I never owned the Fujifilm S2 Pro, but my long-time friend Michael bought one just a year after it’s 2002 introduction, to replace his S1 Pro. My wife Abby and I borrowed the S1 Pro for a while during that period.

The S2 Pro is built on a Nikon N80 film camera body, a practice common during the period; it was a “Frankencamera,” stitched together from film hardware and digital guts. Many of us used cameras like this in the early 2000s; I used the Nikon/Kodak DSC 760 and the 720x.

Among many other things Michael has photographed over the years, he shot our 2004 wedding with the S2 Pro, with outstanding results.

On a couple of occasions when Michael let men borrow it, I made some very successful images with it, including a couple of magazine covers.

Some thoughts…

• Some reviewers claimed that the sensor in the S2 Pro wasn’t “really” a 12 megapixel sensor because it used six millions photo sites, arranged in Fuji’s own Super CCD diagonal configuration, and interpolated up to 12 megapixels. What this view misses is that all digital color images are made using some kind of interpolation. Fuji’s scheme in the S2 Pro seems to deliver a “real” 12 megapixel image.
• The separate digital and film mechanisms mean separate battery systems. The digital side runs on AA batteries in a tray at the bottom, and the film side uses CR123 batteries in the grip, though for a while you could buy a bypass insert to skip the CR123s, with inconsistent results.
• Even by 2002 standards, the autofocus system the S2 Pro inherited from the N80 was slow and inaccurate. I usually manually focused, and Michael eventually got so frustrated with it he replaced it with a Nikon D200.
• Although it was touted as having decent high-ISO performance, I was disappointed by it, particularly that it could make noise bands at ISO 1600.
• Like its contemporary the Nikon D100, the S2 Pro requires moving the exposure mode dial to change the ISO and the custom settings, inherited from its film ancestors, which interrupts workflow, particularly if you forget to put it back.
• Color straight out of the camera might be the best of the era, a Fujifilm strength; accurate, saturated but not phony, good skin tones, though I found that auto and daylight settings both tended to be a little too cool, particularly for skin tones.
• Sharpness was good as well, allowing true 12 megapixel enlargements.
• The camera is smaller and lighter than some of its contemporaries, like the Kodak DCS 14n, but slightly bigger and bulkier than the Nikon D100. In my hands, everything about the Fuji seems small compared to the pro DSLRs I use every day.
• The frame rate, write-to-card time, and response time to button pushes all lag, and slow me down. Sometimes that can be a bonus, since it can force you to be more conservative and more contemplative about your shooting, but I would never attempt to shoot sports, for example, with the S2 Pro.

Despite its slowness, I always liked shooting with the S2 Pro, and if I found one at a garage sale for $25, I’d buy it, but not for much more than that. It was a good step forward in the early years of digital photography, and Fuji obviously learned and grew from the experience (which Kodak, for example, did not), and has gone on to do great things in the field.

Special thanks to Michael for getting the S2 Pro out of storage and photographing it for me.