Fujifilm FinePix S · announced July 2003
The Fujifilm FinePix S5000: three megapixels on the sensor, six on the box, and a battery that lasted
DPReview and PhotographyBLOG title it the FinePix S5000 Zoom, Imaging Resource the FinePix S5000. No review or announcement we read gives it another regional name.5861
In 2003 Fujifilm priced a ten-times zoom with full manual control at $499 and built it around a 3.1-megapixel sensor. Reviewers liked the grip, DPReview and Imaging Resource the battery, and they split on whether the 6-megapixel mode added any detail. A continuous mode kept the last five frames before you let go of the shutter button.
Fujifilm FinePix S5000 specs: sensor, lens, battery, memory card and cable
Launched in July 2003 at $499, the Fujifilm FinePix S5000 is a 3.1 MP CCD compact with a 37–370 mm (35 mm equivalent) 10× zoom lens. Inside: it uses xD-Picture Card and runs on 4 x AA (alkaline or NiMH) batteries. Sources
- Sensor
- CCD, 1/2.7", 3.1 MP source
- Lens
- 37–370 mm equivalent, 10× zoom source
- Memory card
- xD-Picture Card source
- Battery
- 4 x AA (alkaline or NiMH) source
- USB / A/V cable
- See our Fujifilm cable page
Meet the camera
It is a small imitation of a single-lens reflex: black plastic, a rubberised grip, a lens that telescopes out at power-up and an electronic viewfinder where the prism would be. Imaging Resource found the body solid for structural plastic, too big for a shirt pocket but fine for a large coat pocket, purse or backpack.6 PhotographyBLOG placed it between a compact such as the Olympus mju 410 Digital and an SLR-style camera such as the S7000, and found it a joy to use.8 DPReview thought it one of the best-looking SLR-like cameras of recent times.5
Weight depends on who is counting: 337 grams without batteries in Fujifilm's table as Imaging Resource printed it, in its datasheet and in PhotographyBLOG; 430 with four AA cells in DPReview and the Australian launch note; 444 in Imaging Resource's review.178536 DPReview dates the announcement to 29 July 2003. Imaging Resource's news item gave $499 and August shipping, PhotographyBLOG's $499.95; the datasheet lists 31 August 2003 as the date available, and the review says street prices had reached well below $400.51276 By June 2004 PhotographyBLOG printed a recommended price of £279.99, $429.99 or €649.99.8
Why this one was interesting
A ten-times zoom at three-megapixel money
Low End Mac set the price against its neighbours: the S602 Zoom was selling for about $700 and the S7000 would list at $799, so the $499 S5000 might be all the camera many buyers of either needed.4 Imaging Resource noted several 10x cameras with a nominal 3.1 megapixels at the same price or lower,6 and DPReview set it beside the 3-megapixel Minolta DiMAGE Z1, another 10x with manual controls, and preferred the Fujifilm's design.5
The lens was the selling point. Imaging Resource said f/3.1 at full zoom beat most long-zoom digicams;6 DPReview called f/3.2 at telephoto impressive, adding that its only possible complaint, no optical stabilisation, was not something to expect at this price, size and weight.5 The sources disagree about the long end: f/3.1 in Imaging Resource's overview and on the barrel in our product photo, f/3.2 in DPReview, Fujifilm's table and Imaging Resource's design page, and f/4 in the prose of Imaging Resource's launch news.651
Three megapixels, six on the box
The sensor counts 3.1 million photosites, and the camera interpolates the extra pixels to save 2816 × 2120 files.61 DPReview thought Fujifilm's marketing, which leans on the 6-megapixel size, rather deceptive to an uninformed buyer.5 Our FinePix S7000 review covers the same trick on a larger sensor, and our S602 Zoom review the camera it undercut.
