Fujifilm Introduces Half Camera

2025.05.22

Fujifilm just launched a completely unique camera that is unlike any offerings on the market. The new digital camera is not part of any existing series and includes numerous new technologies that together provide a never seen before user experience.

The Fujifilm Half is digital camera designed to simulate the experience of a compact Half-Frame film camera. In this case, the Half refers to a vertical band of a 35mm film that is half-the width of what is now called Full-Frame. Given that film frames have a cost, the half-frame format double the number of photos taken per film roll. Even though it does not quite have a sensor half-the-size, which would be simply a Four-Thirds sensor, this camera is made to give that impression using some specific choices.

The Half is a compact fixed-lens camera with a 10.8mm F/2.8 prime lens that is equivalent to a 32mm lens when compared in Full-Frame terms. It achieves this using a 1" sensor with a 3:4 aspect-ratio, just like splitting a 35mm frame in two. To simulate this, the sensor is vertically oriented, meaning that with the camera held level, it takes photos in portrait-orientation. Of course, one can simply rotate the camera 90° to capture a landscape image, if so desired. The illusion is maintained by a matching vertical rear LCD screen! Taking it further, the Fujifilm Half also record vertical videos.

Fujifilm includes a number of details to encourage users to work with it as if it were a film camera. The rear view of the camera shows the vertical rear 2.4" LCD screen with 3:4 aspect-ratio and 920K pixels. In Film Camera mode, this display is disabled, although it can be used for framing in Digital Camera mode. An optical tunnel at the corner shows 90% coverage at 0.38X magnification. This type of viewfinder is imprecise and will experience parallax issues, particularly when subject distance is close. Right blow the OVF, a rounded secondary LCD will show the selected film mode, very similarly to transparent windows on film cameras for uses to know which film is loaded. There are 13 Film Simulation modes on the Fujifilm Half. The rounded display responds to touch, so that users can change film modes by swiping on it. This is a playful touch!

Digitally, this is a 17 megapixels camera with a 2.7X crop-factor. The sensor has an ISO 200-12,800 sensitivity range. This camera offers full-manual controls with an F/2.8-11 aperture-range and a 1/2000 - 30s shutter-speed range, suitable for versatile lighting conditions. Users can applu ±3 EV of Exposure-Compensation in 1/3 steps. As most compact fixed-lens cameras, this only only saved JPEG images and measures its 10cm minimum focus-distance from the front of the lens. Images and videos get saved to an SDXC memory card.

The are few features on this camera compared to most and so its user-interface has been highly simplified. As apparent from the images above, there are no control-dials, no 4-way controller an no joystick. Several modern features do make their way into the Fujiflm Half, notable WiFi and Bluetooth 5.2 LE, plus a USB-C port. Due to its limited feature and relatively small sensor and displays, this camera takes 880 shots-per-charge, an extremely long battery life for any camera launched this decade! The camera also supports Automatic White-Balance and 7 presets. The Half connects directly to Instax Link printers. There is also a new dedicated X Half Phone App that can view and share images.

Film cameras do not record video and so Fujifilm took some liberties with Movie mode here. This camera records video in 3:2, 3:4 and 1:1 aspect-ratio at 1440x2160, 1080x1440, and 1440x1440 resolution, respectively. Oddly, there is no 9:16 mode. There is four frame-rates to choose from: 48, 36, 28 and 24 FPS.

Fujifilm expects to ship the Half in late June for $850 USD or $1000 CAD. The price is definitely set high for the uniqueness of the camera which should be highly profitable for the company.

NOTE This is such a unique camera that it cannot be entered into our database yet!

• Digital Camera