Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro review

Features
In addition to an abundant amount of custom options, such as a variable centre-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 barcode reader compatibility. When turned on, you can connect a barcode reader to the camera and it will store barcode information in an image's EXIF data. (We're 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 adaptor cord and attach it to the S5 Pro's remote terminal, then activate the feature in the camera's menu system.

Fujifilm'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 Fujifilm 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 Fujifilm'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 are likely to 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. Fujifilm claims that the honeycomb-shaped photodetector layout captures more information than a typical chessboard-pattern 6-megapixel sensor would. In our images this seemed true, but it seems to fall nearer to 6 megapixels than to 12.

Performance
Previous Fujifilm dSLRs have been painfully slow to use, but the S5 Pro shows marked improvements over its predecessors. The S5 Pro takes 0.5 seconds to start up and capture its first JPEG. Subsequent JPEGs take 0.82 seconds between shots with the flash turned off and 0.86 seconds with the built-in flash turned on.

When capturing raw images, the S5 also took 0.84 seconds between shots. Shutter lag measured a decent 0.4 seconds in our high-contrast test, which mimics bright shooting conditions, but slowed to a disappointing 1.2 seconds in our test that replicates dim shooting conditions. When capturing JPEGs in continuous-shooting mode, we were able to capture an average of 1.9 frames per second, regardless of image size. That's nowhere near the 4.1fps you can get from the D200 or the 3.2fps you can get from the Pentax K10D.

Image quality
Image quality was impressive, but the S5 Pro's resolving power just can't match the Nikon D200. Colours are generally accurate, and the automatic white balance does a respectable job of neutralising colours in most normal lighting situations. Studio shooters should note that, as one would expect, our unusually warm tungsten hot lights confounded the S5 Pro's auto white balance. We don't hold that against it though, since this is the case with many cameras.

If, however, you have tungsten lights that are near the 3,200K colour-temperature range, as ours are, you'll need to use the tungsten or manual settings, both of which did an effective job of neutralising colours with those unusual lights.