Fuji S2 Pro vs. Canon 1D Mark II (800K of Images Warning)

I have been shooting live performance images of country singers in two "bar" venues for almost two years, Pro Bono, with a Fuji S2 Pro and high end Nikkor lenses and have been very happy with the result. Recently I was fortunate enough to leverage that experience into an agreement to photograph all events at the Chumash Casino Resort. This job pays fairly well for a "side job" and because it involves professional boxing as well as poker tournaments and a lot of live performance [Randy Travis, Clay Walker, B. B. King, Chicago, Michael McDonald and the like], I decided to step up to the equipment listed in my signature. I'm going to need a lot of help! My first reaction was utter disappointment, as I will point out with images below. Then I read Pekka's review and looked at his images (again) and just have to believe that I need guidance rather than returning the equipment for Fuji or Nikon.

With the Fuji I have always shot the largest jpeg rather than raw as the file sizes are much smaller and the in-camera processing has always been good. I tried some raw images and getting jpeg output that equal that from the camera was very time consuming. I normally shoot up to 400 frames at an event and would much prefer to have the camera do most of the processing, if possible. While I am not trying to suggest that these are scientifically comparable images or even taken with comparison in mind, here is what I am "used to":

Fuji with Nikkor 17-35mm AF-S ED f2.8 handheld, 1/15, f4.0, ISO1600, tungsten light balance, sRGB color space, contrast 2, saturation 2, sharpness 2 (not sure equivalents for these last three settings.) This image is resized only from original:

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Hi Dwight,

On the first pair of images,. the colors from MKII look bad,. I agree,.
It looks like there are other things wrong,. obviously white balance was not what you hoped for,. it looks underexposed and I can't see what is in focus either?

One thing you may want to try is to adjust the "parameters" settings in the MkII if you wish to shoot jpeg,. there are color matrix settings, sharpness settings, and contrast settings that can be adjusted if you prefer to use in camera processing and shoot jpeg.

You mention Dynamic Range,. don't confuse contrast with dynamic range. Almost without exception,. larger dynamic range means less contrast, and vice versa. When we work in PS, as we play with levels and contrast settings we increase contrast and in doing so reduce dynamic range.

What the 1D MkII offers is extended dynamic range,. which gives more leeway regarding exposure,. but then may require the photographer to adjust levels in Photoshop or your raw converter to get the contrast your looking for.

Regarding the second pair of shots..
To my eyes the MkII image has more potential,. the white balance is better.. (granted it took away the colored lightings effect) and there is plenty of image detail and range. It too looks on my work laptop like it is a bit underexposed though.. this could be my poor old LCD...

A simple tweek of levels and some sharpening will make this image ready for prime time.

You do not need to invest a lot of $$ into post processing if you decide to work in RAW... the Canon DPP software included free is quite a good way to get started,. but for ease of use you may want to look at the free "Rawshooter", or the very affordable "BreezeBrowser"...

In fact I would download the trial of Breezebrowser ASAP,. take some test RAW files. and try playing with aplying the afor mentioned "camera Parameters" and "Color matrix" settings in BreezeBrowser" to your RAW files,. (BB includes the MkIIs parameters in the software) ..you can then see instantly the differences these parameters will make. ( I think Canons DPP will do this as well,. but it is ,. well,. "A breeze" to do this with BreezeBrowser

To be honest, price is no object (I am planning on reinvesting 100% of my photography business income into camera and computer equipment which may reach $40-50K USD over the next two years), but speed/ease of use is, so if you have more suggestions for software please let me know.

The focus in the wide angle shots was spot meter on the brightest performer's face in AI Servo mode set to fastest responsiveness ... so I too am confused by the lack of an 'in focus' object in the Canon image. If it was anyone else's image I would think camera movement, but I shot more than one and am pretty steady and this is very wide angle ... I may have to reshoot similar using a tripod or at least a monopod to be sure there is an issue I guess. Is there any known problem with low light AF?

The dynamic range issue I mentioned is motivated by what I see as a striking fall off of detail away from the metered area ... there is some retained detail in the shadows and highlights but it is generally pushed farther out than I am used to ... perhaps another area that is easily addressed by more post processing, sigh.

