Fujifilm H2S with super telephoto: quick enough to snap the fastest of birds
25/10/2022
Translation: Patrik Stainbrook
The Fujifilm H2S comes close to the best sports and wildlife cameras out there. All while costing less than half as much. If you don’t want to spend a fortune, it’s an interesting alternative.
Another camera test involving bird photos. Really?
Yes. The Fujifilm H2S is a camera for sports and wildlife photography offering fast and continuous shots. It supports superfast CFexpress cards, quickly moving huge amounts of data out of temporary storage and ensuring there’s no buffer overflow. Most important thing upfront: the autofocus is fast, able to detect birds as well as other elusive targets.
Why you need a special camera for wildlife photography
Sports and wildlife photography places high demands on equipment. This is especially true for bird photography, as birds are often fast, small and far away. Although not always.
At the same time, wildlife photography is one of the few reasons you’ll need a new camera in 2022. Landscape photos will turn out just fine with a five- or ten-year-old SLR camera – or even with a smartphone. It’s a different story when you want to capture a distant subject that’s also moving fast. What you’ll need is a state-of-the-art camera tailored to this purpose as well as an appropriate lens.
Take the Fujifilm H2S and Fujifilm’s super telephoto lens, also released this year.
This test is limited to the suitability of the H2S as a wildlife camera. I didn’t test other features, such as video, and can’t say anything about it.
Quite the speedy sensor
I’ve already described what distinguishes the H2S. Important for wildlife photography: choosing between the electronic shutter, very fast with up to 40 frames per second, and the mechanical shutter. The latter still enables 15 frames per second and there are no rolling shutter effects. The camera can also be set to automatically switch to electronic when the shutter speed is faster than 1/8000 of a second – only electronic can do that.
The Fujifilm H2S has a stacked sensor that activates quickly. This should minimise rolling shutter effects, even with an electronic shutter. However, they don’t disappear completely: the spinning blades of the fan below are still slightly distorted. However, the effect is less visible compared to the Canon EOS R7, for example, which doesn’t have a stacked sensor.
The camera’s sensor comes in the APS-C format (about 24 × 18 mm). This makes it the same size as the Canon EOS R7, but smaller than most sports cameras that normally use full frame (36 × 24 mm).
A lens equipped with powerful telephoto
The 600-millimetre focal length with its APS-C sensor means you can achieve the same image detail as with a 900-millimetre full-frame camera. That’s a lot. The lens speed isn’t massive with f/8 at the long end, but already at 500 millimetres it increases to f/7.1. Nice to have. Compared to its focal length, the lens is very light. My kitchen scale shows 1843 grams – ready for use, i.e. with the tripod clamp and lens hood, but without the protective cover. For comparison, Sony’s 200-600mm lens is significantly heavier at 2421 grams.
However, at a solid 30 centimetres, the Fujinon XF 150-600mm is almost as long as the Sony, so it only fits in a large backpack. It also shares internal focusing with the Sony lens, always remaining the same length when zooming.
In addition to focus and zoom rings, the 150-600mm has an aperture ring, which I never used while testing. It’s quite smooth. But despite this, you can’t use a stepless aperture for videos.
The focus motor works almost silently – even the image stabiliser is louder. It’s also fast – I can’t measure exactly how fast. Anyway, to increase the speed even further, it has a slider that limits the focus range from five metres to infinity. Otherwise, focus already works from 2.4 metres, which corresponds to 0.24× magnification.
I tried the lens without a tripod. Its weight is manageable, although a monopod would be quite comfortable if you’re on the lookout for longer.
Autofocus: useful bird tracking
By and large, bird detection works as I expected it to. The camera quickly captures a bird and keeps it in focus. The focus alternates between body, head and eye depending on your distance. You’ll still get plenty of blurred images, but the hit rate is within a usable range.
I’m not entirely convinced by the autofocus when there are several birds in one frame. I can’t choose for myself which bird I want to focus on. The camera also doesn’t always focus on the bird closest to you.
Object detection can be optimised with presets. Depending on the situation, you can choose different speeds, sensitivity and zone range switching. I left all on the default setting in my tests.
