D80 out! Fuji S5 in!

[chris bangs]

Check this out

Fuji is backing out of the Pixel war and focusing on image quality.

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0609/06092502fujifilms5pro.asp

[Jonathan Bird]

Well, it's clearly a D200 body, which means it will fit into any camera housing for the D200. Unfortunately, I do not know what TTL system it uses, meaning it may fit in an Ike housing but the TTL may not work unless it uses Nikon's iTTL system.

I do not necesarily buy into their "image quality" rather than quantity arguement. It has 12 million picture sensors (not really pixels), divided into 6 of one type and 6 of another, as if they are calling it a super-duper quality 6 MP camera, but in fact they advertise it as a 12 MP camera and it outputs 12 MP images. So it's really just a 12 MP camera with half the pixels a difference size than the other half. Maybe there is some advantage there, but maybe not. They also use a hex pattern on the pixels instead of a standard grid, then do all kinds of post-processing to produce an image that has standard grids of pixels (because that's the only way they can end up.) I'm not convinced this is any better. I guess only a test will tell.

The only system that seemed like it would be better than the standard CCD (or CMOS) sensor with a bayer pattern filter on it was the Foveon chip that had three layers (R,G,B) stacked. That technology seems to have fizzled.

Jonathan

[dbh]

It said iTTL in the article....so it SHOULD work.

I was thinking of getting a back-up D200 body. Once I find out for sure it fits my housing, I may just get one of these instead. It would make for a good comparison.

Dave

[Jonathan Bird]

The problem is that iTTL means little. Nikon's iTTL system is slightly different from camera to camera, which is why Ikelite has a full time engineer to design a different "black box" for each housing to talk to their TTL strobes. The Nikon system is different from the Canon eTTL system, but their has evolved too. So unless the camera uses a "D200-conforming iTTL system" there is no promise that it's the same as Nikon's iTTL. For the S1 and S2 Fuji used a non-iTTL system and then the S3 went to iTTL but which one? The one used on the D70? The D100? Their own? They are all different!

Jonathan

[chris bangs]

As soon as I found out the D80 did not have the 1/500th sync the D70 had, I lost a bit of interest.

I will wait for the Fuji to be released and tested, then I will ponder what direction I will take. and who knows what other cameras will be out by mid 2007.

TTL - who cares ;-)

Chris

[Jonathan Bird]

Yeah, the sync is a bummer. Even the D200 only goes to 1/250 which is lame.

Jonathan

[Jonathan Bird]

Yo Chris,
Any follow up on the Fuji?

Jonathan

[dbh]

here is an update from the one Chris posted:

http://www.dpreview.com/news/0612/06120701fujis5pro.asp

Dave