Fujifilm FinePix S3 Pro UVIR Digital Camera Review

Shooting Infrared and Ultraviolet
The sample S3 UVIR came with an IR filter and a UV filter. We shot a range of subjects with each filter. However, we shot relatively little without the filters because the shots just look washed out. Each of the three color channels – red, green and blue – are about equally sensitive to infrared and ultraviolet, so the addition of those frequencies affect each channel equally, evening out color contrast.

Blood
Blood shows up dark in infrared light, but many clothing dyes don't. So, spots of blood will show up dark against a light background, even on a black t-shirt. To demonstrate this, one dedicated DigitalCameraInfo writer set aside a black shirt at home, waiting for some sort of bloody incident to occur. After a couple of days, his daughter ran cheerily down the hall with a triumphant shout of, "Daddy! I have a bloody nose!" Alas, it dried up too quickly to get on the T-shirt. Later, the writer inflicted a personal injury upon himself to yield blood for the test and greater quest for truth. Interestingly, both the infrared and the ultraviolet filters were effective in showing the blood. The comparison shot was taken with a Nikon D80, and it doesn't quite match up with the S3 UVIR shots, but it demonstrates that the blood did not show in visible light.

Ultraviolet, Visible Light Only, Infrared

Daylight 
Below are two comparison shots of outdoor scenes. The first, of a house's peaked roof with sky in the background, contrasts the S3 UVIR's performance between an IR filter and a UV filter. The image pair with color is a composite of two shots of the scene – the top one through the #87 infrared filter, and the bottom one through the UV filter. We split the composite into red, green, and blue channels because we saw so much color variation in the UV shot. The IR shots' channels are fairly consistent in tone, while the UV shot is much brighter in the red channel. This may be due to the UV filter's efficiency, or it may be that the filtration built into photosites on the chip passes UV with varying efficiency.

Top: Infrared; Bottom: Ultraviolet

Top row: Red, Green and Blue channels of Infrared shot; Bottom row: Red, Green and Blue channels of Ultraviolet shot

Our other daylight shot was taken with a 300mm f/4 Nikkor, on a clear, cold day. We had hoped to demonstrate the superior haze penetration of infrared, but the effect is limited because it was such a clear day. Still, the visible light shot shows significantly less contrast than the IR shot. We could not test this scene in UV because we don't have a UV filter that would cover the 300mm. We used an 87c Kodak Gelatin filter for the IR shot.

Vegetation
We shot all sorts of produce with the S3 UVIR but have chosen to show the pineapple top . The left shot is through the IR filter and the right is through the UV. Foliage reflects both IR and UV efficiently, so the top looks pale in both shots. We notice more shadow in the UV shot, but that may be contamination from visible light, as we saw in the outdoor shot of the house.

Left: Infrared; Right: Ultraviolet

Ink
When Fujifilm reps demonstrated their IS-1 infrared camera at the Photo Marketing Association show, they took pens and blacked out their names on their business cards, and then shot the card in IR. Voila! The name reappeared! The trick was so popular we had to ask for cards that hadn't been defaced. The technique is useful in identifying forgeries, altered checks, and other problematic documents. We marked up a swatch of newspaper with ballpoint pen, an indelible marker, a water-based marker, and a pencil. Our comparison shows infrared versus visible light, and it clearly shows that IR "sees through" the inks but doesn't have a particular advantage with pencil.

Top: Infrared; Bottom: visible light, with FujiFilm FinePix S2

Fabrics
In some situations, some fabrics are not opaque to infrared light. Sony found this out to its chagrin when it released "Night Shot" infrared-sensitive cameras, and some users put IR filters on them and went to the beach. Because we at the reviewed.com family of publications frown on such behavior, considering it intrusive, pathetic, and scummy, we did not attempt to invade anyone's privacy. Instead, we laid a few shirts over a newspaper with a large headline. The effect was evident when the fabric was in contact with the newspaper, using either the UV or IR filters. With air space between the fabric and the newspaper, we did not see the effect. The effect varies with the type of fiber and fabric thickness. Our most obvious results were with a cotton broadcloth shirt. Fujifilm has concerns about misuse of the camera, though the camera is marketed primarily to law enforcement professionals.

Top: Infrared; Middle: Ultraviolet; Bottom: Visible light with Nikon D80

Filtering the Light Source
It doesn't really matter where the filter is, as long as it removes all the unwanted wavelengths of light. We shot images with an IR filter over the front of a Nikon SB80 flash but with no filter on the lens and got the same effect as filtering the lens. The advantage was that we could see through the viewfinder and focus the camera. We shot in subdued light and used the S3 UVIR's fastest sync-ing shutter speed - 1/180 - so that the ambient light was not a factor in the exposure. The IR filter we used for this is unexposed, processed Ektachrome transparency film. Apparently, any transparency film will do, but we had Ektachrome on hand.

Filtered flash, with no filter on the S3 UVIR