The DSC-F707 creates images that are so detailed you'll gasp the first time you see them.

Sony's 5.2-megapixel camera makes stunning photos, even blown up to poster size

See Al Fasoldt's poster-size enlargement of his "Chloe" photograph, shown below, in the "On My Own Time" art exhibit at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse from Oct. 18 to Nov. 17, 2002.
 
May 5, 2002


By Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, Al Fasoldt
Copyright © 2002, The Post-Standard

   Digital cameras need a lot of resolution -- the ability to capture fine detail -- if they are going to compete with good film cameras.
   I had that goal in mind when I shopped for a new digital camera a few months ago. After weeks of comparing one model with another, I bought a 5.2-megapixel Sony model -- the DSC-F707, selling for about $1,000 at discount.
   I could not have been more surprised by the camera's overall performance. It has turned me away from film, probably forever. The images it takes are pro-level in every way, and few professional cameras could match the new Sony in some of the special ways it operates.
   I'll get to them shortly. Let me tell you the hot news first.
   The DSC-F707 creates images that are so detailed you'll gasp the first time you see them. After my initial shock wore off, I used iPhoto, the image-management program that Apple supplies with its new computers, to order poster-size prints of two pictures I took with my new camera on a jaunt to Florida.
   My grandaughter Chloe. Click on the image to view the orginal full-size photo.
   
   The prints from these 2560- by 1920-pixel images are 30 inches wide by 20 inches high. In one of them, a close-up of my granddaughter Chloe in which her face takes up about one-third of the frame, you can clearly see the entire scene in the reflections in her eyes. The photo has no grain at all -- it can't, since it's a digital photo -- but it also seems to have no obvious pixel patterns, even when you are a few inches away from the huge 30 X 20 image. (I entered that one in a contest, and, yes, I'll tell you whether I win anything.)
   The DSC-F707 is a big camera as digital models go, but what sets it apart from nearly all other digital cameras is an immense Carl Zeiss zoom lens. The lens is so huge that it unbalances the camera, making one-hand shots hard to take, but I forgave the unwieldy design as soon as I saw my first photo. Even at the widest telephoto setting (using its 5:1 optical zoom), the Sony's giant lens displayed none of the telltale color shifts and focus abnormalities I've seen in lesser lenses.
   The camera even focuses automatically in the dark. Even better, it can take pictures in the dark, using infrared beams that light up the scene.
   The range of features this new camera has is amazing. It will focus manually or automatically, can hold both focus and iris settings for difficult shots, can take bracketed photos (three "burst" shots varying in exposure, for example), has an advanced shutter (30 seconds to 1/1,000 of a second) and automatically filters out the noise generated by its light-sensitive pickup elements during long exposures. It also can record short "memos" with each still picture and will automatically store a second kind of image with each shot, if you wish. That way, you could get an uncompressed version (a TIFF file) of each photo along with a standard, compressed JPEG, to point out just one use for this feature.
   The camera has a slot for a single Memory Stick storage card. The top Memory Stick capacity at this time is 128 MB, but I've seen reports that 256 MB and 512 MB cards are on the way. Sony gives you a 16 MB Memory Stick with the camera, but it will hold only five or six high-resolution pictures when they're produced as JPEGs (and barely one picture if you choose the uncompressed TIFF format). I bought two 128 MB memory sticks for about $80 each.
   If you'd love to get a top-quality digital still camera but want to save room in your budget for a digital video camera, the DSC-F707 might be a dream come true. It takes digital video, too. You can adjust the video quality from "pretty bad" to "not bad at all." I was able to get about 20 minutes of video at a medium quality setting on a 128 MB memory card, and probably could have made an hour of ultra-awful-quality video on the same Memory Stick. (To be fair, I'm a videographer with a good digital camcorder, so I'm not a big fan of the sort of MPEG video that the DSC-F707 records. But it's not bad when you turn up the quality.)
   The camera's built-in microphone works well, but the audio is single-channel, not stereo.
   Images normally are stored in JPEG format (also called JPG), taking up about 2 megabytes of space on a "Memory Stick" storage card. I was about to get 50 to 60 high-resolution JPEG photos on each 128 MB Memory Stick. When I chose TIFF format, I could get about eight images on the same size memory card.
   The camera connects to your computer through a USB cable. I took my laptop computer along on our Florida trip and copied each day's shots to the laptop, then erased the Memory Sticks after I knew the photos were OK. The USB connection worked flawlessly on both the Windows laptop and my G4 Macintosh with OS X. (The Mac's more modern operating system did things faster and with much less fuss, but I was glad to see that Windows did a good job also.)
   The camera is powered by a rechargeable lithium-ion cell, and comes with a recharger. Sony says the camera will take 4,000 photos on each charge. I was able to shoot for days without running low on power.