Throwback Thursday: the Fujifilm FinePix S5100 Zoom and all those shiny new compacts

I still have both E550 and S5100 ... used them for years until I switched to DSLRs. By then, they weren't worth much on the market, so I just kept them. Despite their limitations compared to today's gear, they took fantastic images.

I would like to add a extra comment and join the comments of other users,
GREAT color and shame on fuji not to make an otherone like the s5000.!!!!

I had a 5500. AA batteries meant I could keep it in the glove box and take it on holiday. I thought it was great and still do. How many other on reading this did a Metadata filter to look back. Good memories because these were pictures taken to remember things rather than for the sake of the pictures. Some shots I still like though and no issues with 4mp.

Porsche Fuji 4800
2001
https://www.dpreview.com/galleries/2625319480/albums/architecture

I know this will sound crazy. I still take two S5100s to use as a backup to my S5 Pro for studio work and weddings. Even 12 years later, these 'old' Fujifilm classics deliver superior color rendition and tonal transition. (My background before photography was as a portrait painter -- where the color and tonality of skin is a very big deal and occasional obsession....).

A couple of years ago, DPReview did an interview with a Fujifilm executive who revealed that one of the engineers instrumental in developing the film stock decades ago still has significant input in the color profiles of their digital cameras. Wow.

BTW, I'm not a Fuji fanboy -- my day to day cameras are Sony, Olympus, and Panasonic mirrorless. It's just amazing that as photographers, we not only have choices with great new cameras -- but with great 'old' ones as well.

It was all downhill when camera makers switched from CCD to CMOS sensors.

thank you for sharing this post

Oh hell, the compact camera of those times were just terrible. Slow, often clumsy, noisy as hell, zoom lenses that started at 35mm. The worst were the ultrazooms where the more pricey one were almost as expensive as the cheapest DSLR but the difference was just incredible. I got my first 'proper' digicam in 2006 (Canon A610) and replaced it with DSLR in just a few months.

That said, if you want to remember one digicam from Fujifilm, it would be F30. They had enough sense to repurpose the SuperCCD for high sensitivity, so the camera could take pics with ISO 800 with ease, something which only DSLRs managed to do at the time.

I remember vividly my first experience with a digital camera - early 2000. I was on a vacation and a guy asks me to take a snap of him in front of a clocktower. He was kind of flustered because the batteries were beyond their last legs. (Like when the camera claims the battery is done and shuts off, but then you wait a couple minutes and magically the battery is good for another 30 seconds). The guy must have taken a whopping 50 photos already that day! So I'm kind of ogling over this nifty new "live image" device while he's chiding me to be quick about taking the picture before the battery craps out again.
I remember laughing after the fact, wondering why people waste their time with embryonic technologies(*), and happily made snapshots the rest of my trip with my Minolta Vectis 40 APS P&S.
Like Ron Burgandy in 1981, I guess some people have no foresight! :-)
(*) And yes Im well aware that no tech would ever mature if not for early adopters!

Cool article. I always enjoy looks back to the early 00's when digital cameras made that breakthrough of quality & affordability for average, non-gear-geek consumers. Pre-digital, I had always had a casual interest in the art of photography but was never inclined to make the effort to improve, beyond trying to take nicer snapshots on vacations. The immediate feedback of digital, the elimination of the unpredictability of the film development process, and the ability to shoot hundreds of pictures at whim with no consequence beyond recharging batteries was a game changer for me.

Late to the Fuji party to...... Recently purchased a X-S1 and love it, beautifully constructed piece of genius, love it so much just purchased a Nikon coolpix P900, wow, what a lens, so,so very sharp. This of course is not related to this story, sorry.

While I didn't own those cameras, I've owned cameras on either side of that chronological period. The Canon S45 was my first digital camera in 2002, with a 4mp sensor and raw shooting, although I never shot in raw, back then. In 2005 came the Canon S70 with 7mp sensor, and still that awful 15p VGA video.

By 2007 I had the Fuji F30, which was a revelation on so many levels. Good high ISO shooting, reasonably clear 30p video. Even now, in 2016, it still holds up as a point and shoot camera. Fuji have come a very long way; Canon, too. But the classics still live.

No 4K as usual ;)

I didn't own any of these camera but I did seriously consider the E-550 and remember the review on DPR well. About this time I bought into the Olympus E-1 system which cost me a fortune. I still have and use my E-1.

