Godd Bye FinePix S5, you are becoming extinct.

I love the competition Canon 40D versus Nikon D300 it is. Good news to all of us!

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely. Fuji had the 14bit processor for years, and except for wedding photographers, it failed to attract anyone. They did not progressed with their sensors with better resolution and lower noise to be a compelling competitor and a sizable alternative to owners of Nikkor lenses.

And now its all over. The D300 is cheaper, dramatically faster, has far better resolution and provides the same dynamic range. So which camera would you chose? Oh gosh, its a hard one...... Shall I still take the S5? Name just one good reason!

Thomas

Hi Thomas!

First of all I'm an electronics engineer and I love photography.

Second, regarding your "reason" not to jump to Nikon, well... I may not have the answer for you. Everyone is choosing it's own gear in relation to what it feels, what it does. Now, for the technical part i want you to know that you are wrong. The CCD designed by Fujifilm corporation is a DUAL sensor approach. As a reminder, every photodiode from the CCD is encoding a 14 bit value of what it "sees", and we have two of them for every channel in the RGB image. So, there is no way the new sensor from Nikon (or Canon) could get even near to fujifilm's dynamic range.

Do the math yourself

Anyway, i must admit that D300 is a very attractive body, not to mention the full frame D3. I trust Fujifilm will cover the gap soon enough.

To put it in another way, if i had to choose now between the S5 and any other camera on earth, it would still be the S5, or if i were short of $, i would buy the excellent S3 second hand somewhere.

Oh, and there's also the color. What about the sublime Fujifilm color rrendition Mr. Thomas ? Choose wisely.

Cheers!

--
It's nice to be important, but it's more important to be nice.

ThomasH_always said:

I love the competition Canon 40D versus Nikon D300 it is. Good news
to all of us!

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution
cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely.
Fuji had the 14bit processor for years, and except for wedding
photographers, it failed to attract anyone. They did not progressed
with their sensors with better resolution and lower noise to be a
compelling competitor and a sizable alternative to owners of Nikkor
lenses.

Click to expand...

The 14 bit did not fail to attract anyone, in fact it attracted both Nikon and Canon. I guess you could say Fuji paved the way.

14 bit color is not the same as higher dynamic range. I suspect Nikon and Canon still have a way to go with their DR to catch up with Fuji.

ThomasH_always said:

And now its all over. The D300 is cheaper, dramatically faster, has
far better resolution and provides the same dynamic range. So which
camera would you chose? Oh gosh, its a hard one...... Shall I still
take the S5? Name just one good reason!

Thomas

Click to expand...

This is such a common view to those who really do not understand the difference between Fuji and the others. Those who use the Fuji know the reasons that make the Fuji images special. Look at it this way, Nikon and Canon have finally quit banging their heads against the wall in a megapixel race and are finally focusing on the final image quality.

Fuji really has nothing to be ashamed of except some of the manufacturing choices they have used in the past.

Enjoy your D300. Fuji will come along with their own itteration and it will make some people yawn and others really, really happy.

--
Alan, in Montana
Photos are cached here,

http://radphotos.net/index.php?option=com_copperminevis&Itemid=33&place=gallery&cat=10069

Alan & dlbogdan, there's a real reason for some of choosing Fuji over other makes and it has nothing to do with money. All I see again is a bunch of nos. with some more ugraded and useless electronics, at least for me.

The FF of the D3 is an attraction but I could care less about its features, specially if its image quality is going to fall short of even the 5D like the its predecessor. Some of still enjoy taking our sweet time composing, focusing and manuall working out the exposures before pulling the trigger. There's more sense of accomplishment working out the details manually than letting a computer make all your decisions for you. After all anyone can buy the same camera, point it where you point it and shoot the same way, what's the big deal? Maybe if I was a commercial photgraphic house with staff photographers I'd get thrilled with 51 point AF, iTTL, full Auto functions, etc.. Then I'd go out and buy a no. of D300s or D40s, give them to my staff knowing that even the worst of them will come back from a wedding or any other kind of event, sports or otherwise, with something sellable, given a large enough card. Have you noticed how much of this type of mediocre but commercially acceptable photography is out there already? I'll wait to see what these cameras can really do before coming to any conclusions, specially since until now Nikon never had a digital camera that I ever remotely considered owning.

