All referred images and text on this page (c) Mahesh R. Shirgaonkar
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Sony DSC F717
Reviewed by Mahesh R. ShirgaonkarUpdated: February 2, 2003.
Originally written: December 25, 2002.
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Introduction:
| Six months back I had an epiphany: I realized that the entire process of taking
pictures with a film camera (35mm, medium or large format) was too time consuming and
definitely costly. So, I started considering getting a digital camera to shorten the
process of producing digitized photographs. Like most other folks, I have always
considered most digicams to be really costly toys. A few digicams, like the Canon D60, the
Nikon D100 and the newest Canon 1DS cost a fortune and supposedly produce photographs that
are comparable to 35mm slides. These cameras were (and still are) way beyond my budget of
around $1000. |
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Looking around the web, reading various reviews, I came up with a list of 5 cameras I
could afford:
- The Sony F717
- The Nikon 5700
- The Minolta Dimage 7Hi
- The Olympus E20
- The Canon G4
I finally got myself the Sony F717! What follows is a justification of my act! ;-)
Getting it:
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I bought my Sony F717 from the local Fry's store in Santa Clara. The package consisted
of the camera, a 32MB memory stick(MS), a battery, a charger, a USB-cable, neck-strap,
guide, and some other stuff. Having read the reviews I knew that 32MB MS would hold around
12 JPEGs. I also knew that the battery would last about 4 hours on full charge. So I
bought the following items along with the camera:
- an extra battery
- a 128MB MS
- extended warranty (Sony provides only 90-days warranty!!)
The total package cost me just over $1200, though prices for the base package have gone
down since. |
Within a few days of buying the camera I also bought two very important accessories:
- a remote control
- a lens-hood
Sony had a limited
recall on a few 717s. Those 717s had to be sent back to Sony for some debugging.
Immediately after buying my camera I checked with Sony to see if I had to send in my
camera. The answer was a no! I was happy! :)
The body:
| The most striking feature of the Sony F717 is its unique L shaped body. For a long
time I was skeptical of this design. Change is always tough to accept. Getting used
to the L shape wasn't too much of a change for me. It is almost like using any 35mm SLR. Externally,
the 717 is quite similar to its predecessor, the 707. The only major differences I could
see were:
- some of the buttons/controls were placed differently
- the 717 has a more bright body. The 717 is sharply silvery, while the 707 was a mellow
metallic brown. Lacking any engineering reasons for the choice of body color I think a
brown, or maybe even a black 717 would be much better. The small silver body mounted on
top of a gigantic tripod attracts a lot of attention which I really hate for various
obvious reasons.
The body has a nice bright LCD, and an electronic viewfinder with a rubberized eye-cup.
Switching between the LCD and the viewfinder is easy and quick enough as the camera has a
special button for this purpose. The LCD and the finder (as Sony calls it) are mutually
exclusive: when you are using the LCD, the finder is off and when you are using the finder
the LCD is off. The finder and the LCD reveal the same information. There's a lot of
information that can displayed. You can configure/choose what information you want shown. |
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I find the LCD to be bright, crisp and clear. I use a Belkin PDA screen overlay to
protect the LCD from dust, grime and smudges. This reduces the brightness, though!
The body has a small built in flash right behind the lens. The flash is definitely
useful in certain situations (fill flash, etc) but it goes without saying that you would
need an external flash if you use fancier flash techniques. The camera sports a hot-shoe.
Note that the hot-shoe is not enabled by default. It has to be enabled through the camera
settings menu. There have been reports of successful use of Canon's 420EX and various
Nikon flashes with the 717. As yet I have not tried any external flash with the camera.
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The camera provides most of the standard features found on cameras in this price and
feature range:
- exposure compensation, bracketing, AE lock, metering mode selector, built-in flash
control (on/off/auto), self-timer (on/off)
- complete auto and scene (portrait, landscape, etc) picture taking modes
- aperture priority, shutter priority, manual, program modes
- a mode to shoot movies
- a mode to review pictures and movies
- a mode to setup the camera
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Additionally, the camera also provides controls for:
- macro mode (which I think is a joke but is a popular setting on most 35mm and digital
p&s cameras) NOTE: the flowers and the roses were photographed using a closeup
diopter, and not just the camera's macro setting.
