Fujica GW690: Is It Sensible to Go Medium Format on a Family Holiday?

The Fujica (Fuji) GW690 AKA the Texas Leica. Leica because it’s a rangefinder and Texas because it’s BIG. And if we want to push the metaphor further, like those big American trucks it’s expensive to run. It looks very similar to a 35mm rangefinder but comically larger. It is big because the negative is big too. This thing gives you a whopping 6x9 negative, incidentally it has roughly the same aspect ratio as your standard 35mm. As you can imagine, with such a large negative the detail it records is phenomenal.

Despite its size the GW690 proves itself to be reasonably portable, and a great camera if you prefer to shoot handheld. I decided I’d take this beauty for a spin around the forests of Fontainebleau, on a group bouldering holiday, with kids. Carrying bouldering mats, water, food, sun cream, climbing shoes, chalk bags, etc. The addition of one over the shoulder, mid-size, SLR case containing the GW690 wasn’t in fact all that noticeable.

The GW690 is a fixed-lens camera; mine has a 90mm f3.5 Fujinon lens, roughly 40mm equivalent in 35mm terms. Shutter and aperture are all built into and controlled on the lens, manual focus, naturally. Is this lens sharp? Yes, yes it is!

The film advancement lever is on the main body with the shutter release on top of it. It takes one and a half winds to advance this colossal negative to the next frame. And this is what I meant earlier about it being expensive to run. One roll of 120 film will get you a paltry 8 shots. And if you are not careful, you’ll go through a roll of film in less time than it takes you to swipe your card to pay for the roll in the first place.

One other nice little feature it has is a second shutter release button on the front of the body that you can press with your right index finger while holding the grip, which is useful when you orient the camera for portrait shooting. Other than this the camera is simplicity itself. No built-in light meter for example, but entirely mechanical and battery-free.

In the shifting light of a French forest in mid-August, its simplicity became both charm and complication. With no built-in light meter, I was constantly reaching for my phone or my 35mm camera to take a reading. The coincident-image rangefinder was also difficult to use in the dappled forest light, though that may be more a reflection on my particular viewfinder than the design itself. Between metering, focusing and composing, I probably missed 60% of the action I wanted to photograph. Looking back at the shots I did get, the camera naturally pulled me towards quieter moments: climbers at rest, environmental portraits and the forest itself, rather than action at the crux.

The fixed lens can feel limiting, making this something of a poor man’s Mamiya 7. And because it’s a rangefinder, YOU MUST REMEMBER TO REMOVE THE LENS CAP! You do not want to sacrifice one of your eight precious frames to a perfectly exposed photograph of the inside of a lens cap. The fear of wasting a frame made me very conservative in how I was shooting, less inclined to experiment.

But if you want an affordable, at least initially, portable camera capable of producing extraordinarily detailed, sharp images, and are happy to work at its pace, it is hard to go far wrong with the Fujica GW690. Really, this camera rewards a slower, more deliberate way of working. For landscapes, architecture or portraits, it is ideal. For action-packed family holidays, not so much.