Fujifilm took inspiration from the X100-series of compact cameras when it crammed a medium format sensor inside a compact camera – but now the Fujifilm GFX100RF has swept all three of the world’s biggest awards for product design.
The Fujifilm GFX100RF has now earned a Bronze Award from the International Design Excellence Awards, or IDEA 2026. While the IDEA Awards were just announced earlier this month, the GFX100RF had already earned a 2026 IF Design Award and the Red Dot Design Award ‘Best of the Best.’
Together, the IDEA, IF Design, and Red Dot awards are considered the world’s three largest product design awards – and the GFX100RF has now earned honors across all three competitions.
The GFX100RF uses the same 102MP medium format tucked inside mirrorless cameras like the GFX 100S. But what’s unusual about the GFX100RF is that it takes that sensor and crams it into the body of a compact camera with a fixed lens.
I took the GFX100RF on a trip last year to Los Angeles, California, and the camera felt small enough to forget that I was shooting with a luxurious medium format sensor.
The GFX100RF takes some inspiration from Fujifilm’s viral X100VI, carrying a similar retro look and feel – yet the GFX100RF carries some key design differences. The entire top plate is made out of one block of aluminum. The camera carries a definitive luxury feel in the build quality alone.
The design of the GFX100RF also elevates access to a handful of controls. The medium-format compact camera has some of the same top dials as Fujifilm’s other retro cameras. But, the GFX100RF also has a dedicated dial made just for quickly adjusting the aspect ratio. Another lever controls zoom – which is only digital, not optical, but 102MP leaves a whole lot of room for cropping and still getting excellent detail.
Putting digital zoom onto a lever on the camera body left some space on the built-in 35mm f/4 lens (28mm on full-frame equivalent). Fujifilm tucked in another control ring here that can be customized inside the camera’s menu.
Fujifilm’s recent camera designs haven’t gone unnoticed. The GFX100RF sits alongside popular cameras with a less luxurious price point like the X100VI, the X-E5, and the X-T30 III. Fujifilm’s viral cameras – and beloved retro designs – are likely one of the reasons that the company has seen huge leaps in camera shipments over the last two years, recently rising to the top three of Japan’s camera makers.
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