Fuji S5 Pro in 2018... Madness?

You can get very good quality from that sensor but it's impossible to say whether it's right for you because you don't say what you want to use it for.

Low light? No way!

Large prints? There are much better modern sensors with higher resolution.

Beautiful skin tones in good unchallenging light? Yes, that's here it comes in.

Always great to see a S5 thread. I don't log on very often since the S5 was my last Fuji camera (and also because before the X cameras came out this forum was more about photography than hardware) and I did not move to the X system. Too much invested in Nikon glass so I now mostly shoot with a D800. Nothing against Fuji, I worked for them for almost 30 years and left during the intro of the S3. Still love the company and their products. I still own a S5 but do not use it often. In fact my S5 probably has less than 5000 actuations and is in like new condition. (Maybe I should take it out more often.)

That all being said I find the RAF files from the S series cameras to be the most malleable files I've ever worked on. It's amazing how much detail, dynamic range and color realism you can achieve with these files. The fact that the sensor is only 6MP and almost 20 years old make it all the more remarkable. While I am blown away by what the D800 (and that's getting old now, but then, so am I) accomplishes there's something (what I call) nostalgic about the images I produce from the S5 files. I find that as processing software improves and new plug-ins and products appear I revisit some of my favorite files and coax even more out of them. One of the posters in this thread lamented the demise of the Super CCD. I, too, was sad to see it's development cease. Now the only differentiation of files comes from the firmware that camera manufacturers apply to the Sony chips. The Super CCD was different from its core and impossible to duplicate. There were many reasons for development to cease, cost and difficulty achieving adequate yield as Fuji tried to make a larger sensor being the main culprits. I'm sure I'll feel the same way when Fuji discontinues Velvia.

So, I think it's a great idea to acquire a S5 as a second camera. It will take some getting used to (I hated the D800 when I first got it; love it now) but once you do you'll be amazed at what that piece of equipment will do. Attached is a S5 image printed to 16x20 hanging in my bedroom. Reminds me of a great 30 years every morning.

PaulSnowcat wrote:

Why, why they killed SUPER-CCD development!?

It's that higher ISO performance that let the CCD down. As CMOS almost caught up with it at lower ISOs, the CCD's days were numbered.

You're right though, CCD was always the boss and remains unbeaten where higher ISOs were not required (which is what I meant about unchallenging light in my answer above).

Hi Paul, If you are shooting raw you really need to be using the Fuji HU software to see the intended Fuji colors. I have just bought a 2009 Mac pro , loaded a copy of Snow Leopard ,added Rosetta , then reloaded my old Fuji Soft ware. Well , talk about chalk & cheese. ACR does not give anything like the Fuji Software. The tone curve and color response is very different and the image is no longer interpolated to a 12.1 m/px image as the chip was intended to be. I am in the process of writing a set of presets for ACR. What I have noticed so far .

Blue response. In ACR it will always be a compromise , ACR will not reproduce the blue swatch without destroying the mid and light blue swatches . So to adjust the blue response you have to work on the mid blue swatch and live with what you get in the darker blues.

Magenta response, in a couple of the film response settings the magenta hue is pushed as far as it will go towards the red in the HSL tab and it just makes it.

Cyan is another tricky one.

Skin Tone. The problem here seems to be the response of the darker skin tone color in respect to the lighter skin tone. If you get the light skin tone color right the darker tone looses red( looks greyish) . If you get the darker tone right , the light one gets really bad.

Are you mad to get an S5 , no way. A 6 m/p image with a 25 meg raw file describing it, it has so much information describing it. They are so pliable.

Since the S5 I have used 4 or 5 Nikon cameras and still use the S5 for certain jobs. I don't know how many times i look at the files from my different Nikons and think " why didn't I use the S5". I guess it is because (even though most of what I shoot these days ends up on a web page) I know the client will get them up on their screen blow them up to 100% and think they aren't sharp enough ??? To hell with color , tonality , HIGHLIGHT color response & roll off.

The more you learn to handle the files from the S5 the more you will be amazed by that chip. It brought a whole new bent on expose to the right.

When the presets are finished I am happy to share. 8-9 years ago we made some available for the old ACR.( I say we because I emailed them to someone and he hosted a down load link) .

The reason I am going through this again is I am trying to fix up my Nikon DF. For those instances when I say " why didn't I use the Fuji".

Batdude wrote:

John Motts wrote:

You can get very good quality from that sensor but it's impossible to say whether it's right for you because you don't say what you want to use it for.

Low light? No way!

Large prints? There are much better modern sensors with higher resolution.

Beautiful skin tones in good unchallenging light? Yes, that's here it comes in.

Good unchallenging light?? You mean artificial indoor light? What do you mean? The S5 Pro is one of THE best cameras for challenging light when it comes to highlight recovery. Perfect for wedding and stuff like that. You blow up the highlights and it will be fixed easily. No other camera can do that.

All modern camera can do that.  Just meter for the scene.  Current Fuji cameras have a larger DR.

PaulSnowcat wrote:

I've had a modern Fuji, the T1. And it did not impress me in any way - not in colors, nor in DR. DR is slightly less then Nikon D7500 gives, colors are, in most cases, even slightly worse then Nikon D7500 gives.

While DR of S5 is also somewhat lower then I am getting from D7500m it colors I enjoy more. Clearly SUPER CCD Technology is superior to cmos where it comes to ISO 100 color reproduction comparing. While X-Trans is the same CMOS with the same strengths and weaknesses of every CMOS sensor.

The issue of DR is not open to debate.  Both the XT1 and D7500 are far superior to the S5 in dynamic range.  If you aren't impressed by the DR of the XT1, then you'll hate the S5.  So you reasoning falls apart.

As to color, with the latest Fuji cameras receiving some of the most glowing color reviews of any brand, I'm not sure why you find fault.  The color was actually very inaccurate with the CFA on the S5.

In term of DR though, every brand beats it now.  You don't seem to have a very good grasp of sensor tech.

I have a D600 which certainly has a higher resolution and less noise at super high ISO values. But getting the same kind of lush colors out of the D600 is hard work, and under some conditions the D600 just misbehaves wildly, whereas the S5 Pro would do it perfectly even in jpeg mode.

I think one of the differences is that the red color channel of the Fuji goes further towards the infrared, whereas Nikon probably doesn't go far enough in that direction. As a result, the colors around sunset are very different between the Fuji and the Nikon. And it takes a lot of post processing of the raw files to get the same kind of warmth from Nikon that the Fuji is capable of doing even in jpeg mode.

The thing that made me switch was that the S5 is cropped. A fullframe S5 Pro would have been the ultimate thing.

And the difference in resolution you get from ACR vs. Fuji's raw converter is, in my experience, bigger than dpreview's review states. It's like going from 4 to 8 megapixels. And sharpening the Adobe RAW output simply doesn't get you there. I think it's not interpreting those Fuji raw files correctly, and neither is dcraw, RawTherapee, or any other raw conversion software I've tried.