- white balance (a very fancy name for controlling the tone of the photograph. It is
essentially the same as using correction filters when you are shooting with regular film
in say incandescent light, or late night, etc.)
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The control buttons are spread all over the body and the lens casing but I think they
are quite well placed. When I bought the camera I compared it to a Canon G3. The G3 has
numerous buttons all over its body! Instead of providing all those buttons, Canon could
have as well provided a key-board! ;-) Compared to the G3, the 717 has fewer buttons that
are well placed. Of course, the trade-off with fewer buttons is that you need to press a
couple of them to get to a feature. e.g, to enable bracketing, you need to press Menu,
select Recording Mode and then enable Exposure Bracketing! Thats quite a bit of button
fiddling right there.
The Lens:
The second distinguishing feature of the 717 is its tilting lens. Most other cameras in
its class provide a tilting LCD. I think the Nikon 9xx and the 4500 are the only other
cameras with tilting lens feature. Before I bought the camera I was very skeptical of this
feature and its ease of use but I got used to it very quickly.
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I like to think of the 717 as a digital ZLR. It has a built in 5x optical zoom. It
also has 2x digital zoom. Most of the photographs I shot at the SF Zoo were taken with the
digital zoom enabled and I am quite impressed with the lens as well as the digital zoom. The
actual focal length of the lens is 9.7-48.5. It is a Carl Zeiss Vario Sonnar lens. True to Sonnar (German for very
bright), the lens is fast: f/2.0-2.4! The length is completely contained in its barrel
and does not extend outside the barrel at any time. This makes using filters on the lens
easy.
I found the AF to be reasonably fast. Bill Tuthill pointed out that CDI found the AF to
be very slow! It is definitely not Canon's USM. I think it is faster than most Nikon
lenses I have used: the 28-105 ED, 60mm Micro and the 80-200/2.8 ED. A more interesting
feature is that the camera can actually focus in absolute dark! In such situations, the
camera uses a special Holographic-AF mechanism to project a safe laser criss-cross
pattern to illuminate the subject. I found the AF to be accurate in all the situations. |
The lens zoom can be controlled electronically, using two little switches on the lens
barrel. The lens zoom can also be controlled manually using the ring at the front of the
lens. The camera lets you set the direction in which you wish to turn the ring to zoom in
or out. I have set it to match my Canon lenses.
The lens can also be setup for manual focusing. In this case the ring at the front of
the camera acts as the focusing ring and you have to zoom using the two little switches on
the lens barrel.
| The 717 lets you attach filters in front of the lens. The Nikon 5700 does not have
this feature!! As soon as I bought the camera, I bought a regular Skylight 1A filter to
protect the lens from dust, accidental finger prints and everything else. I also bought a
circular polarizer and a 3+ magnifier. Oddly enough the polarizer's effects are not
obvious when looking through either the finder or the LCD. This makes using the polarizer
tricky! I have almost stopped using the polarizer now. The 717 uses 58mm filters. These
can be found in abundance even at local photography shops. Also, the 58mm filters are
considerably cheaper than say 67mm and 77mm filters. Sony provides attachment lenses
that can help you extend or shorten the focal lengths. I have not tried these for two
reasons: they are costly and they are really big and ugly (design wise).
The lens exhibits visible distortion. This is not alarming though! A quick recap of the
lens' focal length should tell you that this is essentially a fish-eye lens in all
reality. It is just that the image sensor is so small that the lens gives a picture
equivalent to 38-190 zoom on a 35mm SLR but, in all reality it is a ~10-50mm zoom! My
Canon 20-35mm zoom shows visible distortions over its entire range on a 35mm slide image!
Again, I wouldn't complain about the distortion, but it is something to know, remember and
compensate if you can. |
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Thankfully, the tripod receptacle is placed under the lens barrel. The lens is heavier
than the body so this makes complete sense. The lens seems to be in an aluminum casing. I
personally believe that the main body is all plastic though I could be wrong.
Interesting features:
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I found the following features on the 717 very interesting:
- A small button to quickly modify the white-balance.
