10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Superb portrait camera
Date of Review: Sep 16, 2009
The Bottom Line: Superb people photos, the sensor is still high quality.
Rock solid build quality & Nikon lens compatible
now available for about $800 NEW if you can find one
for 100% technical info see the Fuji site, for an unbiased objective and experience driven review of a camera I've take over 20,000 professional shots with, read on.
I've had this camera: Fuji S5Pro, for a number of years now & it's still my preferred camera for people shots over my Nikon D300.
I bought it purely to photography people: weddings and portraits. It still does both superbly.
It's built on Nikons D200 body and will be tough to get hold of now as Fuji seem to have left the DSLR stage. It's a real shame as it is still a star performer. anyone looking for an inexpensive, high quality, DSLR especially for people shots this camera will produce outstanding work.
It takes Nikon lenses, which are very high quality, and it's construction is rock solid - I've dropped mine several times and it is still shooting all day long. I put a cheap Nikon 50mm f1.8 lens on the camera body and it's portrait perfect.
The sensor is a 6mp x 6mp combination: 6mp are colour receptive and 6mp are tone receptive this gives the camera a close to film like image, that is still great today. so 6mp? will the images enlarge OK? I've enlarged images from this camera to 34" in print form & 53" in canvas form & they still look great!
I use 4Gb CF cards with the camera, as they burn straight to 1DVD, the Fuji S5Pro produces 45Mb RAW files which is very large but gives the greatest post shoot editing flexibility. Occasionally I will shoot in JPEG mode and the results are still of high quality.
Without doubt the single biggest issue with the camera is the delay between shots. It has a maximum continuous shoot mode of 2 frames a second (someone has a sense of humour!) However knowing this limitation, sports photographers will look elsewhere for a rapid fire tool.
This camera is for, primarily, taking photographs of people, at this, it still excels.
anyone looking for an inexpensive backup camera (wedding portrait photographers) or an enthusiast looking for a cost effective way into wedding & portrait photography the Fuji S5Pro [& a Nikon 50mm f1.8] is an excellent choice.
