Upgrading from DSC-F707

Ever have the upgrade itch? The F717 gave me that itch and this is after only owning the F707 for 6 months. Now comes the time where you have to ask yourself is this new camera worth upgrading to from F707 (or another digi-cam)? For me it was but read below and see if the same applies to you!

The main concerns/complaints I had with the F707 were the zoom control button (location), length of movie mode, inaccurate colors, and slow USB connectivity. The things I liked about the F707 were battery life and shot to shot time. Below are some of the major new additions/upgrades to the F717 and their benefit.

Zoom-Focus Ring
The F717 now has a dual purpose zoom and focus ring that is selectable by a switch and defaults to zoom. The direction of the zoom (CW-CCW) can be changed in the menu system. I never use the Zoom buttons but only the Zoom ring now!

Movie Mode
The F707 could take a HQ 320X240 MPEG movie but had a time limit of 15 seconds due to internal memory buffer. The F717 writes directly to the Memory Stick (32MB) and is only limited by the size of the Memory Stick.

USB 2.0
I have not seen another digital camera with the USB 2.0 interface and it is much welcomed. USB 2.0 with it's 400 mbps is of course not fully utilized since it's limited by the speed of the F717's internal Memory Stick reader but the speed over the F707 is very noticeable and I would estimate 25% faster transfers.

Body - Construction
Body seems stiffer than the F707 at the swivel point and the same can be said for the mode selector wheel. I'm not a big fan of the silver color but the cam would probably look odd in black (what was wrong with platinum?).

Imaging Features
There is now a five point selectable auto focus system and a live histogram view. The histogram is a great feature often found on digital SLR cameras that allows you to view exposure levels on a small graph and make necessary adjustments. Noise reduction has been improved from the F707 and I especially noticed this in low light photos.

Battery Life
This is where someone is going to instantly disagree but I love the Sony battery system. It constantly outperforms all other supplied digital camera rechargeable batteries with well over 400 shots on a single charge. The opponents to proprietary supplied rechargeable batteries argue that if they are caught without a charged battery they can simply insert some over-priced AA batteries and be back in business. I remember how long those alkaline batteries last (it's almost depressing) and I don't have a problem keeping my battery charged (which is about once every week).

Additional Features
Boot up time in just over 1.7 seconds and shutter lag (shot to shot speed) has been dramatically improved from the F707. I also noticed color accuracy has also been updated for the newer model. This corrected some problems the F707 had with over saturated reds and some funky colored green (grass for instance). Auto focus is accurate in all lighting conditions and is faster than the F707 and others with AF assist lamps. The lens and CCD imager remain the same from the F707 but you’ll get no complaints from me as it’s a perfect combination of 5x optical zoom and a 2/3” CCD imager. A CCD imager is what gathers light from the lens and is converts it to electrons. The larger the CCD will usually yield less noise on your photos (especically low light photos). Sure I’d like a 10x optical zoom but I believe a zoom of that magnitude would require optical image stabilization and would put this cam in a much higher price bracket.

Closing thoughts..
I purchased the F717 last week and I’ve already logged over 300 photos ranging from indoor low light to outdoors macro. The photo quality is something to behold and I have yet to find a camera similarly priced that can compete. Some other cameras I considered were the Olympus E-20N, Nikon Coolpix 5700, and Minolta Dimage 7Hi. The F717 has fewer manual features than the above three but still delivers superior image quality and is less expensive. Now we have price, and while the F707 broke new ground in affordable 5 Megapixel digital cameras I don't think the F707's identical price has the same effect. Judging by the dropping price of the F707 ($650-$750) I think the F717 should have debuted at $899 MSRP. I was able to get the $894 price from CDW but only because it's a corporate account as most reputable online retailers prices are hovering near the $999 MSRP at launch. From Novice (me) to Pro the F717 has a lot to offer and room to grow with it’s user. My only major complaint is the unacceptable 32MB Memory Stick and Sony’s lack of larger Memory Sticks (128MB as of Oct 02'). A 5MP fine shot on the F717 is equivalent to 2.2MB which yields about 12 photos on the supplied 32MB stick. I'm a big fan of the informed consumer and I hope this review will help you purchase the digital camera that is right for you and maybe it'll even be the F717. :)


Definitions

CCD - A charge-coupled device (CCD) is a light-sensitive integrated circuit that stores and displays the data for an image in such a way that each pixel (picture element) in the image is converted into an electical charge the intensity of which is related to a color in the color spectrum. For a system supporting 65,535 colors, there will be a separate value for each color that can be stored and recovered. CCDs are now commonly included in digital still and video cameras.

A CCD in a digital camera improves resolution compared with older technologies. Some digital cameras produce images having more than one million pixels, yet sell for under $1,000. The term megapixel has been coined in reference to such cameras. Sometimes a camera with an image of 1,024 by 768 pixels is given the label "megapixel," even though it technically falls short of the mark. Another asset of the CCD is its high degree of sensitivity. A good CCD can produce an image in extremely dim light, and its resolution does not deteriorate when the illumination intensity is low, as is the case with conventional cameras.

Histogram - A histogram is a specialized graph or plot used in statistics. In its most common form, the independent variable is plotted along the horizontal axis, and the dependent variable (usually a percentage) is plotted along the vertical axis. The independent variable can attain only a finite number of discrete values (for example, five) rather than a continuous range of values. The dependent variable can span a continuous range.