Just in time for my upcoming eBook (soon, real soon), FujifilmUSA has sweetened the deal on buying an S5 Pro. First, they've dropped the price US$200 to US$1699 (many resellers including B&H sell it for about US$100 less than that). Better still, you can get a free vertical grip (not an MB-D200 as I earlier reported, but a third-party grip that provides extended battery support) and Huey Pro after rebate, a US$280 value. Unfortunately, as I write this, the details haven't made it onto the S5 portion of the FujifilmUSA Web site (the free HyperUtiility offer still is there, not the new offer). The offer itself is here, though the wording is confusing "Body Only Kit...a savings of $280 with mail-in rebate" implies that you have to buy the Huey and grip, but then the fine print says "Huey Standard Edition will be mailed out..." Why is that none of the camera companies can get their marketing straight?
Here, I'll give it to you the way you want it: (1) buy an official US import S5 Pro body only kit (not the one with a Huey and AC adapter in it or any other kit) before the end of the year; (2) register the camera online with Fujifilm; (3) doing #2 gets you the form you need to fill out and return to FujifilmUSA along with the proper UPCs from the outer box and invoice. You'll get the grip and Huey by return mail. Simple. Sort of. I still don't understand why the body+Huey kit can't net you just the grip. I guess Fujifilm doesn't want to sell that kit any more, eh?
I'll reiterate something I wrote recently: the S5 Pro is the only DSLR I know of that has some exposure latitude. Most of us pros are actually intentionally overexposing slightly with our raw S5 Pro files due to the high degree of recovery that is possible during conversion. This lowers noise and really brings out the dynamic range the camera is capable of.