The Fujifilm FinePix S1 PRO – My First Professional Digital Camera Part 2

In part one of this blog, I told you about my impressions of the first professional digital camera I bought, the Fujifilm FinePix S1 Pro. I looked into my archives and recovered some of the early pictures taken with it.

 There are some very early architectural test images, taken around Salford Quays, Manchester, in September 2000. There’s my first commissioned tethered shoot image, taken at the offices of my client in central Manchester of a man on the phone and using a remote control, this was shot in November 2000. I’ve also included a couple of images of my client’s old premises, a listed building in Shudehill Manchester that were shot in March 2001. Finally, I’ve included a studio product shot I did for Virgin Cola in March 2001.

Looking at the files, a few technical aspects stand out for me. Firstly, I can’t remember what lens I was using at the time, but it clearly wasn’t one of the best Nikon lenses ever made. Secondly, the look of the Super CCD sensor, I find it grainy and noisy, probably not helped by the relatively high base iso of 320. I’ve never been a fan of CCD sensors for this very reason, whilst I can understand and accept that some photographers prefer these over CMOS sensors because of the ‘filmic look’ they give, it’s not for me and if I want a filmic look I’d either use an analogue camera with film or add it in post-production.  Finally, whilst the camera was unable to shoot RAW format, the colours from the TIFFS and JPEGS were pretty good and better than the other more expensive cameras available at the time.

The S1 Pro was a ground breaking camera both for me and the industry as it was the first affordable DSLR and paved the way for me to move into a digital workflow and opened the market up for all future DSLR’s. 

March 2001 - Virgin Cola Advertising

September 2000 - Test Shot at Salford Quays

November 2000 - First Commissioned Tethered Shoot

March 2001 - Shudehill Giftware Exterior

September 2000 - Salford Quays Test Shot

March 2001 - Shudehill Giftware Exterior

September 2000 - Salford Quays Test Shot

September 2000 - Salford Quays Test Shot

September 2000 - Salford Quays Test Shot

Fujifilm Finepix S1 Pro Camera Specifications

Fujifilm FinePix S1 PRO – My First Professional Digital Camera Part 1

To my great surprise, I was recently reunited with the first digital camera I bought for my business way back in the year 2000. I sold it to one of my clients many years ago for them to shoot some in-house photography when I wasn’t needed. It was rediscovered in a cupboard after it had developed a fault that made it uneconomical to repair due to obsolescence. Needless to say, I was delighted to welcome it back even though it sadly doesn’t work.

As a professional commercial and industrial photographer since leaving Salisbury College of Art in 1986, I shot most of my assignments on medium format film systems by Hasselblad or the Mamiya RZ 6x7’s. I also shot a lot of work using the large Format 5x4 and 10x8 Format film cameras made by Sinar. The only time I would shoot with a 35mm camera would be if the client wanted 35mm transparencies for a slide show with the industry standard Kodak Carousel projectors.

As it with a lot of things I purchase, I usually do a bit of research and due diligence to make it’s right for me in every aspect in terms of cost, build quality and value etc. Therefore, coming from a medium and large format film background, the early professional digital cameras represented poor value for money with poor image quality. For example, the very first Digital SLR, the Kodak DCS 100 from the early 1990’s, which was basically a customised Nikon F3 film camera tethered to a separate hard drive, offered images at 1.3MP at a cost of approximately £15K! Needless to say, I didn’t jump into digital imaging early!

 In January 2000, Fujifilm announced the ground breaking FinePix S1 PRO. Finally, there was DSLR that could give me 10x8” image at 300ppi, use Nikon F lenses and cost less than £1800. I bought this, a MacBook and a copy of specialist reprographic software, GF Print Pro, that could increase the file size using a fractel algorithm instead of the poorer quality interpolation enlargement method. I remember testing this and going up to a 24x20” image at 300ppi and was being blown away by the quality. I think the overall investment was approximately £3K.

The key specifications are as follows:

Sensor: Super CCD 23.3 X 15.6mm

Image Size: 3040 x 2016 Pixels

Lens: Nikon F Mount

Shutter Speed: 1/2000thto 30S

ISO: 320 to 1600

Storage: Compact Flash or Smart Media Card (Dual Slot)

Connection: USB

In my next blog, I’ll dig out some of my old S1 Pro images for you to have a look at.

