FujiFilm S5 Pro Users

[levi]

Hello

Just wondering if there are any S5 Pro users here?

Hope we could exchange info/tips on how to exhaust the features of the cam.

Thanks!
Levi

[swifty]

Oops.. seem to have missed this post.
I commented on your BW series but yea, I'm a proud S5 user!!
Read my comment on your other thread but now I understand why you're a jpeg shooter.
Haha.. I really like the jpeg output too from the S5 and often have to force myself to shoot RAW for technical discipline. If only the S5 write speed wasn't so annoyingly slow and the RAW files arn't so massive etc.
How long have you had your S5? Being a jpeg shooter, I'm guessing you've experimented through all the film presets? What's your fav?

[ricktas]

I sold my S5 when I purchased the D3. But I really enjoyed shooting with it. Certainly once you got your head round the Fuji menu, it was good. Agree, some of the in-camera settings produced seriously good results

[levi]

Oops.. seem to have missed this post.
I commented on your BW series but yea, I'm a proud S5 user!!
Read my comment on your other thread but now I understand why you're a jpeg shooter.
Haha.. I really like the jpeg output too from the S5 and often have to force myself to shoot RAW for technical discipline. If only the S5 write speed wasn't so annoyingly slow and the RAW files arn't so massive etc.
How long have you had your S5? Being a jpeg shooter, I'm guessing you've experimented through all the film presets? What's your fav?

Thanks for the comment.

Yep I most shoot jpeg. But for majority of these b&w shots were from my nikons and panasonic.

I had my S5 early this year... but been lusting for it since 2007. I did a review a couple of years ago and was blown away with what it can do in my type of photography. Yeah its slow compared to today's standards.

As for the presets - i mostly use standard mode with my own settings on saturation, etc.

But I do find the F1b pretty effective for studio work.

I used to like the F2 mode... though it has tendency to clip the blacks.

[levi]

I sold my S5 when I purchased the D3. But I really enjoyed shooting with it. Certainly once you got your head round the Fuji menu, it was good. Agree, some of the in-camera settings produced seriously good results

How do you compare the DR of your D3 and S5?

Based from reviews (ex dpreview) the DR of the S5 still reign supreme even among the new batch of cameras in the market.

[levi]

Here's a couple of sample shots frommy review of the S5 way back 2007

(using the F2 - velvia mode)

[ricktas]

How do you compare the DR of your D3 and S5?

Based from reviews (ex dpreview) the DR of the S5 still reign supreme even among the new batch of cameras in the market.

Perosonally I found the DR of the D3 beyond what the S5 could do.

Like the velvia replication, that was one of my faves, it certainly gave a very accurate digital rendition of velvia.

[Bear Dale]

Nice colour in those pics.

[levi]

Perosonally I found the DR of the D3 beyond what the S5 could do.

Like the velvia replication, that was one of my faves, it certainly gave a very accurate digital rendition of velvia.

Thats what I thought too.... that D3 would kick S5's ass in DR.

But checking on the lab test prove otherwise

Nikon D3
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/nikond3/page20.asp
Fuji S5
http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/fuji...pro/page18.asp

at 400% DR settings, S5 has a usuable range of 11.8EV (-7EV and 4.8EV)

vs. D3 has a a usuable range of 8.6EV (-4.7EV and 3.9EV)

Notsure how accurate these review are though

[levi]

Nice colour in those pics.

Thanks JimD!

[michael_sa]

Great camera though I think it takes a little getting used to.
I mostly shoot in Std mode, the film sim modes never quite did it for me. I do shoot a few landscapes, but F2 mode is just too contrasty for my taste and seems to fly in the face of having such a huge DR available (IMO)
My usual settings these days are Std mode, std colour, tone & sharpening, at the 400% DR setting. Usually on AWB but I'm experimenting a little recently with custom WB settings (I'm using firmware 1.11)
I do find the WB a little off, this is most noticeable on (Caucasian) skin where the pinks tend to wander off into weirdness... so I have the AWB fine tune set to R -2.
I save RAF & jpg but almost always end up using the jpg. The S5 is a jpg machine!
When I do use the RAF's, I process using Photoshop/ACR and the amount of recovery that is achievable still blows me away. Extreme highlight recovery seems to tend toward a magenta cast in my experiments - here's someone else's test

There's some interesting stuff over at the Flickr S5 group re settings/FAQ type topics - that might be worth checking out.

Here's a couple straight out of the camera (shot using a custom white balance, EXIF is here and here)





On the downside, the S5 absolutely sucks bananas at long exposure photography (in comparison to my D50) It really is a people/portrait/wedding camera imo and not a 'one body for all occasions' camera like most of the consumer/prosumer DSLR's.
I used to shoot a lot of night stuff and anything I've done using the S5 takes a bit (read: 'lot') of fixing up.



A lot of noise and hot pixels were fixed up in that. Makes me appreciate just how good the long exp NR was on the Nikon!
Shooting at anything other than 100%DR for long exposures results in too much noise to be useful. (obviously noise generated from the R pixels)

I could go on but I'm starting to ramble...

Love my S5

[swifty]

Michael_Sa: that flickr highlight stress test link you posted is amazing. I've never pushed it that far before and to be honest, when I've had a blow out like that I've just deleted the photo, not knowing something can be salvageable eg. covert to BW.

