Fuji FinePix S5000Fuji's latest electronic SLR offers a full 10x optical zoom lens.<<Viewfinder :(Previous) | (Next): Exposure & Flash>> Page 5:OpticsReview First Posted: 10/01/2003 |
Optics
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The S5000 is equipped with a, Fujinon 10x 5.7-57mm zoom lens, with a 35mm equivalent range of 37-370mm. This corresponds to range from a moderate wide-angle to a pretty substantial telephoto. Aperture ranges from f/2.8 (f/3.1 with the lens at its telephoto position) to f/8, and is manually and automatically adjustable in 10 steps. The f/3.1 maximum aperture at telephoto is better than most long-zoom digicams manage, further suiting the S5000 to sports and wildlife shooting, where you'll frequently be working at telephoto focal lengths, and where you generally want the widest aperture possible, to keep shutter speeds high and depth of field shallow. Focus ranges from 3.0 feet (0.9 meters) to infinity in normal AF mode, and from 3.6 inches to 6.6 feet (0.1 to 2.0 meters) in Macro mode. Pressing the left arrow key enables the Macro shooting mode.
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The S5000's contrast-detection autofocus system operates in either Single or Continuous modes, selectable via the Focus Mode button on top of the camera. Continuous mode may be useful for dealing with moving subjects, but as I've found to be the case with most digicams I've tested, brings relatively little speed benefit when working with stationary ones. (A shutter delay of 0.69 seconds, vs 0.77 in single-AF mode.) The same button also accesses the Manual focus mode, which lets you adjust focus by pressing the Exposure Compensation button while pressing the W/T zoom buttons. When entering manual focus from Single AF mode, the focus is automatically set on the current subject from the Single AF setting. You can then adjust the focus as desired. I have to say that the S5000's manual focus adjustment is one of my least favorite among digicams I've tested. There's no numeric scale provided, so you're entirely dependent on what you see in the viewfinder to set the focus. - And there's no magnification applied to the image during focusing, so it's very difficult to set focus with much precision.
As an aid to shooting in dark surroundings, the S5000 has an autofocus-assist illuminator that projects a bright green pattern on the subject when needed. In my testing, this illuminator was effective down to light levels of about 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux). What I found odd was that the illuminator wouldn't come on at levels darker than 1/16 foot-candle. Generally, AF illuminators will turn on at light levels below a certain threshold (when they're needed), but this is the first time I've seen one that subsequently shut down at the very darkest levels. This may not be a big issue for most users, as 1/16 foot-candle is very dark (and indeed, a factor of two darker than the lowest level at which the EVF is usable), but I'd think that at least some would find it useful to have an AF-assist light available for those times when you want to snap a flash photo in total darkness, trusting to a wide-angle lens setting to capture the subject you're interested in, when it's too dark to use the viewfinder.
A locking selector dial surrounds the Focus Mode button, and prevents you from accidentally pressing it while shooting. An AF Area mode lets you set the autofocus point to Center or Multi (a broader area in the center of the frame), or to Area. In Area mode, you can manually move the AF area point throughout the frame using the Four-Way Multicontroller. The focus point can be moved across the full field of view, in 7 steps vertically or horizontally. (A total of 49 different positions.)
A removable plastic lens cap protects the lens surface when not in use, and comes with a small strap to attach it to the camera body and prevent it from being lost. The two zoom buttons in the upper right corner of the rear panel control both optical and digital zoom. The 2.2x digital zoom feature increases the S5000's total zoom range up to 22x (depending on the image size selected), and is accessed by zooming past the optical zoom range with the telephoto zoom button. The amount of digital enlargement is reported in the LCD display. As with any "digital zoom" function, remember that there's no free lunch: The amount of zoom achieved trades off directly against image resolution. Fuji's way of dealing with this is to restrict the amount of digital zoom to whatever the ratio is between the currently-selected image size and the maximum resolution of the sensor. This insures that no additional interpolation is applied to digitally-zoomed images, preserving image quality. (To my thinking, this is the intelligent approach, rather than upsizing the cropped, digitally zoomed image, which only makes the photos soft and fuzzy-looking. As far as I know, Fuji was the first to employ this approach to digital zoom, but Sony has recently followed suit, with their "Smart Zoom" feature.) The net of all this is that no digital zoom is available at the six-megapixel resolution, 1.4x is available at the three-megapixel image size, 1.8x at two megapixels, and the full 2.2x only for one-megapixel resolution images.
The S5000's lens barrel has a set of filter threads, which accommodate Fuji's accessory lens kits. An adapter ring accompanies the camera, so that you can attach the accessory lens, or other third-party ones such as closeup adapters or polarizing or other filters. The adapter provides a set of 55 mm accessory threads in front of the furthest extension of the S5000's lens.
Optical distortion on the S5000 is slightly better than average at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.7 percent barrel distortion. The telephoto end fared much better, as I measured only a half-pixel of pincushion distortion there. Chromatic aberration was higher than average, showing fairly bright color around the edges of the resolution target lines in the corners of the frame. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.) However, this effect was most likely exaggerated by some corner softness, which appeared in all four corners of the frame at the full wide angle lens setting.
The S5000 has a macro mode that lets it focus down to 3.9 inches (10 cm). That's fairly close, but note that the lens will only focus that closely when set to its maximum wide-angle position, which reduces the S5000's performance to only a bit better than average, with a minimum area of 2.88 x 2.17 inches (73 x 55 millimeters).
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