For the settings, do you have suggestions of where to start that would be more like the Fuji? Which color space, etc.? I can see that I will have to do a lot of test shooting and experimentation. I may even have to pick up the Fuji S3 body (I still have quite a nice collection of good Nikkor glass) to tide me over until I get up to speed. BTW, a 1Ds Mark II is also in my plans (assuming I can get all these issues worked out) in about a year so I hope there are lots of similarities.

Thanks for the feedback ... I will try to do some better controlled tests, experiment with the settings and the suchlike.

The one thing I love about Canon cameras is their tendancy to produce natural color and that's exactly what your MKII is doing. You can get the same super-over-saturated effect with the MKII in post-processing very easily.

Most people like over-saturated colors. In their photos, their TV settings, their computer monitor settings.

On your samples above picture #1 does present a more club atmosphere that you're used to seeing in prints. Maybe not the way it "really" looks, but many times that does not matter. If you take that shot into Photoshop and crank the color saturation up you should be able to come close to the Fuji sample.

On sample 2 the MKII shot looks much better than the first.

I see you shot the MKII using manual white balance. Try some other options there. Also, crank the color sat up on the MKII shots. Are you shooting sRGB or AdobeRGB? That makes a huge difference when displaying anywhere but Photoshop.

First of all, if you are happy with Fuji, why not just keep working with it?

To capture the full dynamic range in digital you will need to expose for "full histogram", because the sensor stores light in linear bits, and for human vision this must be converted to JPEG (or TIFF, whatever) using quite strong a gamma curve, which "distributes" the data lower on low end of luminance spectrum, higher on high end and spreads all data wider on middle. Canon way of setting this gamma curve in camera is different to Fuji's, and RAW gives you free hands to do it your way. To my taste RSE has got the best curves available now.

Highlight overexposure is not bad thing in concert photography with RAW, about 1 stop can be retrieved back in conversion, sometimes even more, rarely less (depends on color channels). Usually performers heads are like lighthouse lamps (some light guys can light evenly, most can not) and if you expose to them you will get rest of the scene pretty dark. That is why I do not use the "traditional" spot metering from face most of the time, I use Center Weighted because it gets a good basic overall estimate, and always to the brighter side, which I can then set up to taste in RAW. I use Av + EV correction if needed. And I do not want to keep spot metering when my concentration needs to be on other things.

IMHO to get best possible results from concert photography you will need to shoot RAW. For choosing exposure, white balance, sharpening, noise reduction, file format, bit depth, color profiles - all after the shoot. Take a look at Rawshooter Essential 1.1.1 which you can get from http://www.pixmantec.c​om for free. Works only on PC. I have used Capture One Pro for a long time with Magne Nielsen's color profiles and it is also very good, although RSE works now better with my photos. Both of those tools need you to take time to learn how you get the results you want to get. Many people make the mistake of expecting the RAW conversion to make photos look better per se. The fact is that you make the photoos look better if you have the eye for it and the tool just helps you get there - the tool does not know what you think so presets will definitely present you the best possible image that lies behind the RAW. That is also why I do not accept in camera JPEG's any day. Conversion (developement and print) is essential part of the photo and its presentation.

About 1D Mark II AF: for me, with latest firmware the low light AF "problems" are gone. In similar situations where it before hesitated it now locks instantly and accurately. To me your wide angle shot looks like it is slightly backfocused, and without knowing the focus method you used it is hard to say anything about that (could be a dud lens, too). Due to complexity of choices presented to the camera AF when using wide angle, I tend to focus those situations manually.

There are lots of settings in 1D Mark II which lets you set it to your liking: how AI servo reacts to passing objects (like hand holding a microphone), are focus points expanded or not, how the focus is kept locked and so on. Focusing screens can be changed.

Jim, which colorspace do you think would work better for what I appear to want from these images? I did have 4Adobe selected but will now try sRGB with Sat High and Color Tone +2 (what is color tone?) using CM1. Are there too many settings on this beast?

Pekka, the Fuji S2 AF is slow, the frame rate is as slow as my Coolpix 950 (2 fps) which is not acceptable when shooting most sports and one of my major events at the casino is going to be professional boxing, it does not have mirror lockup, it only has five AF/Exposure points, it only has mechanical cable release, it's flash integration is poor, it does not have many other very useful features of the 1DMII. I am pretty clear on why I need to move up but it is a fair question.