The last five frames
Imaging Resource singled out the continuous modes. In Final 5 the camera shoots while you hold the shutter button and saves only the last five frames, so it "effectively reaches back in time" to what you were looking at up to a second before you let go; Top 5 saves the first five.6 Fujifilm rated both at 5 frames per second; DPReview measured 4.2 and called Final 5 novel.15
What was lost
It was not an S602 replacement: Imaging Resource said that role belonged to the forthcoming S7000, and called the S5000 an advanced point-and-shoot rather than a true enthusiast model.6 Low End Mac, summarising DPReview's comparison with the S602, listed what the cheaper camera dropped: 30 fps VGA video, the hot shoe, the SmartMedia and CompactFlash slots, the ISO 1600 mode, the sharper viewfinder and the super-macro setting. It gained RAW capture in place of TIFF, a 10x zoom against 6x and a lens adapter ring in the box.4
The dark: its weak point
With no ISO 100 setting, noise was the main complaint in two of the three full reviews. Imaging Resource saw higher-than-average noise throughout, visible at 1:1 on screen and in prints of 11 × 14 inches or larger, mild in prints under 8 × 10.6 PhotographyBLOG found ISO 200 just about acceptable and red and blue artefacts at 400 and 800.8 DPReview skipped its usual noise chart because the camera cuts its sharpening as sensitivity rises, so noise reduction shows up as softening; it noted that ISO 800 is only offered at 1280 × 960, which Imaging Resource said works by combining groups of four pixels.56
The reviewers disagreed about the assist lamp. DPReview's autofocus test ran to complete darkness at both ends of the zoom, thanks to a green lamp it said worked notably better than the F700's.5 Imaging Resource found its unit's lamp effective down to about 1/16 foot-candle and then, oddly, switched off at darker levels, and said other reviewers apparently had not seen this.6 Its night tests gave usable pictures down to 1/2 foot-candle at ISO 200, 1/4 at ISO 400 and 1/8 at ISO 800, while its viewfinder was usable only to about 1/4; on our reading of those figures, at ISO 800 the camera could shoot in light too dim to frame by.6 DPReview limited night mode to two-second exposures at ISO 400 and saw hot pixels in them.5
Real photographs taken with this camera. The sensitivity and camera model are read from each file's own EXIF data; the two ISO 800 files measure 960 × 1280, which is the 1280 × 960 size the reviewers say ISO 800 forces, turned upright. The EXIF of the radio shot says the flash fired.
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The little wins
A battery that would not quit
DPReview ran its new battery test on four 1600 mAh NiMH cells and got 5 hours 31 minutes and 555 shots, longer than any camera it had tested to that date, against 445 for the S7000 in the same table. That table now also lists two cameras above it, the Canon PowerShot G6 and the Olympus C-8080 WZ.5 Imaging Resource called it a stellar performer and estimated 3.8 hours with the screen and 4.4 with the finder from its power-draw table, though its prose gives 4.4 hours as the screen figure.6 PhotographyBLOG's warning was about the alkalines in the box, which it said do not last long.8
How it drew the picture
Colour got the warmest words. Imaging Resource found it very pleasing, though bright reds ran slightly over-saturated; DPReview called it vivid, a little strong on primary reds; PhotographyBLOG found bright-sun pictures punchy and colourful.658 Imaging Resource also found a contrasty tone curve that blew highlights and plugged shadows under harsh light.6
Detail is where they split. DPReview thought the default sharpening harsh enough to put halos around dark detail, while PhotographyBLOG found the files pretty sharp out of the camera.58 In DPReview's lab the 6-megapixel files resolved 1,100 lines per picture height horizontally before aliasing and 1,300 at extinction, the same as the 3-megapixel Canon PowerShot A70, while a 5-megapixel Canon PowerShot S50 reached 1,450 and 1,650; it saw no gain at the 6-megapixel size and told readers to shoot at 3.5 Imaging Resource's chart showed artefacts from about 800 to 850 lines and extinction near 1,400, and it found more detail in the 6-megapixel frames than the 3-megapixel ones, enough to say Fujifilm's interpolation was more than smoke and mirrors.6 The numbers are close; the reading is not. Our PowerShot A70 review covers the comparison camera.
Photos taken with this camera (a bridge, a funicular, a clock tower, a hyrax, an altar, a castle, a bronze chariot, a damselfly and a farmhouse), from Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture. Eight of the nine report ISO 160, which fits the Auto setting, since the manual settings start at 200; sizes run from 2048 × 1536 to 2816 × 2120 (one is upright), and the hyrax and the chariot carry EXIF dates of 2013 and 2012, ten and nine years after launch.
