Fuji S3Pro Short Field Test
Photography by Fred Kamphues
Fuji S3Pro
The Fuji S3Pro became available in mid 2004 and is aimed at advanced amateur and professional photographers. The camera is equipped with Fuji's latest Super CDD SRII technology, giving it a wider dynamic range than conventional DSLR's.
After having seen some promising results from other photographers, I was keen to try this camera myself.
The S3 body is based on a Nikon F80 and for Nikon photographers everything is in a familiar place.
The S3 has a small additional display at the back, indicating the ISO setting (very important!) and remaining battery life. It also provides quick access to a number of functions that are often used.
The camera uses a set of four (relatively inexpensive) AA batteries, which give around 400 shots, depending on autofocus, display use and ambient temperature. Enough for one day of heavy use.
Blown highlights is one of the more serious problems in digital photography and Fuji has solved this with a CCD which emulates the structure of color negative film. Negative film uses different grain sizes with different sensitivity. The large high sensitivity grains respond to small amount of light, while the small low sensitivity grains respond to large amount of light. In a similar way, the Fuji Super CCD uses a dual pixel configuration as is shown in the figure on the right. The large S-pixels capture the normal end of the tonal range and the small R-pixels capture the higher end of the spectrum.
Complex in camera processing makes one image out of the two captures, resulting in an image with a fine highlight tonality. Fuji claims an increase of the dynamic range with more than two stops over conventional CCD's.
Super CCD emulating negative film
There is no better place to test the extended dynamic range of a camera than in difficult light conditions, so I took the S3Pro on a trip to Costa Rica. With its dark rainforests, bright waterfalls, long surf beaches and stunning sunsets, Costa Rica provides an excellent testing ground, as well as giving plenty of mouth watering photo opportunities for any photographer.
Since the S3Pro has a Nikon F-mount, I was able to use my own set of Nikkor Pro lenses and compare it back to back with my Nikon D1X.
For an impression of the capabilities of the S3Pro, please have a look at the lowres samples below:
Fuji S3Pro + Nikkor AFS 17-35
ISO 100
f/22
2.0 s
Exp. comp. -1.0
The waterfall of La Fortuna
Fuji S3Pro + Nikkor AFS 17-35
ISO 100
f/9.5
1/15 s
Exp. comp. -0.5
Eucalypt forest in the Cordillera Central
Fuji S3Pro + Nikkor AFS 17-35
ISO 400
f/4
30 s
Exp. comp. -1.5
A nightly eruption of the Arenal volcano
Fuji S3Pro + Tamron 90SP
ISO 400
f/22
1/6 s
Exp. comp. -0.5
Raindrops on a leaf
Fuji S3Pro + Nikkor AFS 17-35
ISO 100
f/16
1/180 s
Exp. comp. -2.0
Sunset on the beach of Manuel Antonio
A thorough analysis reveals that the S3Pro has indeed an incredible dynamic range. With the dynamic range set to WIDE2, blown highlights are prevented, while at the same time details in the dark areas are retained.
The only drawback is that the file size in RAW mode is 25 MB, quickly consuming the capacity of even the largest Compact Flash cards. Compressed RAW (like on the Nikon D70S and D2X) is not available.
Another important limitation is the write time to Compact Flash card. Fuji has equipped this camera with two camera slots: One Compact Flash slot and on xD Picture Card slot. The write times to Compact Flash are very slow, even with a fast Sandisk Extreme III card:
WIDE2 dyn. range RAW 12 MPixel output: 12.9 seconds
WIDE2 dyn. range JPG Fine 12 MPixel output: 4.4 seconds
WIDE2 dyn. range JPG Fine 6 MPixel output: 3.6 seconds
With an xD card, times improve a lot (around 8 seconds for a WIDE2 dyn. range RAW file), but still this is a very slow camera compared to its competitors. This is most likely caused by the complex in-camera-processing, but for action shooting this camera should not be used in RAW mode and wide dynamic range (the fact that the image buffer can contain only 3 RAW files or 9 JPG files doesn't help either). Nevertheless, for landscape work, the results of this camera are absolutely stunning!
Fuji S3Pro + Tamron 90SP
ISO 100
f/8
1/350 s
Exp. comp. -0.5
Things don't get more worse than shooting a black volcanic beach and white surf on mid day.
If we compare the S3Pro with a D1X image under identical conditions, the difference in dynamic range becomes even more obvious, as you can see on the histogram below.
Nikon D1X + Nikkor AFS 80-200
ISO 125
f/8
1/750 s
Exp. comp. -0.3 (+ 1 stop in Nikon Capture)
While the D1X image clips the lower end of the tonal range, the S3Pro image has still plenty of margin on either end of the histogram. Very impressive indeed!
100% crops:
If we look at some image details, the 12 MPixel S3Pro image is clearly sharper than the interpolated 10 MPixel output of the D1X (although the images were made with different lenses).
The S3Pro is probably somewhere in between the D70S and the D2X. It would be interesting to see a direct comparison between the S3Pro and the Nikon D2X.
The images on the left and right show the detail in the highlights area for both cameras.
Note: the extra grain in the D1X image should be ignored, as this is the result of a +1 stop correction in Nikon Capture. Normally the D1X produces very clean results at 125 ISO. However, it does show that with the extended dynamic range of the S3Pro, there is more exposure lattitude in difficult conditions.
Conclusion:
With a current price of 2000 Euro, The S3Pro is considerably more expensive than the Nikon D70s, Canon 350D and even the Canon 20D.
If Fuji aims at the professional photographer with the S3Pro, I think they should address the slow write times on Compact Flash cards, as this is the most commonly used format (xD cards are currently not available in pro capacity).
Nevertheless, the Fuji S3Pro has a very impressive dynamic range, producing images of high quality, especially under difficult light conditions.
For landscape, or wedding photography, this camera is an excellent choice.
It is less well suited to photography that involves some action (at least not in wide dynamic range mode).