Fuji S2, S3 or S5 PRO?? Assistance Needed!

mistermejia wrote:

urs_tha wrote:

eyeing some S5 on ebay ... if i get lucky i will end up getting it, if no one else beats me to it...

Maybe you better delete this publicity at least until the deadline is over

Yeah no kidding! But I got ahead of everybody else, i contacted the seller directly and asked them if they would be willing to sell it to me right away for $500, the guy went to ask his boss and they said yes. Camera, two batteries, chager and the battery grip, 26,000 actuations. I just purchased it 5 minutes ago, so sorry i HAD to do it

I think is worth it, there are NONE anywhere localy and other stores have it but at $600+

Congrats!  Now go out and get some shots you can post on the forum.

Bob

Bobtheamateur wrote:

mistermejia wrote:

urs_tha wrote:

eyeing some S5 on ebay ... if i get lucky i will end up getting it, if no one else beats me to it...

Maybe you better delete this publicity at least until the deadline is over

Yeah no kidding! But I got ahead of everybody else, i contacted the seller directly and asked them if they would be willing to sell it to me right away for $500, the guy went to ask his boss and they said yes. Camera, two batteries, chager and the battery grip, 26,000 actuations. I just purchased it 5 minutes ago, so sorry i HAD to do it

I think is worth it, there are NONE anywhere localy and other stores have it but at $600+

Congrats! Now go out and get some shots you can post on the forum.

Bob

You better believe I will Bob, just give me about a week until i get it.  I know, that is terrible!  I can't wait either.

By the way, last time i had a CF for my D200 was a long time ago, i am sure there are more brands and speeds out there now, what brand and speed would you recommend at this point?

This camera has Wi-Fi capability???  Is this correct?  No Fricking way!!  Am i dreaming??

My D7000 didn't have Wi-Fi capability.  Is it in the actual camera or do i have to buy some kind of external adapter?

Paul Pacurar wrote:

can anyone help me with the famous Hyper Utility software? I found some on the net, but couldn't install it on windows 7. It seems to be an update, and it doesn't find any installed from CD software. There is no place (torrents and so on) from where it can be downloaded.. Please advice

Thanks

Is this a free software that you found or something?  Can you paste the link?  What do you mean you can't install it on Win7 ?  Are you getting some kind of error message?

I have never used HU, i have LR4 and i love it and don't have a problem with it.  I paid $150 for it but now it costs $80.

Hi Bob

Have not visited this forum in a long time and some recent activity on my part prompted me to look in on the "old" gang.

As you know I have the Pentax 645D, the D800E and the now the D7100(a great camera by the way) but i have been disappointed by all of them with a satin white dress in the sun next to a black tux in the shade.  The classic situation the S3-S5 sensor was designed for.  So in the last two weddings I brought one of my S5's just to see what I would come up with.

If you look at the DR of the D800E or D800 the specs and tests say that you get as much DR as the S5.  Well yes and no and that no is a resounding no by the way. Indeed you can get as much DR from the D800E as the S5 but you have to under expose by as much as 2-3 F stops to get it. When you underexpose by that much you have to fight grain and believe me, shadow detail is a very tricky thing to get right while holding highlights when you have underexposed by that much. Moreover just how far under did you go when you shot it at -3. Some situations give you as much as -4 or even -5 because your meter is not very accurate when you are underexposing by that much.  As most of us know with the S5, or S3 for that matter in RAW, you just shoot and get normal looking exposures on the LCD, look at the histogram and if you are in the ballpark you will get good detail in the shadows and you have almost infinite immunity from blowing out the highlights.  With the Pentax, the Nikon D800E and the Nikon D7100 if you do encroach on too much light on peoples faces good luck in finding a good color balance on skin tone. You get a yellow-orange sick looking skin with some areas of pure white and all you can do is make it into a black and white. The shot is blown and you are better off deleting it.

OK, on resolution the S3 and S5 are not where they need to be although for wedding work they work nicely.

I have said it before and I'll say it again even though I know it makes absolutely and completely no difference to anyone, what I would love to have is a full field camera with the S5 sensor laid out to be full field which would make it about a 14MP camera. Files would be big but so what. I would love to have that capability and it is too bad Fuji didn't see fit to build it.

Waltersmatthews wrote:

Hi Bob

Have not visited this forum in a long time and some recent activity on my part prompted me to look in on the "old" gang.

As you know I have the Pentax 645D, the D800E and the now the D7100(a great camera by the way) but i have been disappointed by all of them with a satin white dress in the sun next to a black tux in the shade.  The classic situation the S3-S5 sensor was designed for.  So in the last two weddings I brought one of my S5's just to see what I would come up with.

