Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828 > Reviews (3)

Announced in August 2003. The Sony DSC 828 caught my eye straight away, 8 mega pixels, Zeiss lens, professional looks and a bargain price. The camera was subject to significant delays and eventually shipped in the first week of 2004. After some major research I sold my D60 and took delivery of a shiny new 828. Shrewd move or major mistake? Read on.

In the box

The first thing that struck me was how light the box and at one stage I did think Sony had sent me an empty one!. Once inside the bundle is reasonable you get:
Cyber-shot DSC-F828 camera
NP-FM50 battery and charger/mains adapter
Software including Pixela ImageMixer software, USB drivers, and Sony Image Data Converter for the raw files (more on that later)
Strap
Lens hood
USB and A/V cable.
Manual

Initial Thoughts – Look and feel

The first thing that strikes you when you take the 828 out of the box is the quality feel of the camera, it’s magnesium alloy body feels solid in your hand but by no means too heavy. I have always been put off of prosumer cameras by their amateurish look after all if somebody turned up to photograph your wedding with a Sony DSC 717 or Fuji S7000 how seriously would you take them? The 828 scores well straight away in this area, it has a professional (ish) look about it and to be honest I really like the design.

Functions and Controls

Of course beauty is more than skin deep. So how does the 828 perform? Well not bad, but not great. Firstly a real bonus is that the 828 has 2 memory slots (1 for Memory stick and one for Compact flash). Well Done Sony!
All the controls are laid out well and pressing the relevant button and then scrolling with the control wheel will access most functions. You have the option of shooting in a number of modes, which range from auto everything, point and shoot to shutter priority and full manual, these are controlled using a traditional SLR type dial on the top of the camera. More advanced features such as white balance, ISO and pictures settings are located in the menus (accessed by pressing the menu button), those who have used Sony digicams before will feel instantly at home. All menu functions are easily accessed using the mini joystick and works well enough for me.
All is not perfect though. Firstly the switching between the LCD and EVF is not instinctive, switching between the two requires the manual flicking of a switch, you will get used to it but it is a pain at first.
All the manual controls you would associate with an SLR are easily accessed, the control wheel defaults to control shutter speed, aperture is accessed by pressing the relevant button and then scrolling through the settings (f2 – f8) unless AP mode is selected which results in this being controllable by the wheel as a default.
Lastly and a huge plus for the 828 is the lens, it operates just a like a real one! No electronic zoom controls, it also a manual focus ring.

Performance

So the 828 looks good and has pretty much all the controls of an SLR but how does it perform?

Firstly for those used to a film or digital SLR the first thing you miss is an optical viewfinder, the 828 has a 235k pixel EVF (electronic view finder) that acts in the same way as the LCD screen.

If you shoot landscapes, portraits or anything that does not move too quickly this is fine. However for those who take sports or wildlife shots this could be a limitation for you. Don’t get me wrong this is the best EVF I have ever used but when compared to the optical one on my D60 it does I’m afraid fall slightly short.

In Jpeg mode (I’ll cover RAW later) shot to shot performance is reasonable and easily comparable with the D60, this is dependant on switching off the auto review function mind you. Shutter lag is a non-issue and is almost non-existent, trust me you will not miss an important shot due to shutter lag.
Battery life is excellent too. I do have 2 gripes. Firstly the use of a proprietary battery, replacements are expensive. Secondly if you do buy a spare battery there is no separate charger, it has to be charged in the camera. This is very inconvenient and no doubt a cost saving exercise on Sony’s part.
Auto focus is very quick (there is also a manual focus option) and there are options to select different focus points. Low light focus is excellent thanks to Sony’s holographic AF system, this works by emitting infrared beams onto the subject. Overall auto focus both in low and normal light easily outperforms my D60.

RAW Mode

For those who don’t know a raw file is the equivalent of a digital negative. It provides far greater flexibility for post processing where you can alter white balance and even make adjustments (within reason) to the exposure without affecting the image. The bottom line is RAW files offer a higher quality of image than JPEGs which are highly compressed to save space. Now before I cover the 828’s RAW performance you need to ask yourself:

Do I want to sell my shots?
Am I intending to carry out significant editing on the pictures later?
Do I need the facility to alter white balance after shooting?

