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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
I have an offer of a *used* Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 + 256MB memory
stick Pro for $600. The owner claims he's had it for 18 months and that it's in excellent condition. Is this price OK, very good or rather high ? Actually prices tend to be high in my area, so this would be roughly equivalent to buying it for about $500 in the US. I believe this camera was put on the market about 2 years ago. I've only had time to briefly go through a few reviews, mostly done when the model was relatively new. Like reviews of many products, they are mixed and even confusingly contradictory. How has it fared in experienced user circles ? I'll be grateful for any personal experience you've had with this camera. Thanks in advance for any input. |
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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
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#3
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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
Scott W wrote: wrote: I have an offer of a *used* Sony Cybershot DSC-F828 + 256MB memory stick Pro for $600. ..........., so this would be roughly equivalent to buying it for about $500 in the US. I Have a Sony F828 and love it, but $500 US seems pretty high for a camera that is that old. A check on ebay shows a lot of people asking about that for the F828 but for just a bit more money you could buy a DSLR. For $500 I would want a new camera and a warranty, but this is just my opinion. Scott Thanks, Scott. What about the purple fringing that a lot osome people complained about earlier ? I used to be an avid 'snapshooter' years ago, but have been neglecting photography for something like two decades, and I'm a novice when it comes to digital photography. I bought a Fujifilm Finepix S3500 a month ago to familiarise myself with digicams, and I wouldn't mind hanging on to it for a few more months except for two things - 1) The S3500 cannot focus in anything but a well-lit scene. 2) I have a buyer for the S3500 right now. What immediately caught my attention about the F828, along with its many other good features, is its ability to focus in very poor light. The S3500 cannot AF even when there's sufficient light for comfortable reading. Is this problem prevalent among digicams ? |
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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
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#5
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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
I have the 828.
I think very highly of this camera. It is an early landmark of EVF/digital camera design. However the inexperience of Sony's designers and engineers in creating high end cameras are evident in the 828. Because of its size and weight I doubt that any future cameras of its ilk will have a lens of this high quality. When I use the 828 to make images under identical circumstances compared with my D70 (in raw mode but the 828 in jpeg mode) the images from the 828 are never inferior and often superior in terms of color fidelity and detail. This is not an overstatement, and I am very finicky about these issues. Purple fringing is a real issue under some circumstances but no more than artifacts inherent to the D70 which, believe it or not, also yields fringing if you photograph linear dark objects against a white background. Other than as a studio camera the 828 raw mode is kind of useless and does not consistently yield images that benefit from the kind of processing that makes dSLRs worth using. The 828 is overall slow to handle compared to a dSLR and the EVF can be difficult to use in bright light. The noise issue is exaggerated but real and images from the 828 are best quality at the relatively low native ISO equivalent of 64 (dSLRs are usually ISO 200). That being said D70 images at much above ISO400 are not all that beautiful either. IMHO unless you have a burning desire for this now discontinued camera I would not pay that much for a used model under the circumstances you describe--throw in a 1gb memory card and the deal looks alot better! For a bit more $ a dSLR is more versatile if this will be your only high end digital camera. But I assure you I have no plans to ever sell or trade my 828 and I use it often. |
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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
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#8
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$600 for Sony DSC-F828 OK ?
bmoag wrote: I have the 828. I think very highly of this camera. It is an early landmark of EVF/digital camera design. However the inexperience of Sony's designers and engineers in creating high end cameras are evident in the 828. Because of its size and weight I doubt that any future cameras of its ilk will have a lens of this high quality. When I use the 828 to make images under identical circumstances compared with my D70 (in raw mode but the 828 in jpeg mode) the images from the 828 are never inferior and often superior in terms of color fidelity and detail. This is not an overstatement, and I am very finicky about these issues. Purple fringing is a real issue under some circumstances but no more than artifacts inherent to the D70 which, believe it or not, also yields fringing if you photograph linear dark objects against a white background. Other than as a studio camera the 828 raw mode is kind of useless and does not consistently yield images that benefit from the kind of processing that makes dSLRs worth using. The 828 is overall slow to handle compared to a dSLR and the EVF can be difficult to use in bright light. The noise issue is exaggerated but real and images from the 828 are best quality at the relatively low native ISO equivalent of 64 (dSLRs are usually ISO 200). That being said D70 images at much above ISO400 are not all that beautiful either. IMHO unless you have a burning desire for this now discontinued camera I would not pay that much for a used model under the circumstances you describe--throw in a 1gb memory card and the deal looks alot better! For a bit more $ a dSLR is more versatile if this will be your only high end digital camera. But I assure you I have no plans to ever sell or trade my 828 and I use it often. Thanks for all the friendly informative replies. I've almost decided not to buy this camera, but not because of the price. This model is still available new from Sony in my country for the equivalent of about $1100 US. The owner has reduced it to about $500 (again I'd estimate this to be roughly equivalent to a price tag of $400 in the US). I live in a corner of India that's not only physically isolated, but also has almost nothing in common with the rest of the country - language, religion (100% Christian), culture, basic nature, even physical appearance. What really puts me off is that the seller who put this up on eBay-India lives 2000+ km away, and insists on pick-up only (no shipping), cash only and won't give return option against any existing defects. I have friends in his city to do the pick-up, but they are even less knowledgeable than me about cameras. So it looks as if I'll have to pass up this chance to own what seems to be a really good camera. However, the time spent here in this thread, yours and mine, has not been wasted. I've learned a lot in the past few days. |
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