ThomasH_always said:

I love the competition Canon 40D versus Nikon D300 it is. Good news
to all of us!

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution
cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely.
Fuji had the 14bit processor for years, and except for wedding
photographers, it failed to attract anyone. They did not progressed
with their sensors with better resolution and lower noise to be a
compelling competitor and a sizable alternative to owners of Nikkor
lenses.

Click to expand...

What do you call progress, having the best colors, tones and DR in the dslr world in the S3 wasn't progress and then bettering and refining it with the S5 again isn't progress to you? Don't forget that even with 51 point or 101 point focus system often only one focus point is the important one, you still have to use one sensor, press halfway and then recompose, unless you're shooting moving targets, AF all the time and hoping that more sensors like more hail mary's would come to the rescue.

ThomasH_always said:

And now its all over. The D300 is cheaper, dramatically faster, has
far better resolution and provides the same dynamic range. So which
camera would you chose? Oh gosh, its a hard one...... Shall I still
take the S5? Name just one good reason!

Click to expand...

If you're impressed by marketing stats & machine gun speeds, then the S5 was never for you!

--
david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk

FlossTycoon said:

ThomasH_always said:

I love the competition Canon 40D versus Nikon D300 it is. Good news
to all of us!

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution
cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

[...]

FlossTycoon said:

This is such a common view to those who really do not understand the
difference between Fuji and the others. Those who use the Fuji know
the reasons that make the Fuji images special. Look at it this way,
Nikon and Canon have finally quit banging their heads against the
wall in a megapixel race and are finally focusing on the final image
quality.

Click to expand...

No argument here, 12bit per color channel was simply not enough to match what we could get from film, and we could see it in virtually all high contrast situations.

And yet, as much I might fail to understand something as you say, what I doubt personally, the fact of live is that the double sensor type made Fuji lots of problems in achieving perfect RAW conversion. They were always on the defensive with adding up both types of sensors to present the illusion of a twice bigger resolution, but in fact, ...this was not true.

True was that 14bits conversion resolution gave Finepix the great advantage in color gradation, foremost loved by the wedding photographers, but also landscape photographers loved the better texture in highlights, clouds, sandstone, bright flowers. This advantage is gone now, and true is that nostalgia for Finepix will not be a substitute to sales numbers, unless Fuji will reply with a comparable number of pixels and frames per second, maybe a better color gamut at the least?

Thomas

FlossTycoon said:

Fuji really has nothing to be ashamed of except some of the
manufacturing choices they have used in the past.

Enjoy your D300. Fuji will come along with their own itteration and
it will make some people yawn and others really, really happy.

--
Alan, in Montana
Photos are cached here,

http://radphotos.net/index.php?option=com_copperminevis&Itemid=33&place=gallery&cat=10069

Click to expand...

ThomasH_always said:

FlossTycoon said:

ThomasH_always said:

I love the competition Canon 40D versus Nikon D300 it is. Good news
to all of us!

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution
cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely.

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

[...]

ThomasH_always said:

This is such a common view to those who really do not understand the
difference between Fuji and the others. Those who use the Fuji know
the reasons that make the Fuji images special. Look at it this way,
Nikon and Canon have finally quit banging their heads against the
wall in a megapixel race and are finally focusing on the final image
quality.

Click to expand...

No argument here, 12bit per color channel was simply not enough to
match what we could get from film, and we could see it in virtually
all high contrast situations.

And yet, as much I might fail to understand something as you say,
what I doubt personally, the fact of live is that the double sensor
type made Fuji lots of problems in achieving perfect RAW conversion.
They were always on the defensive with adding up both types of
sensors to present the illusion of a twice bigger resolution, but in
fact, ...this was not true.

True was that 14bits conversion resolution gave Finepix the great
advantage in color gradation, foremost loved by the wedding
photographers, but also landscape photographers loved the better
texture in highlights, clouds, sandstone, bright flowers. This
advantage is gone now, and true is that nostalgia for Finepix will
not be a substitute to sales numbers, unless Fuji will reply with a
comparable number of pixels and frames per second, maybe a better
color gamut at the least?

Click to expand...

