Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

Mar 26, 2007 - By Patrick Singleton
In the film era, shooting infrared was just a matter of buying the right film. If you wanted to be serious about it, you would also need a special-use filter. Digital photography changed that. Photographers who wanted to shoot infrared digitally could hack their cameras (or pay a pro to do it) by removing the UV and IR cutoff filter, or count on incredibly low sensitization. That was until the introduction of the Fujifilm FinePix S3 UVIR, released last year. Essentially, it's a prehacked version of the S3. Fujifilm removed the cutoff filter and replaced it with clear glass. The result is a camera that is sensitive to ultraviolet, visible, and infrared light. With the use of filters the camera can produce infrared or ultraviolet images. For this reason, the S3 UVIR will appeal to scientific and forensic photographers.
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Picture Quality / Size Options
The S3 UVIR records images at pixel dimensions of 4256x2848, 3024x2016, 2304x1536 or 1440x960. It shoots RAW or JPEG, with two levels of JPEG quality. The native resolution of the sensor chip is 3024x2016, but, because the sensors are arranged in a honeycomb fashion, Fujifilm maintains that they can be interpolated to the higher size.

Picture Effects Mode
The film emulation modes are irrelevant to UV and IR shooting, but the S3 UVIR's dynamic range extension works as well outside the visible range as the S3's does in visible light. With dynamic range extension on, the S3 gave two more EV of range than with it off. We couldn't test the range of the S3 UVIR in a controlled way, but the option extends its dynamic range significantly.

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