Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro UVIR Digital Camera Review

Model Design / Appearance
The S3 UVIR looks just like a FinePix S3, which is to say, a heck of a lot like a Nikon. Fujifilm added a large plate on top that is printed "UVIR." It's very prominent, but it doesn't match the styling of the camera. It looks like the sort of plate that an aftermarket source might use.

Size / Portability
The S3 UVIR measures 5.8 x 5.3 x 3.2 inches and weighs 2 pounds, which is taller and heavier than most current mid-range DSLRs. To work as a useful kit, it needs at least one lens and whatever filters are right for a given job. To use the live preview for focus, we found a tripod indispensable.

Handling Ability
We like the ergonomics of the FinePix S3, and they're unchanged in the S3 UVIR, save for the fact that the user shoots blind when the camera is used as intended. Most of the camera's features – autofocus, metering, white balance, and other color tweaks – are completely useless with either the UV or the IR filters in place.

Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size
The S3 UVIR's buttons and controls have a solid, durable feel. Fujifilm's arrangement of four modal buttons under the monochrome LCD is unusual, but it allows quick access to a range of options. Again, many of these options, such as film emulation and color saturation, are useless in UV or IR.

Menu
The S3 UVIR's menus are unchanged from the S3's with an important exception: in shooting mode, the first menu screen to pop up is the one to allow a 30-second live preview, which is necessary for focusing filters.

Otherwise, the menus look just like the ones on the S3. The menus that appear on the color LCD appear as numbered "pages," rather than usefully-named tabs, so it takes some hunting to find particular entries to adjust.

The four buttons below the monochrome LCD control white balance, file quality, file size, dynamic range, saturation, sharpening, contrast, and film simulation. Of these, white balance, saturation, and film simulation don't influence UV or IR shooting.

The Setup menu controls functions such as image review, custom white balance, color space, dynamic range, auto rotation of verticals, media card choice, media format, beeps, date/time set, USB mode, Firewire mode, frame numbering, language, video format, full camera reset, and live preview. The S3 UVIR also has a function to fully discharge the 4 AA batteries that power the camera. Fujifilm supplies NiMH batteries and a charger, and the company says that completely discharging the batteries before recharging them is useful.

The custom settings menu comes up when the mode dial is set to CSM. It has controls for bracketing order, grid line display, focus area illumination, focus area selection, exposure lock, long exposure mode, autofocus priority, AE/AF button function, comand dial function and multi-exposure function. It's clunky to have to turn the mode dial to access these controls. That is because so few of them are relevant to IR and UV shooting, but it's not a particular drawback for the S3 UVIR.

Ease of Use
The S3 UVIR is in an unusual category, which makes "ease of use" a tricky term. As a piece of technical equipment, its controls are pretty straightforward. We could get images out of it without much trouble. Of course, we had to put up with the lack of metering, lack of autofocus, and a digital viewfinder that only works for 30 seconds at a time.

The only comparison are cameras that have been modified by aftermarket technicians. "Hacked" cameras come in two kinds: full-spectrum cameras, like the S3 UVIR, which are sensitive to everything from UV to IR, including visible light, and which require filtration to make worthwhile images. The second type are infrared-only cameras, which replace the standard cutoff filter with an infrared filter. Infrared-only cameras can't change filters, and can't handle UV photography, but their viewfinders work just fine. Infrared light focuses differently from visible light, so autofocus will be off, and exposure controls won't be reliable, but they might be useful as a starting point.

An infrared-only camera would be much more convenient to use than the S3 UVIR, but it is also less flexible.