Home > Consumer Reviews > Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828 Digital Camera [8MP 7xOptical]

The more I use this camera, the more I love it. My first impressions werethat the F828 is a great looking and solidly built camera that takesoutstanding pictures. Shutter lag is extremely short such that it cancatch the action before the action moves off the frame. Recycle timebetween shots is very fast. Recommend getting the 12x CF card which is abig improvement over 4x, but not noticeably slower than the 40x. Zoomrange is more than adequate with a surprisingly good wide angle and goodmacro feature. Battery life is excellent but since it's a proprietarybattery, it would be a good idea to carry a spare. As far as the storagemedia is concerned, Sony did right by having the F828 accept compactflash. I find it useful to have both a 256MB CF card and 256MB memorystick pro loaded in the camera at the same time. I can fill up my compactflash and switch to memory stick with a flick of a switch without missinga beat. The built-in flash is fine for fill-in or close indoor shots, butI would highly recommend the Sony HVL-F32X flash. It makes a hugedifference and would be money worth spent. I also expected faster shutterspeeds from a camera that sports a fast Carl Zeiss lens.
Leaving theexposure and aperture on automatic produces great resolution and color. Idid get caught up with being concerned about purple fringing and noiseafter reading dpreview. In a few photos, I did notice some purplefringing, but I really had to zoom in about 4x and look for it on my 17"LCD. Otherwise, it's barely noticeable on a very very few pictures andnon-existent on most.
Great camera and have absolutely no regrets about buying it.
Thank you SONY for such a superb Camera
SID

Ever bought something that is a pleasure to use and you just can't stop admiring it? This Sony F828 digital camera is one of those things. It is beautifully designed and the attention to detail is very impressive. Firstly, the size. It is a 'proper' camera with an excellent manually adjusted zoom lense and so it could not be any smaller. The vogue for cramming sophisticated technolgy into the size of a pack of playing cards is limited to the 'point and shoot' end of the market. As a professional I needed a camera that would inspire confidence in my clients and the Sony F828 does that. Secondly, build quality. Everything about this camera feels right and it looks as though it will last for years. The operating system is so easy to use that the manual is only required for some of the finest settings. In fact the automatic settings are so comprehensive that I have not found it necessary to make any adjustments so far. A lot of thought and care has gone into designing this camera and I am surprised, and pleased, that Sony have managed to keep the retail price so low. And finally, it takes very good pictures! As a bonus, the movie mode shoots videos at thirty frames per second which is as good as most purpose-built digital camcoders. Reading this review you might think that I work for Sony. I don't. I'm just a very happy owner of this fantastic camera and recommend you to take a look at it. Enjoy.

I've just got back from a trip around China with the new camera. I shot 600 pictures. When I collected the prints, the guy at the professional print shop wanted to know "What camera did you use? I've never seen results like it". These prints are as good as I would expect to see from a 35mm SLR. Having owned 3.3 and 4.0 mega pixel Sony cameras, this is the first digital camera, which makes me want to print pictures rather than just e-mail them - it is a proper camera.
So I was surprised to hear about chromatic aberration. I checked the prints. Perhaps I could see a blue edge against a white subject that was taken in the Gobi desert - this is in eye squintingly bright sun conditions. I checked the file and there is a little (1 or 2 pixels) around the edge. I hadn't noticed this without looking specifically. There isn't a trace in any of the normal or low light shots. In fact the low light ability of this camera is far and away better than anything I've managed to get regular film to do. As for the bright conditions the aberration is slight and is present to some degree in all cameras.

I've been taking pictures for 25 years on everything from Polaroids to Hasselblads. To say this camera suffers from chromatic aberration is like saying the seats aren't comfortable enough when you get on Concord. You really have just missed the point.

If you are serious enough to spend this much money on a digital camerathen it would be wise to look at websites dedicated to reviewing packagessuch as these, and also to ignore reviewers who appear never to haveactually held the camera and are merely going on pre-release scepticism.It took me a while to be sure, but once I bought the F828, returning itnever even crossed my my mind. Briefly, these are perhaps the most obviouspros and cons:
- The image size (currently unrivalled) and colour,excellent zoom and a particularly impressive manual focus mode, dualstorage capability (a wise choice by sony - which means you don't have tofork out for sony memory sticks), and a near-perfect design and layoutkeeping almost everything at your fingertips
- That infamous purplefringing, which is certainly much more prevalent than it ought to be on acamera of this spec, and often high ISO photographs are more noisy thanone would like
The DSC F828 can photograph virtually anything, and record a wide range offormats. Yet it might be worth considering the size of this model, becausesuch exhaustive capabilities make it an enormous thing to handle at times.As for the purple fringing, I have only been annoyed by it on one or twoimages, and even then it is fairly simple to remove using image-editingsoftware.
Five stars for a fantastic camera in my opinion, but docheck out your other options thoroughly.

Having seriously reviewed all the comments on the F828, and weighed it up against a DSLR plus several lenses, I took the plunge and have absolutely no regrets after 3 months of use. This camera is perfect for someone who is just stepping up from point-and-shoot to serious amateur photography. It is probably not the right choice for the pro, or perfectionist who is obsessed with that last 5% of image quality (yes.. the camera does have defects - CA/PF, noise at high ISO) but 95% of the time it delivers exceptional image quality.

Regarding the 'purple fringe' debate, yes - it is undeniably present. In a recent trip I objectively reviewed around 300 shots - 70% showed absolutely no PF, 25% showed slight or minor PF (zooming on 17'' screen) and only 5% what I would consider noticeable (i.e. on 10x15 prints) - these can be fixed using Photoshop filters. And this was before I learned how to shoot to avoid it.

The fact of the matter is that this is a superbly designed, solid and extremely flexible camera. The zoom range is perfect, though I wish Sony would bring out a decent telephoto adaptor. My only minor criticism is minimum aperture of f8.0 can be restrictive when trying to use slow shutter speed in bright conditions, but a few extra f-stops can be gained by using filters (UV or ND).

Pros - design & build, zoom range, tilting body (especially for tripod work), superb colours & image quality, rapid autofocus
Cons - don't lose sleep over the much-publicised limitations of this camera

With no new model on the horizon, and production apparently stopped, snap one up whilst stocks last - this will still be a reference camera for a few years to come.