Fujifilm has laid out a firmware roadmap for the GFX ETERNA 55, its first digital camera built from the ground up for professional filmmaking. The headline addition is automatic electronic ND support — a feature that promises to make one of the camera’s cleverest tricks even more useful on set.
The ETERNA 55 already ships with a built-in Electronic Variable ND Filter spanning 0.6 (ND4) to 2.1 (ND128). That translates to up to seven stops of light reduction, adjustable in increments as fine as ND0.015 — granular enough to nudge exposure without touching the aperture or shutter angle. Baking automatic control into that system means the camera can react to shifting light on its own, which is exactly the kind of thing you want when you’re chasing golden hour or moving between interior and exterior shots.
What makes this camera worth the attention in the first place is the sensor behind it. The ETERNA 55 uses a 43.8mm×32.9mm GFX 102MP CMOS II HS chip with a primary color filter — a large-format canvas that dwarfs the Super 35 and full-frame sensors most cinema cameras rely on. Fujifilm pairs it with dual base ISOs of 800 and 3200, giving colorists clean latitude at both ends of the exposure scale.
On the recording side, it’s genuinely flexible. You can capture up to DCI 8K at 30fps, or switch to 4K open gate 4:3 at 48fps when you need the full sensor real estate for reframing and vertical deliverables. That open-gate mode is a quiet gift to anyone editing for multiple aspect ratios from a single take.
Fujifilm frames the roadmap as an effort to expand the camera’s capabilities and applications as a filmmaking tool — which is exactly the kind of long-term commitment cinema shooters expect once they’ve invested in a body. And this is an investment: the GFX ETERNA 55 carries a price of US$16,499.95 (£13,999).
The camera was announced on September 11, 2025, and began shipping in October 2025. It’s currently available through authorized dealers, so the firmware roadmap isn’t a promise for hardware still in the wings — it’s a set of upgrades headed to a camera already earning its keep on real productions.
Automatic electronic ND won’t grab headlines the way a new sensor might, but on a working set it’s the sort of feature that saves takes and tempers. For a large-format body already stacked with capable specs, it’s a smart way to keep the ETERNA 55 relevant well past its launch.
