Fuji S5 Pro - is good for used 'till today times (like hobby)?

Jared Willson wrote:

fPrime wrote:

In my humble opinion both the D200 and S5 Pro are CCD color kings in their own right. Because of its skin tone color science I consider the S5 Pro to be slightly better for photographing people while, thanks to its higher resolution, the D200 is slightly better for photographing landscapes.

Is it still worth it to shoot the S5 Pro in 2021? Absolutely! There’s a certain image magic to the output of this camera that is both filmic and almost surreal. I kid you not when I say that I would not trade my S5 Pro for a GFX 100. The latter is a digital device that records digital images at high resolution, the former is an analog device that draws images with passion, fire, and life.

fPrime

I’m glad you like your S5, and I’m sure it was and remains a wonderful camera capable of producing great images in the right hands.

However, the claims that CCD’s are somehow better in terms of color or are somehow more “film like” are nonsense. CCD’s have discrete pixels, just likeCMOS. CCD’s convert voltages into a digital count, just like CMOS chips. Manufacturers spec the Bayer filter, including the colors of the dyes and the amount of overlap between colors. They can and must do this for each new chip design, CCD or CMOS, as different chips have different sensitivities. They also pick the strength and cutoff of the IR filter (if present) as well as the strength of the low pass filter (if present). Then the software takes over in the RAW conversion (whether in camera or in post) and re-maps all of the colors based on algorithms developed by the manufacturer and/or software vendor.

So, there can be and are differences in color response, color accuracy, micro contrast, and aliasing from one sensor to the next based on the choices of the manufacturer and the software vendor, but the process works the exact same way for CCD’s and CMOS. Neither is any more or less “digital”—they are both the exact same, converting photons to analog voltages, then reading out those stored voltages as digital counts. Neither has necessarily better or worse colors. And certainly, there is nothing about CCD’s that creates passion, fire, or a “filmic” look. Passion and fire exist in the photographer alone, not in the camera.

I’m not telling you a more modern, higher resolution camera is necessarily better. If you like the output of your S5 and you know how to get the results you want out of it, more power to you. Keep it, and don’t trade till you have to. But to attribute the colors to it being CCD based? Or to suggest it is somehow less digital than a newer camera? Or to ascribe emotions to it or it’s output? Sorry, there is just no basis for that. It’s poetic, but it’s not real. Your S5 is EXACTLY as digital as a GFX. It does not create magic, passion, or fire. If you are a good photographer, YOU create magic, passion, life, and fire. It isn’t the chip.

I have to agree with you.  I think most of us including myself got really used to saying that, that CCD produce a nicer output and this and that, but now I understand that and has ( up to a point) nothing to do with it.

The reason why I say this now is because my little tiny Fuji X10 does too produce some really gorgeous  and interesting looking “film” like images, more so than my XT1.  The difference is really visible.