If you look at the DR of the D800E or D800 the specs and tests say that you get as much DR as the S5.  Well yes and no and that no is a resounding no by the way. Indeed you can get as much DR from the D800E as the S5 but you have to under expose by as much as 2-3 F stops to get it. When you underexpose by that much you have to fight grain and believe me, shadow detail is a very tricky thing to get right while holding highlights when you have underexposed by that much. Moreover just how far under did you go when you shot it at -3. Some situations give you as much as -4 or even -5 because your meter is not very accurate when you are underexposing by that much.  As most of us know with the S5, or S3 for that matter in RAW, you just shoot and get normal looking exposures on the LCD, look at the histogram and if you are in the ballpark you will get good detail in the shadows and you have almost infinite immunity from blowing out the highlights.  With the Pentax, the Nikon D800E and the Nikon D7100 if you do encroach on too much light on peoples faces good luck in finding a good color balance on skin tone. You get a yellow-orange sick looking skin with some areas of pure white and all you can do is make it into a black and white. The shot is blown and you are better off deleting it.

OK, on resolution the S3 and S5 are not where they need to be although for wedding work they work nicely.

I have said it before and I'll say it again even though I know it makes absolutely and completely no difference to anyone, what I would love to have is a full field camera with the S5 sensor laid out to be full field which would make it about a 14MP camera. Files would be big but so what. I would love to have that capability and it is too bad Fuji didn't see fit to build it.

How are you doing?  You are completely correct.  How long did we want a cam with a full frame super CCD sensor?  It seems Fuji took a different path and am curious whether or not they will make an "X" cam that is full frame.  I have not really tried an X-cam in a formal situation (perhaps someone could post one if they read this and has taken an image) to see whether or not one can actually get the DR necessary to see white near black.

But even if Fuji is successful I don't know how many wedding pros will be taken seriously if shooting with a mirrorless.

Good to hear from you Walter and I don't need to ask to borrow the Pentax.  I am very satisfied with my D800 and it was a heckuva lot cheaper.

Bob

Bob, I have the 800 as well and it broke my heart when i compared just how good the $3K camera was against the $12K Pentax. However time has shown that the D800 cannot match the color transitions that the Pentax delivers and this is particularly true with fine art copy work.It does deliver better resolution than the D800E but the difference is clearly not worth $9K.  Every time I decide to sell the Pentax i run into something it can do that the Nikon can't so I still have it. Oh and i do get a lot more exercise carrying it around and-that is a benefit isn't it :).

My point with the Fuji sensor that never happened is that it allows for a very different way of shooting photographs not to mention perfect color almost all the time.  You can indeed get that good color with the Nikon but you have to work a lot harder to get it and as you know, if you have to get that look in 1,500 photos it's a pain in the mmmm eyeballs???? You know, that gas that comes out of the monitor and puts you to sleep.....

You are right, no matter how good a point and shoot looking camera is, it can't be the main camera but as I have posted, I drag out my Canon G10 late in a reception when my back is hurting.

As i think about winding down on the number of weddings i shoot i am seriously looking at what I should get for travel.  The afore mentioned cameras are just too heavy. My current candidates are the new FF Sony $2.2K point and shoot or the Canon APSC point and shoot, I forget the numbers right now but a friend of mine has the Canon and it is pretty impressive. Have you looked into the area?

Anyway, good to hear you are still a geek like me and understood my post.

Well I know this thread is 7 years old now, much water has passed under the bridge. I wonder how the op got on with his s5.

Over the last two years I’ve acquired all three of these camera, starting with the s5 and working backwards to s3 then s2.

no doubt s2 and s3 feel like old cameras, plasticky, small viewfinder, retro aa battery tray, slow card speed weird electronics with three screens! Yet I love them. Especially like the s3 with its battery grip and no CR123A batteries!

However the s5 feels like a grown up camera. Better viewfinder, solid construction (which is a bit too heavy), better controls, generally modern design. Image wise I think it is possibly better than the s2 and s3. My dislike is I prefer the aa batteries of s3. So I got the matching battery grip for the s5 which can take aa batteries, though this makes it even heavier.

I think the s5 has better electronics than s3 , images show better colour graduation, more refined transitions. Most important for me is that s5 meters with Nikon manual lenses allowing use of the superb 105mm f2.5 ais and others, this alone is worth it over the s2 and s3. I enjoy tinkering with all 3 cameras.

now it is very important to get the Fuji raw processing software hs-v3, because after trialling all the main alternatives, including capture one which is suppose to be partnered with Fuji, I can confirm that none of the others get close to correctly processing the images. It’s like the images gains an extra 30% resolution when processed via the Fuji software. This is a disappointing result because the Fuji software is awful to use. Luckily it will batch process to tiff, so you don’t have to spend too long using it.

the secret with these cameras is to only use the best lens, usually primes, and to play to the cameras strengths, landscape and portrait. Probably more portraits, where the low pixel count is actually an advantage. The high dr is also good for landscapes, but not where you want laser sharp micro contrast.

Fuji now touts its x series , which are good, but these s cam dslrs still have a lot to offer decades after they stopped production.

i can’t be alone in realising this as recently the value of these cameras has started to rise with the s3 and s5 now costing more than an xpro1 in some cases.