Canon’s done one, Nikon’s done one, now it’s Fujifilm’s turn. The Japanese camera brand is bringing its new GFX Eterna 55 filmmaking camera to market, with one of its landing locations situated in South Africa. Unlike Canon’s EOS C50, which favours a compact design, Fuji’s newest accessory for amateur auteurs looks like it means business.
That’s because it’s not strictly for amateurs, having been designed with professional filmmaking in mind. The company will still sell it to newbies and TikTok wannabes, because a sale is a sale, but the new GFX 102MP CMOS II HS image sensor almost demands some cinematography training.
‘Turn right, then take Eterna 55…’
Fuji reckons that the Eterna 55’s 102MP sensor “delivers a cinematic aesthetic with unique depth-of-field characteristics that standard formats simply cannot replicate,” but it would say that. The company’s previous track record indicates that it could have a point. The Eterna 55 certainly has some serious capability, with its proprietary GF recording format that uses the whole sensor in 4:3 open gate shooting, with support for Premista, 35mm, Amamorphic (35mm), and Super35 as options for creators with other plans.
Fuji’s new movie camera handles its 4:3 open gate shooting at up to 48fps, outputs 4:2:2 10-bit uncompressed data or up to 8K/30P 12-bit video in RAW via HDMI. F-Log2 and F-Log2 C are integrated, with a dynamic range of 14+ stops. Since it’s a piece of cinema gear, the Eterna 55 features monitors on three of its four sides — the front end lacks one because that’s where the lens is — allowing for quick access to most of its functions. It also assumes there will be a crew roaming around this thing, so don’t expect it to be cheap.
The 2kg camera comes bundled with mount adaptors — Fuji specifically mentions the PL Mount Adapter G, but there could be more — for more lens choices beyond the GF series. An all-new GF-mount lens, the Fujinon GF32-90mmT3.5 PZ OIS WR, is optimised for filmmaking and should arrive around the same time as the Eterna 55. This, too, lacks a price and launch date in South Africa.
