Fuji S3 Pro has landed

For those of you who might be interested I received this message today.

MERRY CHRISTMAS! SANTA HAS ARRIVED EARLY!

1. Tallyn's has just received 52 Fuji S3's in this afternoon! We have processed most of them and we are waiting anxiously for the next wave of cameras.

I greatly appreciate your patience and I guarantee that it will be well worth the wait!

I will be sending another update soon!

Scott M. Tallyn

Their sending mine over night to me but it’s unlikely I’ll receive mine till Monday because of all the bad weather up north, I’m psyched .

Marc

there IS a Santa Claus

Karl

And he's Japanese - as I always suspected.

Merry Christmas!

Alex

p.s. I hope that the Easter Bunny is equally efficient with Nikon's D2X!

I hope that the Easter Bunny is equally efficient with Nikon's D2X!

Seconded.

I'll be interested to hear how the S3 works in the real world.

I find myself knowing I'm going to do a fairly major trip in about 8 months time, and as of this week owning no underwater photographic equipment (except two Sea & Sea ports, a broken strobe arm and an old nikonos->Ikelite sync cord). The news that the D2X shipping may be delayed into late Feb/early march has me a bit worried :?

<edit: I just realised I still have the 3040 and pt-10, so all is not lost >

The samples that folks are posting on DPreview look fabulous. The High DR mode looks really good.

If the S3 price was more in line with the 20D, I'd probably get one for my topsides "point and shoot" camera. I'm getting sick of processing all the Kodak RAW files and would love to have a camera that does fabulous JPEG's again.

Cheers

James

Ho,

I'm afraid that it won't be any hounsing available for the S3Pro.

As far as I know, not a single manufacturer has announced it so far.

Tell me if I'm wrong, please

Saludos

Matetes

F-100, 2 subtronic, 16,17-35,24-85,60,105mm.

It’s Monday morning and I’m anticipating that I will receive my camera today.

I’m not worried about the housing, I’ll make one in no time.

Marc

How will you make one?

I’ll probably refit my old S2 housing to fit the new S3, I might start from scratch if the dimensions are not close.

Marc

Subal's manager had announced me that they won't do an housing for this camera

Just to let you all know I received my S3 today.

I took several pictures in different modes and compared them to the same shots I took with my S2, JPEG images only.

I won’t get technical why I just thought the images were to soft and the color were very muted compared to the S2.

I came to the conclusion that I like my S2 better and the upgrade is not worth the expense.

I sent the camera back and I’ll be getting on a waiting list for the D2X.

Marc

I'm disappointed to here this. How much time did you take to evaluate the camera? Did you try the different "films?" Is velvia an option and if so it must be snappy with black blacks!

I really hoped for great image quality for the S3 - especially since image quality would be the ONLY reason to buy this camera at its price point. All other cameras in the category have far superior focusing and better bodies.

Perhaps they have gone for less POP in the images - more realism. Kinda silly, though, since S2 users raved about the snappy jpegs out of camera. I was never a big fan of the greens from the S2, and this has been a topic of debate on Wetpixel. THom Hogan came down on my side in his latest newletter in which he states that he no longer uses his S2 because of its funky greens. I found the S2's blue water rendition to be distracting and unappealing. I think I am in the minority here on Wetpixel, however!

I hope to see something improved from Fuji at PMA - they are overdue. Fuji must realize that they cannot compete at $2000 using a $200 camera body. THis was acceptable 3 years ago, but no longer. I expect that the D200/D90 will have a body and focus ability comparable to the F100. Even with the D70's imager this would make a legendary camera. Fuji may have the best sensor technology in the business - but they need a worthy body.

KC

I wouldn't say the majority on wetpixel favor the S2's color. Some do but, like you Kasey, I don't like the green. I'd say the Canons tend somewhat toward green as well. Shoot raw, calibrate, and color correct. I think the tendency is to want to trust the camera to get it right. It doesn't!

I bought a ColorChecker card and did manual calibrations for my cameras with ACR. It makes a noticable difference. I'm trying to figure out how to do that effectively underwater, though. I do calibrate using my uw strobes.

The strength of the S2, it seems to me, has been its JPG performance. That's completely unimportant underwater and the S3 continues that trend while neglecting RAW shooting performance. Combine that with the high price, low performance body and (still) 6MP resolving power and I wonder why there will be interest. MR says he can't demonstrate any improved DR out of it but I'm not sure he tested properly. Still, he has a point and what compels a buyer to choose the S3 over a 20D? Nikon and Canon really focus on usability with fast startup times, good responsiveness and great battery life. It's a shame to read that the S3 at nearly twice the price hasn't mastered these things nor does it arguably deliver any advantages other than superior JPG performance. At least with the Kodak you get tremendous resolving power in exchange for all your frustrations.

