Pre-PMA 2004: Fujifilm has today announced the all new SuperCCD SR based FinePix S3 Pro. The S3 Pro appears to be still based on the N80 (F80) body but is now much rounder and compact in appearance as well as including a vertical hand grip. The S3 Pro has a 6mp + 6mp SuperCCD SR sensor with the same output image sizes as the S2 Pro (12 megapixel maximum) but (as we hope) with higher dynamic range as each pixel location has two photodiodes, one which has normal sensitivity and one with lower sensitivity for capturing the highlight detail. Ever since Fujifilm announced the SuperCCD SR design we've been waiting for the moment they'd introduce it into a digital SLR, well here it is. At this stage there are no detailed specifications available, although we have produced a 'what we know so far' list.

Fujifilm today announced the camera which in my opinion should have been released instead of (or before) the F700. The S20 Pro is essentially an S7000 with the same 3mp + 3mp SuperCCD SR sensor used in the F700, this means all the same manual control and wide feature set of the S7000 but with the promise of extended dynamic range. The S20 Pro also gets a PC Sync flash terminal. Fujifilm has also decided that this sensor which has 3.1 million pixel locations shall be described as having 6.2 million effective pixels, can't say I agree.