed, Compressed, and Lossless.

Going straight to the point, I suggest selecting Lossless: in this way, the RAW files are compressed without any data loss. The file quality is therefore identical to the Uncompressed mode, but the image is compressed between 45% and 100%, according to Fujifilm. I would say that in the vast majority of cases, I manage to compress the images down to around 100 MB, which, although twice the size of the Nikon files, I’d consider reasonable.

Needless to say, make sure to set the “Output Depth” to 16-bit.

Dynamic Range

We’ve already had the chance to highlight how wonderfully wide the dynamic range of the Fujifilm GFX 100s (and 100s II) is, and how the usable range of the GFX sensor in mid and low tones is more exploitable.

Within the menus of the Fujifilm GFX 100s, it’s possible to adjust this dynamic range and its “Priority.” Unfortunately, in this regard, the GFX 100s menu is decidedly cryptic, and selecting the most suitable setting for us landscape photographers is far from straightforward.

The options found under the Dynamic Range menu (DR100, DR200, and DR400) are not simple software curves applied to the image, but rather they act at the exposure level before the analog-to-digital conversion. In practice, selecting DR200 or DR400 results in intentional underexposure of the RAW file by 1 or 2 stops respectively, in order to leave more headroom for managing highlights and preventing clipping in the brightest parts of the image. This is a useful feature when dealing with very high-contrast conditions, but it requires caution, as the base ISO is increased: 200 for DR200 and 400 for DR400. This translates into a potential increase in noise in the shadows, especially if those areas need to be brightened later in post-processing.

This setting is accompanied by the Dynamic Range Priority function, designed for those shooting in JPEG or using film simulations. It’s an automated system that tries to dynamically balance highlights and shadows, applying tonal compression similar to DR400 but with a more pronounced effect also on the shadows. However, for those of us working in RAW, this option has a limited impact on the actual file and is more useful as a visual reference in the viewfinder or in the preview.

As always, everything depends on the context and the type of file you want to achieve. Generally speaking, if you’re shooting in RAW with the intention of post-processing, it may be preferable to work in DR100 and manage highlights and shadows during development, preserving the highest quality and flexibility. But if you want immediate in-camera highlight protection, DR200 often proves to be a good middle ground.

In case you’re curious, I use DR100.

Focusing

Let’s not beat around the bush: focusing has never been this easy with the Fujifilm GFX 100s. Granted that all autofocus modes work as expected and don’t require much discussion, for landscape photography I wholeheartedly recommend manual focus. Now I’ll explain why.

One tool that’s often overlooked but extremely useful for landscape photographers (and one I truly can’t do without anymore) is the Depth of Field Scale: a function that allows you to evaluate directly in the viewfinder or on the display which portion of the scene will be in focus, based on aperture and focus distance.

Among the available options in the Fujifilm GFX 100s menu, I strongly suggest setting this scale to “Film Format Basis” instead of the more conservative “Pixel Basis.” This choice provides a depth of field estimate that is closer to what you’d see in a print, making the so-called hyperfocal distance clearly visible in the viewfinder through the blue bar that appears on the focus scale.

In practice, all you have to do is manually adjust the focus until the blue extension reaches infinity: in this way, you can be confident that the largest possible portion of the scene will be sharp, from foreground to sky.

A practical tip is to first adjust for the maximum possible depth and then slightly shift the focus point forward, to ensure that infinity really falls within the sharp zone, even at the cost of sacrificing a few centimeters in the extreme foreground. It’s a small adjustment that, in landscape photography, can make the difference between a successful shot and one to discard.

This setting essentially makes Focus Peaking unnecessary, which is why I recommend keeping it turned off to have a clearer view of your composition.

Natural Live View

One of the incredible features of the Fujifilm GFX 100s that I loved from the very beginning, and which alone almost justifies the switch to Fujifilm for me, as I already explained in THIS article is the ability to have accurate metering even with an ND filter installed.

In other words, even when mounting a 10-stop ND1000 filter, not only can I continue to see the scene clearly on the display, but I also get a correct exposure reading, allowing me to determine the proper shutter speed without having to rely on charts or apps (we’ll soon see why I say “determine” rather than “set”).

However, for this metering to be accurate (and for the histogram in the live view and on the top display to be correct), it is essential that the “Natural Live View” setting is disabled.

