Sony CyberShot DSC-F707

I too, waited for months before I bought this camera. I used a friend and fellow photographers and was sold on it in minutes. I grew up in, and spent 25 years working in photo labs. I consider myself an excellent custom enlarger printer of color and B&W. I have several Nikons and a load of lenses, a Leica M4P, an old Rolliflex, a Plaubel with a 80mm Nikor lens. I printed negatives from many great local professional photographers and all varieties of cameras. I did work for the local museums. The point of all this palaver being, I have seen every level of quality positive and negative image. This camera equals any of the best things I have every done with conventional wet process films up to the 6x7cm format. Color corrections, if necessary, can easily be made in Photoshop or any of the other easy to use programs. Write your image to CD and have it printed on photo paper at the local mall and it is as good as anything I ever did in my professional career. I wish it was not so, but the technology is here and it is available at a very high level in this camera. Print it at home on copy paper and it still looks pretty good. Home printers and computer monitor color balances vary widely, so don't let comments about color throw you off. There are several additional filter features in this camera, sepia, solarization, negative imaging and the 20-minute mpg capability is very cool. All you need is imagination, a slight grasp of lighting and the eye for composition. This Sony 707 is a great tool and a super value for the money.

I researched the Sony DCS F707 digital camera and its competition for several months prior to making the purchase. Its pictures are sharp and colorful and I am very satisfied with the camera. However, it is not perfect and won't suit everyone's taste. The reds are highly saturated and the greens are a bit yellow. Pictures tend to look a bit like postcards (which I prefer). It's permanently attached zoom lens makes the camera unwieldy. Both hands are required to operate the camera. The zoom control's rocker switch placed in an awkward location and feels as though the switch is reversed and there is a tendency to hold the camera so as to prevent the hidden automatic flash attachment from deploying. The camera uses Sony memory stick media. It works well, but Sony has failed on its promise to deliver memory sticks that hold more than 128 MB, which seems inexcusable in the age of Microdrives. Sony only supplies a 16 MB stick with the camera, so be prepared to buy a 128 MB card immediately. I highly recommend a digital wallet to get around the memory problem (and a good camera bag to carry all your large accessories).

Those are the annoyances, but they are just that. Not problems. Here is the good: the camera takes pictures that look better than life and truly rival 35mm quality. It has movie clip capability with sound. It's battery life is unsurpassed. It can be left on for HOURS. The camera has infared capability and can take pictures in total darkness. It also has a nifty laser that allows the camera to autofocus for flash pictures in dark conditions. The camera acepts standard 58mm screw on attachments. The camera body rotates away from the lens. Although it requires two hands to operate, this feature makes the camera very comfortable to hold and allows the user to take low-level shots without kneeling. The menus are easy to operate and apart from the zoom, the buttons are intuitively placed. The LCDs on the camera and in the viewfinder (like a camcorder) are very high quality.

Wow, what a super product this DCS-F707 digital camera from Sony is! This is a gr8 camera for those trying to bridge between true SLR and a digital camera. Yes u do get the quality, especially if u use the right printer and file size. The camera supports USB and the infamous Sony Memory Stick! U only get an 8mb Memory Stick with the camera which, 2 be honest, is only gonna hold about 4-5 photos on max resolution. Strongly recommend u get a 128mb stick (£80ish). Quality Carl Zeiss Lens with 10x optical. Can Sony improve on this? Roll on the 909!!!

I bought the Sony DCS-F707 as a replacement for a Ricoh 5000 series digital camera - which has proven to be impressive. The Sony produces simply superb prints when outputted to the latest print technology. Incredible depth of field and clarity not matched by my Nikon F5 or Contax RTS unless colour corrected and home printed - and only just. My local printer is about to be convinced that digital product can match or improve on halide! A very powerful tool used with Adobe Photoshop and QuarkXpress.