Manual Control Options
The Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro is a camera designed for the manual shooter, with easy control over the exposure, white balance, ISO, focus and other shooting parameters.
Focus
Auto Focus (8.75)
The FinePix S5 Pro has the Nikon D200's autofocus technology, which is excellent for the $2,000 and under DSLR category. The system has 11 sensor sites. There are three vertical columns of three sites each, and one additional site on each end of the group. Nikon's D2X has the same sort of arrangement, but its sites are spread further apart, and the central nine are all cross-type sensors. Only the middle sensor on the S5 and D200 is a cross-type. Cross-type sensors are sensitive to both horizontal and vertical detail, which makes them more effective.
Still, we noted that the S5 focuses confidently in dim room light and handles low contrast scenes better than the average. Its performance is no different from the D200 in any palpable sense. Both can be set to consolidate the 11 sites into 7 larger sites, which is supposed to make it easier to get a site to overlap the subject without recomposing the shot. In practice, the larger sites can make it harder to figure out what part of the subject the camera is focusing on.
Manual Focus (9.0)
The FinePix S5 has a bright, high-contrast viewfinder, and the relatively high 0.94x magnification improves the view. It's a relatively easy camera to focus. The Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro also has a live preview system, with a significant magnification option. The live preview is only active for 30 seconds at a time, and it shuts down to cool off the sensor for awhile if it's used too many times in short succession. Still, it's a useful option when the S5 is on a tripod. It isn't as useful as the live previews on Olympus, Panasonic and Leica Four-Thirds DSLRs, or on the new Canon DSLR, all of which will work for much longer periods.
Exposure (9.25)
The Fujifilm FinePix S5's exposure modes are program, aperture-priority, shutter-priority, and full manual. The exposure readout shows both aperture and shutter speed, and a linear scale that indicates how far the aperture and shutter speed settings are from the metered reading. In manual mode, the user zeros a cursor between the under- and over-exposure segments of the line.
The S5 offers a generous 5 EV of exposure compensation above and below the metered reading. Compensation can be set in 1/3-EV increments. Both the AE/AF button and the shutter release can be set to freeze exposure readings, and the S5 can link or unlink flash and ambient compensation.
Metering (8.75)
The FinePix S5's matrix, center-weighted and spot metering patterns are identical to the Nikon D200's, including the option of setting the size of the weighted area of the center-weighted pattern. Matrix metering evaluates many separate spots across the frame to compute an exposure. Matrix is supposed to be able to detect backlighting and other situations that center-weighted metering can't handle. Like the D200 the S5’s matrix isn't awe-inspiring. It seemed to detect dark subjects on a bright background or small, bright subjects on very dark backgrounds, but it still split the difference. Though it shoots backlit subjects with more exposure than center-weighted does, which is the right direction to go, it compromises too much, ending up close, but not exactly right. We expect most S5 users to mistrust their matrix mode, and either ride the exposure compensation button, or to stick with spot metering. Because it's the same system as the D200, the S5's center-weighted pattern offers the option of setting the weighted area to a diameter from 6 to 13 mm. The S5's spot mode measures a very small area of the frame, taken at active autofocus site, just as the D200 does.
The S5 can be set to bias exposure in 1/6-EV steps for each metering pattern, up to a full EV up or down. That's independent of exposure compensation settings, and it doesn't show up on the light meter scale.
White Balance (8.75)
Fujifilm DSLR shooters have a reputation for shooting JPEG rather than RAW. The S2 and the S3 produce very flattering JPEGs, but the user doesn't have a bunch of leeway to correct color after the fact, the way a RAW shooter does. JPEGs have to get the color right in the camera.
That may be why Fujifilm put nine presets in its white balance system, plus auto White Balance, Kelvin settings, five custom settings, a 2-axis fine tune setup for Auto and the nine presets, and separate 2-axis tuning for each custom setting. The nine presets are Daylight, Tungsten, Flash, Shade, and five flavors of fluorescent. We didn't have much luck with the fluorescent settings, though. The custom setting works well, and it's a convenience to be able to save five of them. Being able to fine-tune them on axises for red-cyan and blue-yellow could be fantastic, in situations where the shooter could verify that all that fine-tuning is accurate. The sad thing about all the fine-tune controls is that photographers rely on their LCD's color rendition to set them, and camera displays are definitely not up to that job.
The Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro's Kelvin color range runs from 2,500 to 10,000, which ought to embrace everything from tallow lamps to mercury vapor.
ISO (9.75)
Fujifilm includes an ISO 3200 setting on the S5, something missing from its predecessors. It also offers 1/3-EV increments for setting ISO, a feature that the S2 and S3 lacked, probably because of limitations in the platform supplied by Nikon. 3200 is definitely the ragged edge for the S5, but it looks better than the highest extended settings on competing Nikons.
Shutter Speed (9.0)
The FinePix S5 can be set for exposures from 30 seconds to 1/8000 in 1/3-EV steps, with flash sync up to 1/250, plus B for longer exposures. The range is plenty for typical types of photography. There is no need for a camera to have exposures longer than 30 seconds. At a minute, timing an exposure within a second is better than 98 percent accurate, which probably outstrips the camera shutter at high speeds or the aperture setting. More to the point, there's no way it would make a difference in the image.
Aperture (0.0)
The FinePix S5 controls the aperture of autofocus lenses electronically, and provides all the aperture-based control and data that current Nikon DSLRs do. The S5 can handle legacy lenses back to the AI series, which are controlled manually. The D200 body mechanically closes down the aperture on those lenses, and can shoot them in manual or aperture-priority mode, if the user manually inputs the lens data. It's great that Nikon still supports lenses made during the disco era. Of course, Fujifilm doesn't have much choice about it, but some Nikon owners will find the S5 more attractive because of this capability.
