Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro

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Features
In addition to an abundant amount of custom options, such as a variable center-weighting for the metering system and ample user-assignable buttons, the S5 Pro includes a handful of film-simulation modes. The modes attempt to mimic various types of film and thus vary the contrast and tonal range of your images.

As we did with the S3 Pro, we liked the F1 setting for portraits. While there is a live LCD preview mode, you have to delve into the menus to activate it, requiring three button presses for each live-view frame shot. Since it lasts for only 30 seconds at a time, this function is best suited for the occasional studio situation.

One of the stranger features of the S5 Pro is its bar code reader compatibility. When turned on, you can connect a bar code reader to the camera and it will store bar code information in an image's EXIF data (I'm not sure why you'd want to do that, but you can). A similar but more practical feature is the camera's ability to automatically store GPS information as EXIF data. To use either of these features, you need to buy Nikon's MC-35 GPS adapter cord and attach it to the S5 Pro's remote terminal, then activate the feature in the camera's menu system.



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Fuji's Super CCD SR Pro imaging sensor dedicates two photodetectors to each captured pixel. In the S5 Pro, there are 6.17 million of what Fuji calls "S-pixels," which are larger than their corresponding R-pixels and have a higher sensitivity to light. There are also 6.17 million R-pixels, which have a lower sensitivity to light and are better suited to record highlights.

Data from both types of pixel is combined during image processing to extend the dynamic range--the range of brightness values in your scene, from the brightest highlight to the darkest shadow, that you can capture with discernable detail in your image.

Most of the benefit of Fuji's sensor can be seen in increased highlight detail. To the untrained eye, the difference will be subtle, but if you've been annoyed by blown highlights in the past, this may help you. As with the live preview, studio shooters will likely appreciate this more than most sports shooters would. There are five levels of dynamic range expansion available in the S5 Pro. If you turn expansion off, the camera turns off the R-pixels and uses only the S-pixels to capture images.

Some retailers like to tout the S5 Pro as a 12-megapixel camera, but you shouldn't expect the equivalent resolution of a standard 12-megapixel imaging sensor. Fuji claims that the honeycomb-shaped photodetector layout captures more information than a typical checkerboard-pattern 6-megapixel sensor would. In our images this seemed true, but it seems to fall nearer to 6 megapixels than to 12.

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