Fujifilm FinePix S5 Pro

Model Design / Appearance
The Fujifillm FinePix S5 Pro feels solid and looks substantial. It's bigger than entry-level DSLRs such as the Nikon D40, the Canon Rebel XTi and the Olympus Evolt E-500 and looks more like a pro tool. Fujifilm omitted decorative touches. The little red chevron on the D200's grip is a Nikon calling card so it's gone, and Fujifilm didn't replace it with any other accents. The company also left off the translucent logo that the FinePix S3 Pro sported.

Size / Portability
The S5 is 5.8 x 2.9 x 4.4 inches without a lens so it won't squeeze into a pocket or purse, and it's at the high end of DSLR size leaving out the top-of-the-line Nikons and Canons. Wedding shooters who plan to use one for 6 or 8 hours at a time should work on their upper body endurance.

On the plus side, the S5 appears to retain the Nikon D200's better-than-average environmental seals, at least for ports and doors. It's not weatherproof, but it seems to be built for hard use.

Handling Ability
The Fujifilm S5 should be comfortable for a range of users – our contributors, who range from petite to "big and tall" said the D200 was comfortable in hand, and the S5 is the same shape and size, with the same anti-slip surfaces covering the grip and left side of the camera. The camera hangs well on a shoulder strap and balances with a range of lenses, including Nikon's husky big-aperture zooms. We're very pleased to see that Fujifilm retained the large top-deck LCD – its readability speeds up camera operations.

Control Button / Dial Positioning / Size
There is a lot to like about the S5's controls – we like the two control dials for the right thumb and index finger, and the large buttons for switching modes, quality, ISO, white balance and exposure compensation. The dish-shaped 4-way controller is comfortable and quick, and the large latches for the memory card and battery slots are both secure and easy to operate. Again, all those features are a matter of Fujifilm retaining Nikon's good design.

The S5 departs from the D200 in the left-hand column of buttons on the camera back, and those changes are driven by Fujifilm-specific technology. Assuming that wedding shooters are the heart of the S5 market, those controls may well be popular. The S5 has a face-recognition button – press it in playback, and the display zooms in on a face in the current image. Press it again, and see a different face. Fujifilm implements the same techonology in point-and-shoots to focus on faces as images are shot. The S5 can't do that, but speeding up the review process for group shots will appeal to many S5 users.

The S5 has two buttons that bring up menus. One is the Menu button and the other is the Setup button. Our impression is that nearly all of Fujifilm's exclusive image-quality controls – film emulation, dynamic range adjustment, its particular white balance tuner – are under the Menu button. The Setup button has the many, many controls carried over from the Nikon D200 – wireless flash controls, varying the circle size in center-weighted metering, and so on. At first blush, we get the feeling that some basic functions take lower priority because of this – the D200 has a dedicated protect button, that the S5 lacks, for instance.

Menu
This is a first impressions review, and we're going to skip the encyclopedic list of all the menu options. There are two reasons for our decision: first, the S5's menus are extensive, and second, a straight list would obscure our reporting of Fujifilms unusual take on some controls.

First, Fujifilm uses its standard menu style that is busy and not attractive. Each entry is superimposed on a gradient background that runs from light blue to white. It uses numbered tabs rather than mnemonic icons.

The FinePix S5's Menu button brings up an entry for film simulation that are similar to Canon's Picture Styles and Nikon's Optimization settings. We haven't tested the film simulations, but Fujifilm's verbose help system says the settings range from a soft negative for portraits to a contrasty, saturated transparency stock.

Fujifilm's D-Range setting is the second menu entry, and it has been tweaked since the FinePix S3. Not only does it go to 400 percent, for even more range than the earlier camera, but it also allows more intermediate settings – it's as if the D-Range control on the S3 worked only in whole stops, and the S5 allows shifts in 1/3-stop increments.

The menu also has settings for color, tone, sharpness, ISO, white balance (the same control accessible with the white balance button on to of the camera), white balance fine tune, and quality, that allows choices between RAW and two levels of JPEG compression, and the option to shoot RAW and JPEG simultaneously, resolution, color space, which offers only two choices: sRGB and Adobe RGB, live preview, menu reset and noise reduction.

The setup menu is more hierarchical – many top-level entries lead to several controls, some of which have additional submenus. The Shooting entry is the top line, and it's a grab bag, including controls for image comments, GPS input, barcode input, the burst mode frame rate, exposure delay, to limit vibration from mirror flop, the self-timer preferences, and data shown in quick review mode.

Other entries cover niceties such as a grid display in the viewfinder, whether the LCD backlight shuts off when the meter is activated, and so on.

The Nikon D200's menus are very deep and it seems as though the S5 retains all those options. There are settings for the type of batteries used in the MB-200 battery grip, and the vertical shooting controls on it (apparently the grip is compatible, even though individual Nikon batteries aren't), how to handle non-CPU lenses, and some very useful controls for setting the limits on the shutter speed range when a flash is active – essentially, the S5 can be set to aperture priority or program, and as long as there's a flash connected, the shutter speed won't go longer than a user-set limit. Setup also allows the user to set the range of autofocus modes available on the D200 – near-subject priority, group dynamic mode, and options for tracking focus. The S5 can be set to rotate images, or simply display them rotated on the LCD. Like the D200, the S5 can set the size of the center circle in center-weighted metering.

More Fujifilm specific options are available in setup, with choices for shooting in tethered mode via a USB 2 connection. The S5 can also tag images for an 8x10, 5x7 or full-frame crop.

The S5 allows any combination of controls to be locked and provides password security for the feature. Lockdown might be useful for school portraits or other production shooting where several photographers are working on a project and the situation demands that certain parameters be consistent throughout the job.

The S5's menus are complicated and not immediately intuitive. Oddball features seem to be shoe-horned into vague categories. The layout is too busy. For a camera that has so many options, this flawed implementation will frustrate users.

Ease of Use
The FinePix's menus are a weak spot in an otherwise excellent interface. Manual controls are easy to access, and the help function offers useful, but long, text guidance. Overall, the camera handles well. The S5 shows histograms for separate color channels as as well as a master graph. We don't know how many S5 buyers will use Fujifilm cameras exclusively. Among pros, we guess there will be a substantial number who use the S5 in concert with Nikon bodies – maybe for their speed, maybe for higher pixel counts, maybe, in the case of the D80, to save some money. Regardless, Fujifilm's decision to keep most aspects of the S5's interface consistent with Nikon's is a convenience to photographers who use both brands.