Fringing got three verdicts: mild and hard to find in everyday shots for DPReview, purple in high-contrast scenes with the sun just outside the frame for PhotographyBLOG, and higher than average, though perhaps exaggerated by corner softness, for Imaging Resource.586 DPReview measured 0.9 per cent barrel distortion at wide angle and 0.2 per cent pincushion at full zoom, which it rated very good for a compact 10x lens; Imaging Resource found about 0.7 per cent barrel and half a pixel of pincushion.56 DPReview also objected to vignetting in the top corners at wide angle and full aperture.5
Where it let you down
The viewfinder and the screen show the same image, and both crop it: Imaging Resource and DPReview each measured about 89 per cent of the final frame.65 Imaging Resource called the manual focus among its least favourite, with no distance scale and no magnification.6 DPReview missed a manual white balance preset, saw a slight blue cast on its auto white balance chart, and found the mode dial loose, the tripod socket beside the battery door (so the batteries cannot be changed on a tripod) and flash pictures slightly underexposed.5 The supplied 16 MB card held about ten 6-megapixel JPEGs, per PhotographyBLOG, and Imaging Resource said a 64 MB card should probably be considered a minimum.86
Speed was a mixed bag, in both DPReview's and Imaging Resource's words: start-up took 4.1 to 4.6 seconds, shutter lag primed 0.26 to 0.3 seconds, which DPReview called remarkably slow, and shot to shot about 1.1 seconds. Full-autofocus lag at wide angle was 0.77 seconds for Imaging Resource and 1.0 to 1.2 for DPReview, though they timed different things. In the Top 5 and Final 5 modes both measured about 4 frames per second against Fujifilm's 5, then about four seconds to write the frames; the 40-frame long burst ran at about 2 frames per second in Imaging Resource's table and 1.8 for DPReview and Fujifilm.561
What the reviewers said in 2003 and 2004
| Outlet | Date | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Low End Mac (preview) | 1 Aug 2003 | A shopper's preview with no hands-on: at $499 it might be all the camera many S602 or S7000 buyers need.4 |
| DPReview | 17 Sep 2003 | 8 out of 10 for construction, features, ease of use and value; 7 for image quality and for the lens and sensor together. A good all-rounder held back by average resolution and no gain at 6 megapixels.5 |
| Imaging Resource | 1 Oct 2003 | No score in the text we read. Good colour, excellent battery life and Final 5 earn it a serious look as a long zoom; the noise will matter to some users, mostly for large prints.6 |
| PhotographyBLOG | 16 Jun 2004 | A better camera than the S3000 without being much more expensive, with files that print up to A3; noise at ISO 200 and above is the cost. The page shows its star score as an image whose alt text reads "4 stars" (out of 5).8 |
Should you buy one now?
Buy one if you want a light, balanced 2003 long zoom with manual controls and a battery that lasts, shoot mostly in daylight, and will save at 3 megapixels or live with the 6-megapixel files. It launched at $499;1 what it sells for now is a question for the sold listings, not for us. We have not tested a unit, and our coverage rests on two dated full reviews from 2003, one from 2004 and launch notes. Fujifilm later put a 5.1-megapixel sensor in the same four-AA shape (our FinePix S5200 review), and our FinePix F700 review covers the compact that out-resolved it in DPReview's tests. Before you bid, check these:
- The name. It resembles the S602 Zoom and its S3000 sibling,58 so check that the listing and the lens ring say S5000.
- The batteries. Four AA cells, NiMH recommended, alkalines in the box;56 Amazon ↗ has rechargeable sets.
- The card. xD-Picture Card; Fujifilm's 2003 table says 16 MB to 512 MB, and DPReview's accessory list stops at 512 MB.15 Larger cards are a question for our xD-Picture Card guide, not something these sources settle.
- The cable. DPReview lists a Mini-B USB cable and an A/V cable in the box;5 see our Fujifilm cable notes.
- The screens and dials. DPReview says the screen sleeps after 30 seconds and the mode dial is loose;5 check that the EVF/LCD button switches and both displays are clean, and that the lens, which extends a little under an inch at power-up,6 zooms smoothly.
If you are wondering why cameras like this are being hunted down again, we tell that story once, in Pictures that never left the card.
See recent sold prices on eBay ↗Shop on eBay ↗Rechargeable AA batteries ↗
Sources
- Imaging Resource, Fuji announces new S-series digicam, FinePix S5000, by Mike Tomkins (28 Jul 2003, 22:00 EDT; carries Fujifilm's specification table, its US press release of 29 July 2003 and a $499 August shipping price)
- PhotographyBLOG, Fuji Announce FinePix S5000, by Mark Goldstein (29 Jul 2003; quotes Fujifilm's description and gives $499.95)
- Photo Review (Australia), Fujifilm Unveils New Digital Cameras (July 2003; Australian launch note: size and weight with batteries, no price or date)
- Low End Mac, Fujifilm FinePix S5000 and S7000 Promise Great Value, by Dan Knight (1 Aug 2003; a preview from a buyer's side, not a review)
- DPReview, Fujifilm FinePix S5000 Zoom Review by Phil Askey (published 17 Sep 2003, on a production camera; all pages read: specifications, design, controls, timing, battery, image tests, comparisons, conclusion)
- Imaging Resource, Fuji FinePix S5000 review (all 12 pages; first posted 1 Oct 2003; no author named on the pages we read; no overall score in the text)
- Imaging Resource, Fuji FinePix S5000 datasheet (retail $499, date available 31 Aug 2003, weight 337 g)
- PhotographyBLOG, Fujfilm FinePix S5000 Zoom Review (seven pages, dated 16 Jun 2004; author not named on the pages we read; the star score is an image with the alt text "4 stars")
Coverage note: Fujifilm's own page was not available to us, so its specification table and US press release come from Imaging Resource's news item and its description from PhotographyBLOG. DPReview's pages are blocked to scripts and were read in a browser. Camera photo by Yug (public domain); other photographs are credited under each one, all via Wikimedia Commons. Links to eBay and Amazon are affiliate links.