Portrait of Humanity Award In Print

It’s always great to to see my work in print and in this context I’m exceedingly humbled and proud to have achieved this. There were over twenty thousand entries from countries worldwide with only 200 being selected for the book or 1% to put that in context! The standard of photography is superb and was curated by 1854 Media who own one of the oldest and most distinguished photographic magazines, The British Journal of Photography. The curating was undertaken in collaboration with he worlds most renowned Documentary Photographic Agency, MAGNUM Photos.

‘Portrait of Humanity celebrates global citizenship, at a time of great instability.’ Fiona Rogers, Chief Operating Officer, Magnum Photos.

‘We wanted to utilise the undeniable power photography has in the connected world we live in, to paint a portrait of humanity - photographing the people of planet Earth and celebrating every race, religion, sex, gender, age and culture that makes up the intricate tapestry of humanity. We wanted to show the diversity of individuals, accepting that we are all uniquely different, yet the same.’  Marc Hartog, Founder and CEO 1854 Media.

Documentary Portraiture - Awards Success

I’m really pleased to announce that a couple of my images have been awarded a First and Third Place in the recent British Institute of Professional Photography North West regional awards. My success came in the Documentary and Street Photography category with two images taken whilst on an industrial assignment in China last August.

My winning image is a street documentary portrait of a local girl in a traditional Hanfu costume. It was taken in the Bamboo Forest region in Sichuan Province at a local waterfall. 

Hanfu Girl

As soon as I saw her, I asked my guide to see if she would allow me to take her portrait. It was one of those rare moments in documentary photography where key elements all come together in one place at one moment in time. Her look, her costume, the light and the environment were all perfect for storytelling.

The third placed image is a documentary portrait of an elderly gentlemen smoking a pipe at the Guanyin Pavillion, an historic tea house that dates back to the birth of the cultural revolution.  

The Guanyin Pavillion Tea House Patron.

The tea house is an iconic establishment that hasn’t changed for decades, despite the growth in societies modern day café culture. With the help of my guide I obtained permission of the establishments owner and whilst I couldn’t verbally communicate with the patrons, I sat with them at their table, shook their hand, smiled and pointed to my camera. In every case but one, each patron nodded their heads and allowed me to take their portraits. The experience proved to be the most enriching experience I’ve ever had in my entire career as a photographer.

Both images were captured with available light using my Leica M-P (Typ 240) with the Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 ASPH FLE. I found that the discreet and somewhat ‘old fashioned’ look of the Leica sometimes puts my subjects at ease and can generate interest and dialogue. From my perspective, I find using it a satisfying and stimulating photographic experience as it is very different to that of using my Nikon DSLR. I also find the image quality and characteristics of the Leica lenses second to none.   

I have been a member of The British Institute of Professional Photography for over thirty years, holding the highest level of qualification attainable, a Fellowship and also have a Masters-Degree in Documentary Photography from The University of Bolton.

The British Institute of Professional Photography is a not for profit, internationally recognised, qualifying organisation with over one hundred years of experience in supporting and networking photographers. 

Images of The Marsden Moor Fire of April 2019

A morning walk in the glorious Bank Holiday sunshine with friends in the hills above Denshaw and Castleshaw proved to be both spectacular and sad. The pleasantly warm temperatures, the excellent company of my wife, friends and three dogs in the glorious Saddleworth hills gave me an opportunity to create some spectacular images. However, the images created were at a dreadful environmental cost of losing hundreds of hectares of historic moorland to fire, probably  as a result of someones ignorance, negligence and selfishness.

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica APO-Summicron-M 75mm f/2 ASPH.

As is usually the case on such a walk, I had my favoured Lowepro BP 150 AW Hatchback 22L Camera Bag accompanied by my Leica M-P240, the Leica Super Elmar 21mm, the Leica 35mm Summilux FLE and the Leica APO Summicron 75mm lens. The first picture of my friends walking towards a farmhouse and the smoke filled horizon obviously screamed 75mm APO Cron in lens choice. For the rest of the images and remainder of the walk, everything was taken on the 35mm Lux FLE, such a versatile and amazing lens for this situation.

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 FLE.

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 FLE.

Whilst I do have a preference for converting images to black and white a lot of the time, my first impression is to leave them in colour. I may have a change of heart at some stage in the future but at the moment I think the glorious weather and colour palette of the smoke deserve to be shown. 

Taken with the Leica M-P240 and the Leica Summilux-M 35mm f/1.4 FLE.

