I thought I would post something germain to the topic of this newsgroup.


First the Sony F828:

The BIGGY with this camera for people who are thinking of getting it is
probably the "purple fringing" (sometimes, I think, incorrectly called ca).

The first thing I noticed when I got the camera is that the fringing isn't a
big problem except under specific conditions.

Those conditions a If you take a picture of a tree line with a VERY bright
sky above and behind it, you WILL get fringing unless you under-expose.

The fact that I can "make it go away" most of the time by under exposing
tells me it is definately NOT chromatic aberation from the lens, it is
fringing from the sensor. Thats the bad news. The good news is, it can mostly
be avoided by framing/exposing so as NOT to put the sensor into a situation
where you have fine detail that is VERY brightly back lit.

The second biggest complaint is high noise at anything over ISO 100.
The bad news is: REVIEWERS ARE CORRECT!. There is NO good news on this
front.

Does it take good pictures? YES. At ISO 100 or lower it does a GREAT job
and I can't fault it for speed, clarity, color, contrast, or saturation. I
use the camera with color set to "REAL", contrast and sharpness set to the
neutral setting.

If you use the Constant Auto Focus, there is very little lag in this camera
and you can get into the rythm of using it to capture the frame just the way
you want it.

MORE BAD NEWS:

The camera seems to take about a week and a half to save a RAW file.

In actual practice it takes about 10 to 12 seconds to save a RAW file, but
that can seem like a week and makes it unusable for sports/action
photography.

Overall, this is a lot LESS camera than it should have been for a thousand
dollars (US $999)

If the Sony F-717 could shoot RAW it would be a better camera than the 828
even though its only 5MP.



--
Larry Lynch
Mystic, Ct.