Combining point-and-shoot convenience with a host of manual photographic controls, this camera is sure to inspire digital photographers to expand creativity and get better results.... more
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A review by stevenstel on Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F717 August 3rd, 2005
Author's product rating:
Picture Quality
Excellent
Range & Quality of Features
Excellent
Ease of Use
Very Easy
Durability
Excellent
Overall Look & Design
Excellent
Value for Money
Excellent
Advantages:
great battery life, professional quality, night vision
Disadvantages:
flash problem (see below)
Recommend to potential buyers:
yes
Full review
Having owned various digital cameras in the past from cheap £30 - £99 ones, I dived in and purchased a good one that would hopefully last a life time.
The Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F717 was my choice after reading tremendous reviews raving about its features. I hadn't read one review that didn't recommend this camera, so I kept my ears and eyes open and purchased one off ebay.
The Sony camera is a little expensive but hopefully I can justify the costs and why I would always recommend this camera first to anyone who asks me about "GOOD" digital cameras.
By no means am I a digital camera boffin, nor do I protest that I use all the features it has. Truth be known, until I need to use them, I don't use them. The standard default settings alone are good enough for me to download the picture and say "that will do" and be happy with the result - being a designer, I'm not happy at low quality, so this in itself warrants my pleasure with this camera.
Ok, here is a list of this camera's capabilities...
Camera Type: Digital SLR Hence the cost - but well worth it
Resolution: 5 Mega pixels Great pictures at great quality, There are additional setting to enhance the picture also, with contrast/sharpness/brightness controls in the menu.
Flash: YES Pop up Flash built in. Possible additional external socket available. You can force the flash to flash or set to automatic and the camera will determine whether it needs the flash or not.
Focus: YES Both auto and manual, Manual focusing is easy and feels natural in handling and focusing at the same time, the auto focus is superb as you would expect with Sony.
Lens Aperture: F/2.0 - 2.4 hmm, I think this allows more light into the subject - never had need to adjust settings.
Video: YES 16 frames per second This outputs your movie clips in MPG format 320 x 240 • 160 x 120 • 160 x 112 , so far I have taken video clips well into the 3rd minute at low resolution - higher the resolution and this will still easily take clips reaching 2 minutes depending on your storage space - [please see memory note below]
Pictures: Saves pictures as GIF, JPEG, TIFF - 640 x 480 • 2560 x 1920 • 2048 x 1536 • 1280 x 960
Measurements: 12cm Wide, 7cm Heigh, 15.5cm Deep. (I measured it myself :P)
Weight: 696g - This is quite a heavy camera, in comparison, it's approx 2/3 the weight of a bag of sugar - so quite heavy but very stable and easily manageable)
Special Effects: B+W, Negative, Sepia - Cool functions, but would never need to "Negative" any photos I take, but they do look cool, the sepia function is the most useful to me as this merges your photo over a short time frame, so your object looks blurred - more exciting than I make out here though)
Battery Time: 2 hours 45 Mins - This is excellent on battery time, this is standard I would say, but mine can run alot longer, a lot longer!!! by adjusting a few basic settings, such as not displaying it on the 1.8" LCD display and viewing my objects through the View finder instead.
Digital Zoom: 5X Now this is good!!!, this really does zoom close and clearly pick hairs out, or it can produce a landscape picture. Excellent for close up photography work. Especially with the added macro function... this really does take photos of not only a garment, but the stitching too!!! unbelievable
Memory: Depends on your purchase... (buying one with 32Mb can save you a little) I had 128mb therefore I personally get 51 images at high res, this is 2048 x 1536 which i would say is way to big... wayyyy toooo bigggg, or 1,829 images at low resolution being 320 x 240 - ok but quite small, great for photo albums though. So storage space is plenty if you download regulary. Memory card, Slides in the back.
White Balance: Automatic This little function will adjust the amount of light needed for the photo, (Sony, they think of everything).
Night Vision WOW, what a feature this is great fun, to describe it would be to say, it creates light when there is no light using its 2 infra red beams. In complete darkness turning the camera into night vision allows you to see everthing. If you have ever seen wildlife documentaries of night vision, this is exactly what it is. Absolutely amazing. Be warned its scary stuff.
Additonal Extras: Tripod Mount, Built in microphone (which is excellent, be careful though, it picks up everything ;) ) built in speaker, self timer which is 10 secs, viewfinder (view your object through the lens), red eye reduction, so many to detail, but the ones I have missed please take as standard.
Using the camera and software provided: Very easy, I personally didnt have to do anything to install it apart from putting the CD in, XP did it for me, even on a 98 or 2000 it is very simple and nothing out of the norm. I have done this on my work PC which was Win 2000 without a glitch. The pictures are simply saved as a JPG (or your choosing) to a folder it creates using your USB port. (Mine creates an E: Drive named "SONY" when I turn the camera on. And that's it, drag and drop your photos to your hard drive. Easy.
Extras: Carrying case - this is really good qaulity, made of leather and really tough, very comfy to carry also. The camera strap looks the part too, but it does advertise the camera your carrying with "SONY" all over it :P.