I had the F810 and still have fond memories of it. Very nice form factor, speedy (for a camera of that generation), nice viewfinder (can't find these nowadays) and RAW shooting. Och, and it survived several water showers. Nice IQ, especially when shooting RAW. When it was stolen I replaced it with the E-550, which I liked a little less. Too bad Fuji used xD cards in those days. I would still consider an F-810 if it wasn't fore the memory cards. I never considered the F10/11/20/30 series because of the lack of RAW and vf... If fujifilm would update the F-810 to nowadays specs I wouldn't hesitate for a moment...

A bit later than this- but i had the Fuji F11- a wonderful compact.

The E500 and E900 produced nice images. In that era, I always thought that Fuji put the quality into the lens and sensor; the build a bit more rustic.

I've gone through a few cameras many years past their introduction. Yes, they are improved, but I found an image quality sweet spot among the Minolta G500/G600 and Pentax Optio 450/550. The Kodak Z8612 IS has surprisingly good image quality with that sensor and SZ lens-again, great sensor and lens, less processing power.

For me, the biggest limitation of that era was widest angle was usually 35mm equiv.

Amazing that in 12 years camera design hasn't changed A BIT!!! Specially the Superzoom S5500. There are new cameras today that look exactly the same.. too amazing..

Hmmm. When I look back at digital photos I took 10-15 years ago with a variety of camera brands (Canon, Minolta, Pentax) I am struck by how pleased I was with modest performance and resolution at the time, and how much better the results I am getting now are (Pentax, Fuji, Panasonic). Old photos can bring on a wave of nostalgia, sometimes they are creative successes and surprising good technically, but mostly they make me thankful for today's technology. A bit like medical science in that respect.

Even if i shoot Pentax now i have to admit that my favorite brand is Fuji. I started with the Finepix s5000 and everybody was laughing at me for buying a Fuji. Then the great S5 came out and i had a chance to use her for a little bit....an amazing slow camera with sick dynamic range. The guys at Fuji know what they are doing even today with their amazing mirrorless products.
Anyway i thing we need a Fuji DSLR again.

I still have the successor to the S5100/5500, the S5200/5600.
I upgraded to an S200EXR then a Pentax K-x and current use a Pentax K-50.
The close-up capabilities of the S5200/5600 are superior to the S200EXR or the Pentaxes with kit lenses. Clearly a DSLR with a dedicated macro lens would be vastly superior to the S5200/5600, but a good macro lens costs considerably more than what the S5200/5600 is worth, and although the camera is only 5M pixels, I'm not wanting to print big posters of bugs or fungi, so it's still handy to have around, and it's cheap enough that I'm prepared to let my preschool daughter learn photography with it.
Looking at my Lightroom catalogue, I've captured more images with that camera than any other, including some that have done very well in competitions.

I always liked it when DPReview was based out of Europe. The London sky was beautiful from old to new.

Way back to internet history can be fun.

Tuesday, 23 November 1999 www.dpreview.com

Delkin Devices ship 224MB CF type II
Delkin are now shipping their largest capacity flash memory CF type II card, a 224MB whopper. We covered this story originally back on the 27th July when they announced shipment of an 80MB card, now with this much larger capacity 224MB card it begs the question who needs a microdrive? Erm anyone looking for cheaper storage, this baby retails at $999, a 340MB microdrive is around $500...

Back in the day when I thought my Fuji F30 was awesome. How times have changed :-)

My son-in-law's dad was a photographer and bought the Fuji S1 Pro for $4,000 when it first came out, it had a 2" screen and 3MP. A couple of years later he lent to me for my first trip to Asia, I fell in love with it but couldn't afford one and that became my only experience with Fuji cams.

Allison, thanks for posting this excellent article!

The Fujifilm S5100 was -- and still is -- an amazing camera. I still have six of these (if you can find one, you can pick one up for around $30). Simply beautiful color and film-like images. I'm constantly amazed when I compare the images to those of my 'modern' cameras.

What many don't realize is that at the time (2004), the S5100 was one of the few digital cameras marketed specifically to street photographers. Check out the article "Fujifilm's Forgotten Street Camera" on www.streetphotographyreview.com.

I used to own a Fujifilm Z5fd. With its 1/2.5" Super CCD and 6MP, it was the best ultra compact camera of its time, having usable images at ISO800. It was a camera that sold along side the F31fd when Fujifilm got the noise reduction algorithm just right. It was odd that DPReview never listed in the camera database.

I really like this "Throwback Thursday". Please do it every week and please go further back in time. Thanks.