I am aware of the advantages of shooting RAW if one is willing to invest the post processing time to both learn how to get the result desired and then to apply it repeatedly, no matter whether shooting Canon, Nikon or Fuji. I even agree that this is an essential talent to develop. I would just like to have the option when I am under time pressure or am in a situation where I don't have all that software handy ... and even if I put everything on my laptop, the LCD simply isn't up to the task. I think there are some very good reasons for being able to get quite good images directly from the camera ... and good reasons to have the facility to post process RAW. I do not disagree with you.

My firmware is 1.0.3 ... is this not the latest?

I have only PCs so I will grab the RSE download.

You mentoned Spot metering in your followup..

When I first got the MkII I tried spot metering quite a bit.. look at your histogram and "blow outs" in the review when you do and notice that you are underexposing.. I'm not sure why this allways seems to be the case but to spot meter,. you really need to over compensate...

This goes back to what Pekka is saying regarding histograms and exposure,. your choice to spot off of the face is pushing your overall exposure way down.

Not that you shouldn't use the spot meter,. but just check your histograms and blowouts.. In that second pic you can see that exposure could have been at least 2/3rds brighter if not a full stop or more.

Re: RAW sofware.. 6 moths ago we would all be jumping up and down shreiking "Capture One"

But read up on this thread,..
https://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthre​ad.php?t=61681

...and you'll see that "free" might actually be better

We just assume you allready have PSCS

No, latest is 1.1.0
# Improvements to AF tracking in AI Servo AF.
# Reduced the time between when the camera is turned on and when it is ready to shoot.
# Support added for the wireless file transmitter WFT-E1.

in http://web.canon.jp …/eos1dmk2_firmw​are-e.html

Note that it has been know to make firewire connection to the camera work oddly (or not at all).

Focusing:
The 1D MkII has in my opinion the best, fastest, most sophisticated AF system on any camera.

It is also freaking complex.

Set focus to a single focus point,. set custom function 4 to "1" and set the AF mode to AI Servo...
Then check out CF# 13.. (sorry it may be 17?) to see what your "af expansion" is set to... (I have neither my camera or manual here to double check these CF numbers )

I always shoot AdobeRGB, and then convert later if I need to. Keep in mind that alot of photo printers and even labs do not support AdobeRGB. AdobeRGB has a wider color gamut, but only with AdobeRGB supported hardware and/or software.

AdobeRGB photos will look washed out and colorless when displayed on the web.

You have some great advice from both Pekka and CDS and I wouldn't throw the MKII off the cliff yet. It's one of the two most sophisticated, feature-rich dSLRs on the planet. The other being the 1DsMKII. It does take some getting used to.

That's CF# 17. You can set Single, 7, or max 13.

You people are really quite spectacular, you know! When I first saw those images this morning I was, shall we say, much less than pleased. Now I have gone back and tweaked several of them, particularly saturation and some shadows [with PhotoImpact 10 ... I have the whole Adobe CS Suite but am so used to PI I go there by habit ... please feel free to help me change!] They don't fall apart when I look at them at 100%, which is a definite characteristic of the S2. And they do look very good. I have also reset several items on the camera and will experiment further as I go along.

I think the reason that spot metering on the face was so successful with the Fuji and so poor on the Canon is that the Fuji spot is larger (I don't have the percentage in hand, but particularly the center spot looks 50% larger) so in some sense it acted more like center weighted.

I will next upgrade firmware.

BTW, do you generally download via the camera or a CF reader? The USB download, although it should be 2.0 on my desktop, seems much slower than the Fuji firewire. Is there much difference, other than speed, between the USB and firewire process? I admit to not yet reading the "Solutions" book: anything different about downloading RAW? Is this part of what RSE does?

So much to learn ... and relearn ... and relearn!

I have upgraded my firmware. Forced me to connect up my CF reader. Now, when will the wireless transmitter be available so I can test the firmware?

I have ordered my neck strap, too.

Yes I have noticed that when using spot metering it is anywhere .5 to 1 underexposed. This goes for the 1V too. So now I usually use Spot metering with AV mode and use the FEL to spot meter multiple places, and than I can get an idea where to manually set the exposure at if the scene doesn't change.

I would also recommend as other have to change your Adobe RGB mode to sRGB, possibly one of the more saturated sRGB, if you prefer the over saturation. I only find Adobe RGB useful if you are in a Raw workflow.