Sony DSC-F505 "CyberShot"

A typical Record mode screen with the menu overlayed across the bottom.   You can activate the 10-sec selftimer, select one of the special "effects" such as negative art, sepia, b&w or solarize.   The File menu is shown below.

Selecting one of the menu options such as FILE will pop up another submenu of options. Here you can format the memory card, reset or reuse file numbers, set the image size or quality or change the record mode.

This is the Setup menu, from here you can set the video output for NTSC or PAL, set the menu language for Japanese or English, set the time and date and turn the button beeper on or off.

Record screen with camera in Shutter Priority AE mode.  When shooting in either shutter or aperture priority modes the shutter speed and aperture values are displayed onscreen.

And this is the onscreen display you see when you're in MPEG movie mode.   The 15-second 160x112 movie files average about 350Kb in size each.   They are quite nice for email purposes.

Play menu options; index allows you go to backward or forward through the stored images, delete selected images or access the File or Setup menus.

A typical image Playback screen with all the onscreen information displayed.

For quick selection of stored images the F505 has the usual thumbnail playback screen.  You highlight the image you want to view and it is then displayed fullscreen.

Steve's Conclusion

If you're looking for an inconspicuous camera the F505 isn't for you. I often had people staring at me when they saw me holding it out like a raygun from the Star Wars movies. It is sure to attract major attention whenever you pull it out of your camera case. No matter how hard you try there's just no way to hide that big, fat, long lens. The "fit and finish" of the F505 is excellent, the body and lens is metal construction and seems very durable. Almost the entire back of the camera body is consumed by the color LCD which leaves very little room for the other controls.

The F505 takes great pictures but even with its high-tech LCD viewfinder it is not that easy to use this camera outdoors. If the sun is shining directly on the LCD it works great but in most cases you are usually somewhere between bright sunlight and shade. When are the designers going to learn that cameras must have optical viewfinders? LCD-only digicams require you to hold them out in front of you to frame the shot and this just isn't natural. A camera is easier to use when it is pressed up against your eye. There's no problem with sunlight washing out the display and it's a lot easier to follow rapid moving action subjects.

The F505's 5x zoom lens is excellent. I have really gotten used to the "focal power" of the 5x zoom on my Sony D700 SLR and feel inadequate when using other cameras that have less powerful zooms. The D700's lens is good but the F505 has a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonar and nobody knows how to make lenses better than Zeiss. I did find the zoom action to be a bit fast for my taste and would have prefered a slower mechanism. The macro closeup capability is awesome and lets you get so close that the lens actually blocks the light falling on the subject.

Sony is determined to push their new MemoryStick technology on us whether we want it or not. Payback for not having bought their Beta VCRs I guess. The F505 comes with a pathetically small 4MB memory card. This is a 2-megapixel camera and as such it should be packaged with at least an 8MB or 16MB memory card. The recent Comdex '99 show was full of new products based on the MemoryStick so hopefully we won't have to wait too long to see larger 32MB and 64MB cards.

The F505 is equipped with a USB port and it is very fast. There is no need to buy an optional card reader if your computer has a USB port. The download speed is quite impressive but the included "Lite" software leaves a lot to be desired. To read in the images from the F505 I used the MSAC-PC1 PC card adapter that came with my D700. It lets you access the Memory Stick like a drive and use Windows Explorer to copy the files to the hard drive. Sony just began shipping their new floppy disk adapter too.

The F505's built-in flash is mounted out on the top/front of the lens. It's really the only place they could have put it but it's way to close to the lens as such is very prone to redeye. They should have foreseen this problem and included an anti-redeye mode but they didn't.

Battery life is good with the NP-FS11 3.6v InfoLITHIUM rechargable pack and is rated at 60-70 minutes and can be extended by switching off the LCD backlight as often as possible. Recharging takes about 2 hours and the charger can also function as an AC power supply. As with all of Sony's InfoLITHIUM cameras the F505 displays remaining battery time constantly on the LCD screen.

The menu system is extensive and somewhat confusing and requires the use of the LCD to change camera settings as there is no monochrome data LCD. Often it takes three or four menu "steps" just to change a simple setting. And that small 4-way jog switch is somewhat difficult to operate by those with fingers (or thumb) as large as mine.

Overall I was quite satisfied with the image quality even though the highest quality setting uses quite a bit of compression. The average filesize of the 1600x1200 images is from 500-700Kb as compared to the Nikon 950 or the Olympus C-2000Z which is about 900Kb. The extra compression doesn't seem to degrade the images much and was probably chosen due to the limitation of the current 4MB and 8MB Memory Sticks.

If you can live with the limitations of an LCD-only camera then you'll probably be quite satisfied with the F505. If not then I suggest that you look at one of the other cameras that offers both an LCD and an optical viewfinder.