Our 100-megapixel camera captures incredible detail. However, when we photograph original artwork and film for reproduction, the final image you receive may not always contain the full 100 megapixels. Here’s a brief explanation of why this happens.
Native Sensor Aspect Ratio vs. Artwork Aspect Ratio
The Fujifilm GFX100S II uses a 43.8 x 32.9 mm sensor size with a 4:3 aspect ratio. This ratio has its roots in 645 medium-format film but it’s not a very common ratio in other film formats or artwork dimensions. Since the resolution of the GFX sensor is made up of physical pixels on the sensor (11648 × 8736 pixels = 101.2 MP) any piece of film or artwork that doesn’t perfectly match this ratio will not be able to take full advantage of the sensor’s resolution. But that’s ok, because the GFX has a lot of resolution to spare!
Physical artwork and film formats come in many aspect ratios. For example, 35 mm film is typically 2:3; 120 film is commonly 645 (4:3), 6×6 (1:1), 6×7 (5:4); and large-format film such as 4×5 and 8×10 uses a 4:5 ratio. Original artworks can come in an unlimited variety of aspect ratios! Of these examples, 645 makes the most efficient use of the GFX sensor, though even then the final image will rarely be a full 100 megapixels, as historical film standards were never perfectly uniform.
To photograph only the artwork or film itself, we have to crop the image to the original’s boundaries while trying to take advantage of as much of the sensor as possible. In practice, this means we are almost always limited either by the height or width of the original. Effectively the artwork or film will usually fill one dimension of the sensor while leaving gaps in the other dimension. The result is that you end up losing pixels from the sides or from the top and bottom, depending on the original artwork or film’s aspect ratio.
Effective Megapixels by Aspect Ratio
| Artwork Shape | Approx. MP After Crop | % of Full Sensor |
| 4:3 (ideal) | ~94 MP | up to 94% |
| 3:2 | ~87 MP | ~86% |
| 5:4 | ~80 MP | ~79% |
| 1:1 (square) | ~65 MP | ~64% |
For most projects you won’t need more resolution than the effective megapixels offered by a single GFX capture, but if you need more, we’re happy to discuss options such as image stitching or pixel shift captures where we increase the image resolution substantially by combining multiple images of your work. This is achieved either by stitching together multiple overlapping images of your original work or by stacking several slightly shifted captures of the same image. These advanced methods allow us to exceed the native resolution of a single exposure when needed. But, that’s an explanation for a different resource page!
Original Art Examples
“Ideal” Original Art Size
“Ideal” Original Art
Square Original Art Size
Panoramic Original Art Size