If you answered yes to any of the above then you probably already know that you need to shoot in raw. If you just want to take mainly 6x4 shots are slightly larger ones to put on your wall then JPEG is fine and takes up much less memory. On my D60 I chose raw as the size of the file was 3x that of a large fine JPEG, it meant that in some cases it was better to shoot raw than bracket 3 jpegs. On the 828 though this is not the case, RAW files are HUGE (around 18mb) which means if you have a 256mb CF card it will take only 12 shots, a serious consideration and I would strongly recommend budgeting for at least a 1GB CF card or microdrive when you buy the camera.

Ok so the files are big what else? Well more bad news, Sony has in their wisdom encrypted the files so that you can only use the supplied software to convert them. So anybody who currently uses Photoshop or Capture One is going to be very disappointed as the Sony software is not great at all. It is slow, very slow even on a P4 2.2 1GHz ram, and you cannot view your changes in real time. In Photoshop you can view any adjustments to exposure or white balance as you do them, in the Sony image converter it takes anything from 5-30 seconds (depending on the mode you set) for your changes to come up.

Considering Sony has tried to appeal to the masses by supporting CF cards they really have shot themselves in the foot by trying to limit people to it’s software, my only hope is that they see sense and provide details for a plug-in.

Lastly and by no means least, you can only shoot one RAW (or TIFF) shot at a time after which the camera locks up for 12-15 seconds to write to the card. Very poor.

So unless you are taking landscape or building shots RAW is virtually useless, and that is a real shame. Not being a technical expert I am unsure whether this can be remedied by a firmware upgrade or not, I really hope so!

Picture Quality

The acid test of the camera though is image quality and like the performance this is bit of a mixed bag. Before I continue I would like to state that I am no technical expert and am not qualified to comment in great depth on Chromatic aberrations (purple fringing), noise levels or lens distortion.

I have seen and used many digital cameras and I almost always shoot at ISO 100 or 200 and can honestly say that the shots I have produced on the 828 are as good as anything I have seen before, the combination of the Zeiss lens and 8 megapixels appear to be doing their job. I will qualify this comment by stating that I am yet to use a Canon 1DS (£5000+) or Kodak 14N (£3000+) and would expect them to be better. Detail is exceptional as is colour rendition, I am a big fan of the Real colour setting for landscapes which I feel has an almost Velvia like quality. This is all about personal taste of course and I know that many people prefer the standard setting and I would also for portrait work.

Is it all good news? Not exactly. You see Sony has squeezed 8 million pixels onto a sensor much smaller than a digital SLR this means that the pixels are smaller and the theory is that this will lead to noisy images, is this the case? Well yes it is but in my opinion this is not a showstopper. At ISO 64 and 100 the noise is pretty much non-existent, it is visible at ISO 200 and ISO 400 and 800 are noisy. This is of course when viewed on the screen and believe me the effect is not as noticeable when you view prints. Still it’s not ideal and is an area where the 828 falls below the standards set by Digital SLR’s. There is hope though as for a reasonable price you can buy a program called noise ninja which can do some miracle work on those higher ISO images.

You will also see some purple fringing on highlights and this to me is more concerning than the noise. Although quite bad this is a phenomenon not exclusive to the 828 and you will find it in many of digicams including SLR’s. As I said earlier I am not a technical expert so I will leave my analysis of that there.

Overall though the images get a thumbs up from me. The camera produces excellent detail and vivid colour and whilst the noise is an issue I believe the images are every bit as a good as many digital SLR’s.

Conclusion

The Sony 828 is a groundbreaking camera but not without it’s flaws, you will have noticed my comparisons throughout have been to my previous camera, which was an EOS D60 and I have no doubt that people in the market for this camera will also have half an eye on the Canon 300D.

So do I regret the change and should I have got the 300D instead? Sometimes but overall I don’t think so and here’s why.

Fantastic lens. To get the equivalent focal length and more importantly quality on the D60/300D would require at least 2 canon L series lenses costing around £1500-£2000.
DUST – Currently a massive problem on digital SLR’s requiring substantial post processing of the image or specialist cleaning of the sensor. I found that sometimes I was reluctant to change the lens unless I really had to especially outside and that was restricting my photography. Anything that gets in the way of you taking pictures is not good and for me dust was, you can make your own mind up on whether this is an issue for you.

This is my opinion and no doubt many will disagree. The useless RAW function is a big drawback and the noise will put off some, but for me the overall package is a good one I highly recommend.

Digital technology is still moving very fast and I am going to wait a couple of years until the technology plateaus before spending serious money on a camera to keep long term. The days of Canon 1DS’s being available for around £1000 probably are not as far away as you think and when that day comes I will be first in line to buy one, until that day though the 828 will do just fine.