- Nightframing: this is like looking through an IR scope, but it takes almost regular
looking pictures
- Nightshot: near IR photography!
- Holographic AF: described earlier
- A whopping 3 fps!
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The nightframing and nightshot modes are quite restrictive in terms of what other
camera features can be used. I am still not sure how useful these modes would be to my
photography. Just to understand what these modes do, I took two photographs of my
room-mates cat. The photograph in this section was taken in the Nightshot mode. The other
photograph presented in the Body section was taken in Nightframing mode.
The camera provides quite a few features to edit images. I am not sure you really need
these features built into the camera. I cannot imagine anyone wasting his/her time
fiddling around with those tiny buttons, draining your precious camera battery, trying to
edit images, changing their size, etc on the camera's really tiny LCD. Dude, thats what
computers are for!
Camera/Computer Interface:
The camera connects to the computer over USB2.0. It can connect to computers with
older USB ports as well but the data transfer rate would be obviously slower. The software
that comes with the camera allows you to download and edit images on Windows XP. I used it
for some time but, my Windows XP notebook has a mere 1024x768 resolution. My Linux
notebook on the other hand has 1600x1200 resolution. A quick search over the web revealed
that the gphoto2 can be used to grab images off the camera. For those of you who want to
do it the steps are as follows:
- set the camera in PTP mode
- execute gphoto2 --list-ports. This should list your USB port.
- execute gphoto2 --auto-detect. This should show the camera as a F707. Don't worry
about this. You aren't missing anything.
- execute gphoto2 --list-files. This should show you all the files currently on the
camera's MS.
- You can now execute gphoto2 --get-all-files to retrieve all the files. Gphoto2
also allows you to retrieve a range of photographs.
Those of you interested in using Gphoto2 would find more information here. Realize that you would need USB libraries,
etc. Make sure your Linux system actually supports all the required features before using
Gphoto2 to avoid frustration and complains. |
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The only image manipulations I do are:
- rotate images to make them stand upright
- reduce the size of the images to save public/free web-space and to ensure that images
load faster.
All images accompanying this article were made smaller using the following script on a
Linux notebook:
#!/bin/bash
for i in $*.jpg; do
djpeg $i | pnmscale -xysize 700 700 | cjpeg > `basename $i .jpg`-thumb.jpg
done
Image quality:
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I am quite happy with the image quality. I have been using the camera in 2560x1920
JPEG mode and the images look very nice on most of my monitors and LCDs. Colors, contrast
and brightness in the images are very well balanced. I haven't seen any of the super-red
complaints a few people have thrown around. Of course, image quality depends on who's
seeing the image. So, you would have to decide for yourself. Before we conclude this
section I would not deny that quality might not be the same as say Provia 100F exposed
through a Canon 70-200f/2.8 or similar high quality lens. Realize though that the medium
format guys would slam us pointing out that their 220 Provia 100F images are far higher
quality than our 35mm Provia 100F images. I believe it is basic human nature to be unhappy
with image quality. I have learned to be happy with what I have and more importantly with
what I can afford. Technology advances by leaps and bounds every moment. Canon is already
selling its EOS-1DS all over the world. I know I cannot afford it right now. Even if I
could afford it, I know I would never spend that kind of money on a digital SLR when I
could get almost 4 EOS-1V 35mm SLR cameras for the price of one 1DS! The issue is simple:
at this point in time I could afford to spend just about $1200 on a digicam and I believe
I got one of the best from those available in the market right now. (Wow! Why am I
ranting? Onto the review now ...) |
Features I haven't yet tried:
| The only major feature I haven't yet tried is saving images in TIFF mode. The camera
can save images in TIFF format. TIFF provides loss-less image compression as opposed to
JPEG's lossy image compression. So, if you are into image editing, then due to the
lossy-compression employed by the JPEG algorithms, after a couple of image manipulations,
you would have lost significant image information. Ok, enough of geek-talk. The bottom
line here is simple: if you don't manipulate images significantly you could save them in
JPEG format. Otherwise you should try and use TIFF format. The camera manages to save the
JPEG file in fraction of a second. A TIFF image takes up a lot of space (e.g, a 32MB
memory stick can hold only 1 TIFF image and a 128MB can hold about 7 TIFF images,
according to the 717 manual) and also a lot of time to save to the memory stick.