You still fail to see that there's so much more to Fuji cameras than a bunch of stats and their theoratical and yet to be proven values. There are many of us none wedding photographers who love our Fujis for their image qualities, nothing's changing that...

--
david
http://www.pbase.com/ddk

Interesting comments from someone whose one and only post to this forum prior to today was on Sept.2, 2005.
Clyde

ThomasH_always said:

FlossTycoon said:

ThomasH_always wrote:

Click to expand...

No argument here, 12bit per color channel was simply not enough to
match what we could get from film, and we could see it in virtually
all high contrast situations.

And yet, as much I might fail to understand something as you say,
what I doubt personally, the fact of live is that the double sensor
type made Fuji lots of problems in achieving perfect RAW conversion.
They were always on the defensive with adding up both types of
sensors to present the illusion of a twice bigger resolution, but in
fact, ...this was not true.

Click to expand...

I do not see where Fuji ever had any problems with the RAF conversions. They seem to have had that figured out when the released the cameras. I have not had any trouble making some really nice 13x19 prints from the S3.

Fuji has never claimed their camera had 12 mpix of resolution. People read that into the 12 mpix which are actually, physically present on the sensor. What the Fuji engineers have done is provide the pixels on a 45 degree array which the photographer has the option of interpolation to the size of a 12 mpix sensor image. They did that with the S2 body and it works though the resolution is NOT that of a true 12 mpix sensor. The 45 degree axis and the intrepolation does make a 6 mpix image better than an uninterpolated 6 mpix, though as a number of testers can attest to. Fuji is pretty candid about telling users that only the S pixels on the S3 are used for resolution. Again, people just do not read what Fuji is telling them. Yes, there are really 12 mpix on the chip. Only 1/2 of them are used for resolution but these can be interpolated for a higher resolution if the photographer prefers. What Fuji has failed to do is grow from 6 to 6+6 to 8+8 to 10+10 and speed up the internal camera processing. The pressure for them to do that was to keep up with the rest of the world. They were in a pixel quantity, burst rate race and so lots of people though FUJI should be running with the lead horses every step of the way. Fuji did things their own way, made a lot of loyal customers with the images they were getting and that seemed pretty good. Then the 5D from Canon came out and brought even more defections to the numbers of pros leaving Fuji for D200s and D2xs bodies.

So NOW Fuji is getting pushed to get closer to the leaders of the pack. Yes, the S5 is becoming extinct. So it was with the S2 and S1, the D1, D100, now the D200 and D2h. That does not mean these bodies cannot take nice photos but they are no longer in production because enough customers demand more features and image quality than before. The S3 and S5 are just following normal product cycles. You can bet there will be quite a number of S5 bodies taking photos for the next 3-5 years and perhaps beyond.

Alan, in Montana

ThomasH_always said:

True was that 14bits conversion resolution gave Finepix the great
advantage in color gradation, foremost loved by the wedding
photographers, but also landscape photographers loved the better
texture in highlights, clouds, sandstone, bright flowers. This
advantage is gone now, and true is that nostalgia for Finepix will
not be a substitute to sales numbers, unless Fuji will reply with a
comparable number of pixels and frames per second, maybe a better
color gamut at the least?

Thomas

Click to expand...

ThomasH_always said:

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution
cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely.

Click to expand...

Really? So the S5 will stop taking good pictures from here on in? Funny thing is that there are people still using the S2 pros today despite all the technical advancements over the last few years like with the S5 .

ThomasH_always said:

Fuji had the 14bit processor for years, and except for wedding
photographers, it failed to attract anyone.

Click to expand...

I'm not a wedding photographer and it attracted me away from a Canon 30D.

ThomasH_always said:

They did not progressed
with their sensors with better resolution and lower noise to be a
compelling competitor and a sizable alternative to owners of Nikkor
lenses.

Click to expand...

According to the review here the S5 is better than the D200 for lower noise and detail being retained at ISO800/1600. And the noise from my S5 is well comparable to my now ex-30D and it doesn't get the credit it deserves. We can't say at this time will how worse the S5 will be (if at all) than the D300 as we haven't a single photograph to go on yet.

ThomasH_always said:

And now its all over. The D300 is cheaper, dramatically faster, has
far better resolution and provides the same dynamic range. So which
camera would you chose?

Click to expand...

