Fuji's Overexposure Ability

The Fujifilm S5 Pro camera has been getting a lot of favorable reviews for its ability to handle overexposed images.

What does this mean to the average person?

Well take a look at the two images above. Be sure to click on the image to get a closer look. The one on the left is the original image taken with the S5 on manual exposure mode. The lens was a Nikon 17-55mm f2.8 DX set at f 5.6. The shutter speed was set at 1/125 sec. The ISO setting was ISO 200. The sun was shining bright, so this setting created an image that was way overexposed. This was purposely done to use as a test image. The correct exposure should have been 1/750 sec at f 5.6 according to my exposure meter. The camera was set to 400% (W2)Wide Dynamic Range (the largest setting.)

I imported the overexposed image into Adobe Photoshop Lightroom (Adobe's latest workflow software) and corrected the image to yield the image to the right. Not perfect, but not bad.

Most photographers know that if you blow out the highlights of most images, you can't get back any useful information. But as you can see by the image on the right, you can get back information on the Fuji image! These were shot in JPG too... not in RAW format.

With the Fuji S5, it's possible to fix overexposure mistakes if necessary. The image above was approximately 2.5 EV (exposure value) off. With a little help in software manipulation, it is not a real problem.

Because of this ability and the amazing low-light (high-ISO) capabilities of the S5, I've sold off my Nikon cameras and I'm now shooting exclusively with Fuji S5 cameras for this wedding season. Last year, I was using a combination of the Nikon D200's with a Fuji S3 Pro camera. The Fuji S5 is essentially a Nikon D200 camera with the Fuji image sensor built-in. Because of it's Nikon heritage, it accepts all Nikon lenses. That's good for me, since I have a bunch of Nikon lenses!

It's going to be a fun wedding season this year using these new cameras!