Again, these are known limitations. You can set the ISO sensitivity level on the camera
to 100, 200, 400, or 800. I played around with this a bit, but I have set the camera to
ISO 100 for almost all of the photographs so far. Again, this is not necessarily something
worth playing around with if you always use a tripod (I do!). It is good to know though as
you can use it when you cannot use your tripod either due to regulations or because you
forgot to haul it with you! |
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Complaints:
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The max capacity of a memory stick (currently) is 128MB. With about 51 photographs on
one 128MB stick, is the memory stick size really restrictive? Well, I hate carrying all
those little memory sticks. It is too easy to lose them, drop them, etc. A larger memory
stick 1GB, 2GB would be more useful. Sony has already announced larger capacity memory
sticks. Thankfully, Sony has assured 717 users that the new 1GB memory stick will work
with the 717. The expected price for the 1GB memory stick is about $800! Thats just a few
hundred dollars less than the price of the camera!! Whoa!!
The body is a bit too small for my taste. A wider and taller body or a battery-pack to
extend the height of the body would be really nice. |
The camera did not come with either the remote shutter release or lens-hood. Each of
these accessories is quite costly and Sony proprietary. (The world of open-systems is
coming to an end, I guess!) The lens-hood I bought really sucks! It came with a ring on
which to mount it. But, the ring rotates quite a bit and the hood is loose! Also, the lens
hood cannot really be reversed as Sony claims.
With all the features the camera provides, I like to keep the manual handy every time I
take the camera out. The manual is printed on really cheap newspaper quality paper. I am
quiet sure that within the next few months the manual is going to be nothing but shreds of
paper. Sony could have published the manual on good paper with good binding.
Maybe the camera should have provided a feature to save images in RAW mode. RAW mode
images are really raw (exactly what the image sensor recorded). RAW mode images are
smaller than TIFF and save faster. (BTW, Canon provides RAW mode images on most of its
better digital cameras.)
My biggest gripe is that Sony provides ONLY 90 day limited warranty!
Whats up with that? This forces most people to buy extended warranties from some local
reseller. I guess this is Sony's way of rewarding the resellers for selling Sony products!
It is high time Sony realized this problem and offered longer term warranties
retroactively! Their products are great, but not perfect (the initial 717 recall clearly
indicates that).
Conclusion:
| For about $1000 [street price, February 2003] Sony is offering a really decent 5MP
digital camera with a superb Carl Zeiss 5x optical Vario-Sonnar zoom lens. The camera is
deeply rooted in Sony's proprietary technologies (memory stick, battery, remote shutter
release, etc). You have to pay Sony dearly for every little accessory you need for the
camera! Overall, I think this is a pretty well designed digicam that helps you capture
really nice photographs. The camera provides loads of features that you would have to
explore as you need them. So, it is good to have the manual handy. |
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Where to Buy
The Sony F717 is stocked by:
- Ritz
Camera - the camera is in stock with a USA warranty and there's no shipping charge or
sales tax
- Adorama
- in stock
- B&H
Photo - in stock
Buying from these retailers via these links results in
support for photo.net, so please consider them if they can supply your needs.
Other Reviews:
There's a whole lot of information available out there. Here are a few links:
If you search through various news-groups, mailing-lists, etc, you would find a lot
more info.
Competition:
It would be unfair to finish this article without talking about the competition. So,
here goes:
Acknowledgements:
I would like to thank Bill Tuthill for pointing out that the original writeup was too
verbose. He also pointed out that the 717's AF wasn't as fast as I thought it was. He
would definitely have more to say in the discussion that would follow this article.
I would like to thank my room-mate and friend Gretchen Miller. She proof-read the
document and pointed out all the grammatical mistakes proving herself to be a real ESL
teacher and a lawyer-in-making.
Numerous other folks helped in various ways through their constructive and/or
encouraging comments. I would like to thank my parents .... (ok! enough already! ;-)
Mahesh R Shirgaonkar's Photography Website
All referred images and text on this page (c) Mahesh R. Shirgaonkar