I've already made the choice and have the S5 and it's far from all over. And since I don't shoot high speed sports and don't print over A4 then the D300 will be all but useless to me and of no benefit except maybe for a nice LCD. But being the gear head that I am, I wouldn't be surprised if I end up buying one.

Also, it is not cheaper. According to the preview it will be selling for about $1,800 body only....you can get an S5 for around $1,600 and by the time the D300 comes along in a few months it should be cheaper again.

*****************************************
Packy

The S5 Pro didn't stop taking good photos the moment the 40D was announced. People like you announced the death of Nikon a week ago when Canon made its announcements, and now today they have to eat their words with Nikon's announcements of new, probably superior, cameras.

You haven't posted in 5 months and today you come here and poop all over a few forums to blast Fujifilm.

I don't know what your personality issue is and I don't care. However, why don't you try taking a photo TODAY with a 40D or D300. Oh wait, they aren't even on the shelves yet.

Big talk from you; nothing but hot air though.

Anthony

ThomasH_always said:

I love the competition Canon 40D versus Nikon D300 it is. Good news
to all of us!

Except to Fuji... With the arrival of other 14bit A/D resolution
cameras, the Fuji Finepix S5 has outlived its usefulness completely.
Fuji had the 14bit processor for years, and except for wedding
photographers, it failed to attract anyone. They did not progressed
with their sensors with better resolution and lower noise to be a
compelling competitor and a sizable alternative to owners of Nikkor
lenses.

And now its all over. The D300 is cheaper, dramatically faster, has
far better resolution and provides the same dynamic range. So which
camera would you chose? Oh gosh, its a hard one...... Shall I still
take the S5? Name just one good reason!

Thomas

Click to expand...

--
check out my blog at http://anthonyonphotography.blogspot.com

It should be clear by now that Fuji did not design their cameras with the "average" consumer in mind. Read Thom Hogan's excellent review of the S5. If 500 focus points, 10 inch LCD screens and 30 fps excite you, then by all means get the Canon-Nikon.

Sony's sensors (assuming the D300 uses them) have not been known to exhibit low noise -- and we know that from all the D200s/80s and Sony Alphas out there. Will this sensor be any different? I doubt so -- more photodiodes are cramped onto the same sensor space. BTW, when all the hype has died down, i believe the differences will fade into insignificance (the D100 to D200 leap was a much bigger change to me). Just what is it that the D300 can do that you cannot do with the D200? Will you be able to see any difference in the prints?

So to me the only good news is a full frame body from Nikon -- finally. This opens up a whole new and very material realm of IQ improvement from Nikon. The advantages of a much bigger sensor is way beyond a lot of marketing hype.

I'm not sure why any of you see fit to reply to such an idiotic post.

Ignore the Trolls, please do not feed them.

Feeding the Trolls only makes them come back more often.

The limiting factor in dynamic range with digital cameras is not the dynamic range - it is the dynamic range of the sensor. It really doesn't matter if it is 14 bits or 12 bits if the sensor only produces 7 or 8 stops of dynamic range - which is the case with all but the S5.

We will see how well Nikon has addressed the dynamic range limitations of the D200.

I will wait for Phil publishes the curves.

--
Truman
http://www.pbase.com/tprevatt

ThomasH_always said:

And now its all over. The D300 is cheaper, dramatically faster, has
far better resolution and provides the same dynamic range. So which
camera would you chose? Oh gosh, its a hard one...... Shall I still
take the S5? Name just one good reason!

Thomas

Click to expand...

it's depend on what you want, if you want a handsome good looking camera with very high pixel count and zero noise on iso 6400, go for 40D or D300.

or you want a camera that has 2X more detail on the highlight area with better than the rest white balance, S5 pro is the only one can do that, I believe there no other can do that in the future except Fujil's DSLR.

I recenlty saw one of those portrait shot with a new 1dsm3, beside the high pixel count, the color is as pale as a cheap sony video camcorder, the color isn't close to a 3CCD camcorder I used to see, only S5 pro got it right with just a press of the button.

most people make the same mistake again and again, the heart of S5 pro camera is not high pixel count something like 20mp 50 mp no! and it is not something zero noise on iso 128000, the heart of the s5 pro is that it has 2 group of CCD, one group capture a normal exposure like the rest of other camera, the second group capture only the highlight area, and then combine these 2 groups of information into a single image, so it is impossible to blowup the highlight area nor have those wash out look produced by other camera.

with 2 groups of CCD, you have more information for the cpu to calculator a better WB, so you won't see super yellow/orange photos produced by S5 pro.

if you can go through this, you will understand why someone still like a s5 pro.