Re: long exposures - I've only tried it once for exposures a few minutes long. Up to 30sec I think the S5 is fine but in bulb and a few minutes later, the images are plagued with hot pixels. I've never figured it out but S5 doesn't have dark frame subtraction NR, does it?

About 3 min exposure I think of the milky way


~30sec


I also use standard mode mostly with DR set to 400% when shooting jpeg. Yes, it comes out flat but a lot of info to work with there. When shooting RAW + JPEG, then I'd often experiment with the presets. Not a fan of F2 I must say. Having said that, I've just shot through a roll of the real stuff and am waiting to get it developed to see how it compares to F2.

Re: DR. I believe the D3 would have far more DR in the shadows, after all it is the ISO king (well D3s is now) but north of mid-gray, its hard to match the S5. But not having a D3 its only a guess based on samples online.

[levi]

using the standard mode

[Gregg Bell]

will fujifilm make a replacement? hopefully being based off the newer nikon tech? anyone know?

[levi]

will fujifilm make a replacement? hopefully being based off the newer nikon tech? anyone know?

hmmm... no official word from Fuji on this... though there's been rumors the past year or so that the S5 pro has been discontinued..... though Fuji still has them on its website.

If they would come up with a new model... hopefully it would be a FF + Fuji's senso.

That would be sweet!

[levi]

[swifty]

will fujifilm make a replacement? hopefully being based off the newer nikon tech? anyone know?

All is quiet on the Fuji front re: DSLRs
Only rumblings are of a Fujifilm mirrorless camera system, ala EP-1, GF-1.
Which ain't a bad thing if they're using large sensors instead of only developing their small sensor technology, as seen in their EXR line.

Going a bit OT but personally I'd like to see Fuji take Ricoh's flawed genius idea in the GXR one step further.
Instead of modules where the lens are fixed, give us a modular system with a number of sensor + mount modules but don't fix the lens.
Given us:
- 2 base bodies (one EP-1 sized, one GH-1 sized).
- 2 initial sensor modules with a fuji mount and stabilisation (one lower MP, nice high ISO, extended DR and the other high MP, best low ISO and extended DR).
- 3 initial Fujinon lenses (pancake 40mm f1.8 equiv, pancake 24mm f2.8, collapsible zoom 28-70mm f3.5-5.6).
- adapters for every major mount
Later, just keep developing sensor modules eg. monochrome that we can add to the base bodies. Don't worry about needing to develop too many lenses but just keep the system as accessible as possibly by anyone with pre-existing lens from any system.
Yep... I'm completely dreaming!!

Anyways.. back on topic.
Great shots in standard mode, Levi. Tones and colours are just great. I expect nothing less from the Fuji and now that I've seen some of your work, I have high expectations from you every time you post from now on

[michael_sa]

It's great to see so much discussion here on the S5

swifty,
In relation to long exposures and dark frames, no, there's no long exposure noise reduction by dark frame subtraction in the S5.
To clarify a little, most of my night photography exposures were in the order of minutes long, and the Nikon was just so much better at it. Sub 30 second stuff was ok from the Fuji - but only at the 100% DR setting.
That test shot- I tried image recovery from an extremely overexposed shot of my own and got nowhere near as clean a result as that example. Mine had poor detail and a strong magenta cast - in itself it was still impressive - to be able to pull an image back from what looked like a white frame, but for all intents and purposes, it was unusable. (I'll see if I can find it later, it's on a back up drive somewhere)
The thing is though - we're not trying to recover an image from a 3 or 4 stop overexposure, none of us are *that* bad - (are we?) but what we are trying to achieve, is to maintain image information in areas that would otherwise (in dare I say 'lesser machines') blow out.
The Fuji simply does it by capturing that highlight info, rather than by recovery from shadows - correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't there more info in the highlights than the shadows?

[levi]

All is quiet on the Fuji front re: DSLRs
Only rumblings are of a Fujifilm mirrorless camera system, ala EP-1, GF-1.
Which ain't a bad thing if they're using large sensors instead of only developing their small sensor technology, as seen in their EXR line.

Going a bit OT but personally I'd like to see Fuji take Ricoh's flawed genius idea in the GXR one step further.
Instead of modules where the lens are fixed, give us a modular system with a number of sensor + mount modules but don't fix the lens.
Given us:
- 2 base bodies (one EP-1 sized, one GH-1 sized).
- 2 initial sensor modules with a fuji mount and stabilisation (one lower MP, nice high ISO, extended DR and the other high MP, best low ISO and extended DR).
- 3 initial Fujinon lenses (pancake 40mm f1.8 equiv, pancake 24mm f2.8, collapsible zoom 28-70mm f3.5-5.6).
- adapters for every major mount
Later, just keep developing sensor modules eg. monochrome that we can add to the base bodies. Don't worry about needing to develop too many lenses but just keep the system as accessible as possibly by anyone with pre-existing lens from any system.
Yep... I'm completely dreaming!!

Anyways.. back on topic.
Great shots in standard mode, Levi. Tones and colours are just great. I expect nothing less from the Fuji and now that I've seen some of your work, I have high expectations from you every time you post from now on

Fuji has been concentrating on the p&s market... and given that they have been doing that for a couple of years now, I guess they're pretty successful at (sales-wise) it inspite not having much hold of the dslr market.

@Swifty

Now thats additional pressure! Hahaha. Thanks anyways

[levi]

@ michael_sa

i like ho you frame your shots. good control on the highlights too.

i guess thats one strength of the S5 (even compared to today's DSLRs).

share some more images!