Photo Edit Suite: Mine came with this and I would say its very easy to use with big buttons on what you want the picture to do, ie, Sharpen, Brightness, Blur, Remove Red eye etc. Very rare would I have to adjust in this software programme as I find the picture is of top quality to begin with, but these functions can help improve the picture more if so desired.
OK the important part... COSTS. This camera came out in 2002 i believe, and since then it has really come down in price, I have seen this on Ebay around the £360 mark, but this is cheap, I have also seen them advertised at £1,000. Very rarely though. I personally paid £240 for mine. I waited and found a bargain! :D
Most Camera dealers are familiar to this camera too, should anything go wrong with it, so it wont cost you a fortune in the unhappy event to get it fixed. Once you own one of these, you need not ever look at buying another ever. (as long as it still works of course).
I must say this is more than I intended to write and apologise for its lenthyness, but I also hope this justifies the camera and its costs, photo quality can be provided if you really are looking to buy this camera and I would happily email some over to you if needed :o)
An expensive toy, but boy will you be happy with it. :)
Advantages: This camera is ideal for anyone to use Disadvantages: Looks big and bulky.It is a sensitive apparatus.
...I like the silver colour,the sony strap that comes with it for the cameras safety and the small memory sticks look well nice and compact,easy to load these sticks.
The lens is Carl Zeiss lens professional crystal technology.
Main functions
This camera is fabulous in my view.You can choose the quality of photos that you want to use.
It has MPEG movie HQX which means you can shoot MPEG videos and post them on the net easily or send to family and ... ...has nightshot function which you can use to take photos or movies in the dark nighttime as black and white filming.It uses special optical laser built in and a red infrared laser shoots out when you use this function from the lens.
The camera can be used to take photos using the eyepiece as a camcorder style cam for shooting movies or you can snap photos using the LCD screen at the back of the camera.I find it helpful for both occasions it has allowed ...
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Advantages: 5 megapix, 5x zoom, reasonably priced Disadvantages: see list below
...very high price.
The Sony showed a good route for the upcoming cameras: at least 5 Megapixels, 5x zoom, good AF, Lens, and construction.
The camera can be operated thru a wide variety of enviroments: from the total darkness to the sunny beaches :)
The EVF is very good, the LCD is big enough.
The histogram is far the best I've seen. (And very useful)
And the BATTERY! I just can't belive my eyes! It lasts very long!! I usually use the camera for ... ...it's getting greater, if the Sony will build larger Memory Sticks (256Mb, 512 MB, and 1 GB are in the horizon!!! - but don't know if they'll work with this cam...)
Problems
Well, here we are, nothing's perfect for me :)
The first thing I've noticed, that's the LCD is very close to your thumb, and you can easily put it on the LCD, messing up the screen..
The second is the very little range of adjusting in Manual mode.. The Auto mode can select ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Easy to learn instructions and settings Disadvantages: Irreparable memory stick slot
...a pro. I miss my Sony Cybershot F717 camera soooo much! I bought a new higher resolution camera only to find out that my very special old Sony F717 is better. When it comes to price, elegance, weight and the quality of photo it produced. The only glitch that I saw in this camera is when the memory stick slot started to wear off. I'm still keeping my damaged camera right now waiting for Sony to discover its remedy. Anyway, 5 years of life spun isn't ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Advantages: Quality pictures, add-ons, Zoom, easy to use Disadvantages: Bit bulky
I spent six months deciding what camera to go for, and plumped for this one. Look around now and you'll get a bargin, what with the F828 release...and all its teething problems. Basically the 5mp pictures are stunning and look awesome up to A3. The auto mode can get it wrong sometimes, but half the fun is playing with manual mode. Shutter lag is rarely noticable, with full aperature and shutter proirity means the camera is suitable for ALL conditions. ... ...256mb can be got for around 55GBP if you shop around. I like the enclosed lens as well, extendable lens rarely last long down the beach! With a standard 58mm lens it means you can use LOADS of cheap lens (dont pay extra for sonys own!) to develope your creative side, i remend a UV filter to protect your Incredible Carl zeiss lens, as well as a polarizing filter (stops reflections) and a neutal density filter. A lens hood is also worth while. IR nightvision ...
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Advantages: Ease of use, quality, swivel lens, changeable lens!!! Disadvantages: Size and color!!!
...that the reason was *** Sony wanted to sell other models too...LOL... Ok, just a bad thing about this camera as I have mentioned before is the size and another is the color. The silver color gives some style but what if you are taking pix of animals??? the sun can reflect on it and there goes the animal, scared...LOL... well... not that all of us will go out in the woods... But overall rating is 100000 out of 10!!! Great!!! ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average helpful
Combining point-and-shoot convenience with a host of manual photographic controls, this camera is sure to inspire digital photographers to expand creativity and get better results. Armed with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, ISO sensitivities of 100/200/400/800 and shutter speeds of up to 1/2000 second in auto mode, the DSC-F717 produces stellar results, even in the most demanding of shooting situations. PRODUCT FEATURES: Multi-Point Auto Focus; Memory Stick Media; Slow Shutter Noise Reduction; Hologram AF Low Light Laser Focusing Assist; Multi-Pattern Measuring; Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar Lens; NightShot.