Thomas, don't take me wrong but ...

ThomasH_always said:

This advantage is gone now, and true is that nostalgia for Finepix will
not be a substitute to sales numbers, unless Fuji will reply with a
comparable number of pixels and frames per second, maybe a better
color gamut at the least?

Click to expand...

You are confuding this...

14bit raw data was not an exclusive from Fuji and you can find it even in point and shoots from other brands - has nothing to do with dynamic range also - when you look at a Fuji S5 JPG image which was capable of reproducing more 1.5 stops than everybody else in the market, you are looking at a 8bit image just like any other JPG... so, the unique features of Fuji sensor on capturing the highlights are then translasted into a 14bit raw data that contain very usefull data and not just some 2 extra bits of "comercial jargon", IMHO ...

Regards

ThomasH_always said:

Thomas

Click to expand...

--
Paulo Abreu,

'It is not worthy to make a video of your life - just keep the best moments in pictures!'

LOL - so dead - definitely killed the rest of the camera too - completely nuked D200, D2, D2h, D2x, D100, and you name it.

It's interesting how one perceives a new-born Camera like this.

It's like, you have a new-born sister / brother, and then your parents along with all your friends ditch you and go play cutie with the new-born baby.

I don't think it works like that - hell if it does - I'm pretty sure we'd be better off chucking our cameras away when a new model comes in, rather then selling it off second hand.

But hey - if you do think it's dead - I'd be glad to take the "corpse" away from your handsss.. hehehe.
--
Pictures are memories frozen in time~

As we know S5 is a camera who use the D200 body, which was a good camera once upon a time, but with problems, sometimes .....So if Nikon presents a better camera now (D300) without these problems from the D200, the future of the S5 is only a back up camera....

And I know many photographers that they are workng with their S3 without changing to the S5. They say having better pictures wit more details with les post processing work, and they are thinking or keeping S3 as back up camera and taking the D300/ D3. I don't believe that S5 will have a brillant future, people ask FF from the day that Canon is offering this possibility to the photographers, and Sony is going to enter to the playroom....with CZ lenses....
I am using my second S5, but I am thinking to replace this with the D300.

Surely sage advice Walter. ON the other hand, sometimes it seems we just knock holes in their arguments and then hijack the thread to carry it off for our own discussion.

--
Alan, in Montana
Photos are cached here,

http://radphotos.net/index.php?option=com_copperminevis&Itemid=33&place=gallery&cat=10069

If anything, Nikon's new announcements just strengthened Fuji as a brand.

My S5 is a special camera that will continue to be kept in the artillery no matter how advanced other cameras are.

I may get a D3 in addition to this for the FF factor, but i just love the fact that images from my S5 just comes out so great OOC and almost next to no post processing, easy workflow.

Not to mention i can still share the same lenses for both my Nikon and Fujis, sure am glad i dint waste money to go on the 5d bandwagon.

Actually I've been toying with trading in my D200 for the S5 based on the extended dynamic range. I was waiting around for the Nikon announcement to see which direction Nikon was going. The D300 - while nice does not really address the DR issues that most DSLR's have.

So I will trade the D200 in sometime this year. I might get a FF Nikon in the future when is is put in a D200/300 body. I just can't stand the over sized and heavy D2X/D3 body. That of course that assumes Fujifilm doesn't hasn't introduced a high dynamic range version of a FF in the future.

Truman

J.Tech said:

If anything, Nikon's new announcements just strengthened Fuji as a
brand.

My S5 is a special camera that will continue to be kept in the
artillery no matter how advanced other cameras are.

I may get a D3 in addition to this for the FF factor, but i just love
the fact that images from my S5 just comes out so great OOC and
almost next to no post processing, easy workflow.

Not to mention i can still share the same lenses for both my Nikon
and Fujis, sure am glad i dint waste money to go on the 5d bandwagon.

Click to expand...

--
Truman
http://www.pbase.com/tprevatt