Fujifilm S5 Pro

Fujifilm S5 Pro

I’ve often felt a little sorry for Fujifilm in the digital era. They were and still are a very well respected company in the film business, in fact the last camera I used before switching to digital was an F100 and I used nothing but various Fuji films in it. They have often beaten a different path than everybody else and to most people, they just don’t see what’s so special about the products as looking at them the way most people do, their products don’t shout ‘look at me’ as loudly.

Fuji has been using Nikon bodies for their digital slr cameras since the beginning of the digital era. Until recently, they made do with an older modified body that was serviceable, if

not state of the art. They were able to talk Nikon into letting them use the same body as the D200 this time though and thankfully, its made a world of difference as the D200 body is almost universally liked. It is built to last, is easy to hold and importantly for working photographers, all the settings either have their own dial or are very easy to get to which saves precious seconds.

Fuji’s trump card has always been their unusual sensor design. The sensors always look as though they are out of date to people who don’t know much about cameras as they inevitably have fewer megapixels. They have a different design though that has a second pixel that concentrates on just the highlight information from an image and a normal pixel like other cameras to pick up the bulk of the rest of the image data. One of the principle complaints of digital camera’s has been their lack of dynamic range. Using their unique sensor, Fuji is able to capture quite a bit more dynamic range which makes their cameras tailor made for wedding photographers who are shooting a bride in a white dress standing next to a man who is often wearing a black tuxedo which is of course going to challenge any camera’s dynamic range. Wedding photographers love their camera’s, but because they don’t scream out impressive megapixel counts, they get overlooked by many buying a digital camera which is a shame because they are simply excellent.

There is much more to them than their extra dynamic range of course. Using their extensive film development expertise, they give you several film looks in the camera which means you’ve always got several film types built-in to your camera ready to go and you can switch back and forth from one suitable for portraits to a velva style for landscapes at the flick of a switch. In the past, another big issue with Fuji dslr’s was that they were a little pokey and their shooting rate was well below par. The good news with the new S5 Pro is that this camera is a lot more responsive thank goodness. The bad news, if you choose to use the highest 400% dynamic range setting, you are looking at 25MB RAW files which is going to put pressure on the camera’s buffer of course and the shooting rate is still pokey. In all honesty, this to me is not a problem as its much more important to have the dynamic range, the camera is now responsive in most respects and nobody in their right mind is going to shoot sports with a Fuji S5 Pro so I don’t understand the complaint. Shoot weddings, get the S5 Pro. Shoot football, get a 1D Mark IIn or D3/300 with their 8+ frames per second.

I can’t recommend this camera highly enough. I just love the beautiful images it produces and the extra dynamic range is a god send and will get you out of trouble more times than you’d believe. Its high ISO performance is very good too, and I feel comfortable using up-to ISO 1600 in the right conditions. Even if you don’t shoot weddings, I think this would be a great dslr as it gives you access to the excellent Nikkor optical lenses yet you get the benefit of Fujifilm colour, what’s not to like in that scenario.