Here’s why: the histogram and clipping warning (blinkies) you see in the viewfinder are based on the real-time generated JPEG stream. With Natural Live View turned ON, internal processing (tone curves, film simulations, DR settings) is removed, and the histogram shown does NOT faithfully reflect the tonal distribution of the RAW file. In fact, it may indicate highlight clipping and show a condition of “near overexposure” when in reality, there’s still about half a stop of headroom in the RAW.

More in-depth tests have shown that with Natural Live View ON, the histogram can shift to the left, leading you to underexpose based on what you see, and causing incorrect highlight clipping indications from the blinkies.

On the contrary, with Natural Live View OFF, the JPEG stream mirrors the film simulation, tone/highlight balance, making the histogram and blinkies consistent between the viewfinder, final JPEG image, and the RAW clipping threshold.

Touch Screen

These aren’t actual settings, but I can still offer a few suggestions regarding the touch screen on your Fujifilm GFX.

Normally, I’m quite against touch screens and tend to disable them on every camera. However, I changed my mind with the Fujifilm GFX because I believe it’s well-designed and functional even in the field and under adverse weather conditions.

First of all, the touch screen is useful for checking focus: with a medium format camera, it’s important to verify the captured image, and for that, there’s truly nothing more convenient than the pinch-to-zoom gesture.

It’s also very helpful during shooting: with a swipe downward, I can display the level gauge, while a swipe upward shows the histogram. The sensitivity is perfect, and I can even use it while wearing gloves without any issue.

In short: the touch screen won’t change your life, but on the Fujifilm GFX it really works well, and it would be a shame not to take advantage of it.

Shutter Speed: Fujifilm’s Cardinal Sin

If you’ve set everything up as I’ve suggested in this article, shooting a long exposure will be incredibly straightforward, because your Fujifilm GFX is perfectly capable of seeing clearly and giving you accurate exposure readings in any lighting condition.

There’s just one small problem: as I already mentioned in THIS article, unfortunately, if you want to shoot beyond thirty seconds, you’ll necessarily need an external remote shutter release. Yes, because once you go past thirty seconds, Fujifilm only allows selection of shutter speeds that are multiples of 30 seconds.

30 seconds, 1 minute, 2 minutes, 4 minutes, 8 minutes… but you won’t be able to select 3 minutes or 1.5 minutes unless you use an external remote which, of course, completely undermines the metering and ND filter visualization capabilities that Fujifilm provides and that set it apart from every other camera on the market.

It’s madness and a waste.

Especially because it would be an incredibly simple firmware change, posted all over Fujifilm forums and sent directly to Fujifilm itself, yet apparently it ended up in the spam folder or was thrown in the trash.

To me, it’s like owning a Ferrari and never being able to shift into fifth gear.

There’s no advice or setting to offer here, just the desire to share the frustration of being so close to a nearly perfect photographic system, but held back by a trivial firmware limitation.

Extra: Cobalt Profiles for Post-Production

This isn’t an actual camera setting, but it would be a crime not to mention it in this article, as it has significantly contributed to establishing the Fujifilm GFX as the ideal photographic system for me at the time of writing.

As much as Fujifilm’s profiles might be well-made (spoiler: they’re not), selecting the Pro Negative Standard profile is simply the “least bad” option. It’s still a generic profile that is not explicitly created for my Fujifilm GFX 100s, but rather for all Fujifilm cameras (just like the Adobe Color profile is generic and can be applied to any camera).

For this reason, as I have explained extensively, and hopefully exhaustively, in THIS article, I strongly recommend investing a small amount (really, just a few euros) in Cobalt profiles. I truly encourage you to read it, because these profiles genuinely allow you to take full advantage of your Fujifilm GFX sensor’s potential (and in fact, any camera’s potential, since these are camera-specific, not generic profiles).

If you’re interested, I might even have a discount for you… just write me 😉

Conclusions

The Fujifilm GFX 100s is without a doubt the best gear upgrade I’ve made since I first picked up a camera. A sensor with incredible dynamic range and outstanding engineering has made the Fujifilm GFX 100s the camera that has pushed my personal limits further than ever before.

It’s certainly not a perfect tool because perfection, by definition, doesn’t exist (and because until they fix the shutter time, it simply can’t be!), but it has unquestionably made my photography much easier to execute and has given me tools I could previously only dream of.

I truly hope this article will help you get the most out of your Fujifilm GFX in the field, and I encourage you to write to me to share your thoughts or any other optimizations you may have discovered!