The dichotomy of bearing witness to such a sad event and creating such spectacular images will always be with me whenever I look at them in the future.

Using a Nikon 24mm f/2.8 AI-s Lens with my Nikon D810 - Travelling Light and Feeling Nostalgic.

As a professional photographer one of my go to lenses for a long time has been the superb AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED. Optically superb and a really versatile 24-70mm focal length range makes it ideal for the majority of assignments. The one down side of the lens is it’s weight, at 900g it’s a lens that certainly lets you know its presence.

After working on a lot of personal assignments with my Leica M-P240 using prime lenses with manual focusing, I started to look into the possibility of using an older wide angle prime with my Nikon D810 instead of being reliant on the 24-70. It soon became clear that the standout candidate for the job was the classic Nikon 24mm f/2.8 AI-s. This manual focus lens has a big reputation for build quality, being constructed of metal as opposed to plastic and optical performance. It was introduced in the late 1970’s and was still being made in 2013 until Nikon switched the lens construction to the plastic casing. At a mere 250g in weight, thus reducing the weight on my shoulder and in my bag by 650g you can see why it was an attractive option to look at.

After a patient wait, I managed to find a mint Nikon 24mm f/2.8 AI-s on eBay for less than £200 so decided to give it a try. Using a legacy AI-s lens on the Nikon D810 is very straightforward, it mounts in the same way as current AFS lenses but you will then need to go into the “Non CPU Lens Data’ menu to manually input the 24mm focal length and f2.8 aperture information to have full colour matrix metering, EXIF data, and finder read out for the aperture. Thankfully, you only need to do this the once and not every time you mount the lens.

The camera will now work in aperture priority mode, naturally by using the ‘old school’ technique of rotating the aperture ring on the lens, or on manual mode. Even though it’s a 24mm lens, depending on what you’re shooting, you still need to be precise with your focusing, especially on a full frame DSLR. For those of you not used to using manual focus lenses, the focus dot in the bottom left of the viewfinder comes in very useful and is fully functional with this lens.

As I’m old enough to remember the analogue days of photography, it was really great to experience an analogue lens with a real aperture ring on my Nikon D810 DSLR. The focus ring is smooth and it’s a great compact, lightweight lens to have in your kit. In terms of the image quality, it doesn’t disappoint, it has a great minimum focusing distance of 0.3m, creates some nice bokeh with lens fall off wide open if shooting scenes with distinct foreground and background separation. When shooting more generic scenes such as landscapes etc you’ll want to work somewhere between f8 to f11 where the lens is at its optical best.

For those on a budget, looking to travel a bit lighter, want a relatively inexpensive wide angle lens for your current DSLR, or simply would like to have a nostalgic experience with your current DSLR, it’s a great lens to invest in.

About Me

Phil Melia is a professional documentary and editorial photographer based in Saddleworth, Oldham in the North West of England. He gained a HND in Advertising Photography from Salisbury College of Art in 1986 and was awarded a Masters Degree in International Documentary, Travel and Photojournalism Photography by The University of Bolton in 2007. He also holds a Fellowship of The British Institute of Professional Photography and is a member of the NUJ.

Phil works for a diverse range of clients, not only in Greater Manchester and the North West but throughout the UK and worldwide. With over twenty-five years of professional photography experience across a wide range of genres which also include advertising and industrial, his laid back, easy-going approach generates calm positive, relaxed commissions that puts everyone at ease. Added to this his disciplined attention to detail, an established efficient workflow, formulates an enjoyable experience for successful campaigns on a global scale that puts his clients in the spotlight. 

First Impressions

This is one of my favourite shots taken whilst on assignment recently in China. Taken with my favourite camera, the Leica M-P 240 and one of my all-time, awesome lenses, the Leica 35mm Summilux FLE. This is the stunning mist covered architecture of the Longyin Temple at The Bamboo Sea in Sichuan Province and was one of the first sites seen on my tour. #editorialphotographer #asia #china #Leica #photojournalism #Longyin #documentaryphotography

Denis Thorpe - A View From The North Exhibition

An honour and pleasure to meet, see his photography and hear a talk from the award winning former Guardian photojournalist Denis Thorpe at Stockport Art Gallery on the launch of his new book, A VIew from the North. An amazing life in photography and fantastic photojournalism. The exhibition runs until Saturday 20th October. https://www.stockport.gov.uk/upcoming-exhibitions/a-view-from-the-north