The best F-mount appears to be the upcoming D2x. Let's hope its base ISO noise performance is good enough. The 1Ds2 looks like a monster at the high end and the 20D looks good in the midrange. I wish you could say the S3 is easily a better camera than the 20D but that appears not to be the case. Hopefully Nikon will compete. At the highest end I'm hoping that the Mamiya ZD turns out to be as good as promised. It offers the promise of greater performance than even the 1Ds2 can offer and uses superior wide angle lenses. It doesn't appear to have the range of macro lenses that we might like, though. I'd be curious to see what the ZD would look like in a superior housing. Anyone agree?

I disagree that superior JPEG performance is unimportant. I much prefer to shoot JPEGs if I can achieve equal quality as raw. I love the JPEGs from my D2H, and with the raw+JPEG feature I can always go back and edit a raw file when necessary. I expect to shoot this way with the D2X.

I'm not interested at all in the ZD underwater. For too valuable a camera to expose to the elements, and too large to enjoy in a housing. We all agree that the 1Ds and SLRn give results superior to 35mm, so I don't see the need to invest in a system of even greater quality and expense. Besides, the flexibiity, focus, and flash modes of the 35mm format will likely be superior to the ZD.

The madness of greater resolution and DR must stop somewhere, and for me it stops at 16MP! Now, if the ZD resolves sunrays like 35mm, I might be tempted!

I also think that at some point the water in front of your lens becomes the limiting factor.

I'm not ready to write off the S3 yet. Check out the sample images posted by Rainer (I think that's how you spell it) in the Fuji SLR Talk Forum. I think it takes someone who's ready to "invest the time" to get the most out of the S3. Obviously MR wasn't going to do that so he just fired off a few shots and made his proclamation. Not even a review really. His comparisons were good but how good were his raw conversions?

Personally, I think the S3pro is made for taking photos of caucasian brides in bright white wedding dresses in full contrasty sun, and doing it as a jpeg. Has this even been what we want to do, no, not really. But if someone could try shooting a sunball with one "for free" wouldn't everyone want to see the results?

Cheers

James

Here are the pix I'm talking about - very impressive:

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp...essage=11604982

Cheers

James

Hi James,

I agree with you, when I first saw those picture I was very impressed not only with the pictures but with the eye of the photographer.

This is certainly a great camera for that type of look.

It’s soft and very dreamy like quality will make a great wedding, portrait, studio type camera. I was very impressed with the extended highlights and shadow detail of the camera. It was also much better then the S2 above iso 400.

For myself I like hard bold colors which I find possible with my S2. I had a limited time with my S3 so I’m not making any recommendations to anyone here. I think it’s some what subjective and one should judge for them selves. The right person behind this camera could make someone very happy.

Marc

While the ZD in bulky by dSLR standards it's actually lighter than a 1D series body so the housed camera would not be bulkier than a Seacam or Subal 1Ds. I typically shoot all manual, as do many, so any features the ZD lacks wouldn't be missed by me. A 1Ds2 is $8000 while a ZD may not be much different. Lenses are another matter.

I don't think shooting JPG's underwater ever achieves the quality of RAW (especially when the camera consistently makes whites too green). I don't mind JPG above water and can see how certain photographers like it. JPG's can only contain 7 stops of DR, less than the capability of all dSLR's on the market, so it wastes much of the S3's supposed advantage.

I think there's no such thing as enough resolution! You may never get another chance at a shot, especially underwater. Problem is that, to get more, you have to have bigger sensors and, soon, better optics. My big concern with the ZD is that the larger sensor dictates that I will want to shoot macro up to 3:1 or more and there appears to be no lens capable of that. If you shoot small and crop you give up a lot of the advantage, maybe all of it, and such a large rig will need some working distance.

I agree, though, that water and ports may ultimately be the limiting factor. The ZD has a removable AA filter. The Kodak has none yet I never noticed any moire in any of my UW Kodak shots. Another argument for the larger sensor. Lets you get away with less lpmm which is likely limited by the water. That's why I want FF, not DX sensors.

James, I agree that MR's review was more of a fly-by sniping than anything substantial and I have concerns about his methods. The article had that "thinks be knows more than he does" technical feel to it, yet MR is an experienced photographer and it bothers me that he couldn't see any value in it. MR is highly prejudiced though and is very brand-aware. His objective comments are cause for concern. Why does the camera shoot raw so poorly? Is a 512MB buffer too much to ask of a $2500 camera that takes 23MB raw files?

I was hoping you'd shoot some sunballs with your Kodak! After all, it has as much if not more DR than any camera today with the probable exception of the S3. I never had a chance myself. Like the Kodak, properly exposing the S3 may take some learning.

Hi Craig,

I got some great sunball shots - I'll have to get you some of the raw files to play with. My 17-35 performed AWESOMELY (is that a word??).

Here is one where I cropped down away from the sunball a bit. In another, I overexposed the sunball:

When the action is this fast, I don't usually have time to stop down as I spin with the sea lions. Instead, I just left it at f8 or something. Maybe next time I'll shoot at shutter priority and 1/125th.

Cheers

James

Glad to hear your 17-35 worked well. Mine was terrible now matter how I ported it in spite of the fact that it was OK above water. Mauricio's was good, too.