An electronic shutter with a pre-shutter
At first I shot conservatively with a mechanical shutter, but then switched to electronic. For one thing, unlike in my fan test, I couldn’t detect any distortions due to the rolling shutter, even with rapidly flapping wings. I thus benefitted from a higher speed without any disadvantages.
The pre-shutter electronic shutter turned out to be an even greater advantage. It’s only available with the electronic shutter. This means that the series of images doesn’t start when you press the shutter button, but from the moment you focus. This is useful, for example, if you aim at a bird and it suddenly flies off. I wouldn’t have caught the above sparrow without an advanced trigger.
It’s simple: images are saved continuously, but not written to the card. They remain in the buffer memory for a short time and are deleted if the trigger is not pressed in the next few seconds. This reduces battery life a bit, but that’s generally not a problem with the H2S. The pre-timer isn’t new to Fujifilm, but has probably never been as useful as it is on the H2S.
Image quality: a question of lighting
The fast movements of birds require a very short exposure time, and the lens isn’t very fast at f/8. When the sun is shining, this isn’t a problem. Here, in the pale evening sun, 800 ISO at a shutter speed of 1/1600 second is sufficient.
In the shade or in bad weather, however, the sensor sensitivity shoots up to 6400 ISO, and sometimes even that isn’t enough. This leads to images with way too high sensitivity or much too bright ones – both of which result in strong noise. Like this photo, which I took on a gloomy autumn morning.
It isn’t really a problem on this camera specifically – image quality diminishes as the light decreases with any equipment. The issue was by no means better in my review of the Canon EOS R7. But with a little more speed in the lens and a full-frame sensor, you’d have more room to manoeuvre.
With the Fujifilm H2S, there’s also the fact that the sensor only has 26 megapixels. At high resolutions, the image can still be made sharp and low-noise by downscaling even with a high ISO number. With 26 megapixels, this is only possible if the bird is photographed in full frame. A challenge when exposure times are particularly short – namely when your bird is flying. In the following example, cropping reduces the resolution to 4.3 megapixels.
Operation: nothing to report
I found the service to be unobtrusive, and I take that as a good sign. Although I’m not very experienced with Fujifilm cameras, I got along without any problems and was able to adjust the camera to my needs. I enjoy the mode dial, featuring no less than seven custom modes. In my test, I only used two, but if I were to buy the camera, that would certainly be an advantage.
With the Fujifilm H2S, you can’t group pictures from a series, which I already criticised in my review of the Canon EOS R7.
How does it measure up?
Compared to the Canon EOS R7, which is also a sports and wildlife camera with an APS-C sensor, the Fujifilm H2S is pricier but also offers more. Its most important feature compared to the R7 is the stacked sensor, which allows the electronic shutter to be used more often. In addition, a full buffer is rarely an issue with the Fujifilm camera. However, scene detection isn’t any better than on the R7.
Anyone who buys into a system wants security. That’s where I see a plus for Fujifilm: you can count on the manufacturer to take the APS-C format seriously because they don’t offer full frame – only medium frame, unsuitable for sports and wildlife photography. Canon and Sony, on the other hand, treat APS-C more as a limited version of their full-frame flagships.
Compared to fast full-frame cameras, such as the Sony Alpha 1 or Nikon Z 9, the Fujifilm H2S lacks in resolution. This is a problem with cropped images at high ISO. The autofocus doesn’t seem quite up to par either, but it’s not miles off. It serves its purpose.
Verdict: welcome to the club!
The Fujifilm H2S is a very welcome addition to the club of sports and wildlife cameras. In terms of price and performance, it settles in the middle, which was previously unoccupied: above the Canon EOS R7, but below full-frame sports cameras. Compared to the fastest cameras out there, you’ll need to make sacrifices, but you’ll save several thousand francs. In the end, it’s a good deal. And with 150-600mm, Fujifilm has a suitable super telephoto lens that delivers enough focal length at low weight while being fast enough to keep up.
David Lee
Senior Editor
David.Lee@digitecgalaxus.chMy interest in IT and writing landed me in tech journalism early on (2000). I want to know how we can use technology without being used. Outside of the office, I’m a keen musician who makes up for lacking talent with excessive enthusiasm.