short DSC D700 review Author: Frank van der Pol Email: frank@mediacenter.demon.nl Date: 1998/12/03 Forums: rec.photo.digital OK, it's there and it has its pros and cons. I've played with it for half a day now and here is my view on this beast: The pros: It delivers the possibilities that have been promised. I won't say much about that. It's the first manual everything, auto everything priority everything, compression everything (or nothing) camera. It also lacks some things, but I've put these with the cons. In short: It's a dream when you want to be in control over the camera. It's average in speed (almost immediate display of LCD image image after exposure, storage of high Q image in 4 seconds). I was very happy about the fact that the PC card reader works flawless under windows NT. Although the specs show NT compatibility, I was prepared for trouble as all NT users are or should be at certain times. No problems at all, although the spaghetti at the rear side of my PC is getting awful. The reader is fed by the keyboard power and the printer cable goes into the PC card reader cable. No data switch box needed. Printer still worked fine also. For portables this power supply is not neccesary according to the instructions. The whole thing even extended my keyboard cable by about 8". Not of any interest to anyone but for me it was just what I needed. Operating the camera is quite easy as soon as you get the feel of what they actually meant with the design. In a way you choose a menu by rotating the first knob. By pressing a button you activate a submenu and by rotating another knob you actually choose an option within the menu. Releasing the button is making your choice. It is a fast way of navigating though the numerous options. Actually, the pros are countless and I think lots of people were alrady convinced of this. I won't put any 'quality proof uncompressed .tif files' on line because they won't give any indication of the quality, since the weather here is in the range of 1/30 at F2.0 I think it's useless to compare such an image with pictures made under better weather condistions. (Yes I know it's always summer somewhere). In a way winter is a bad time to launch a camera like this. Videocameras still need lots of light to show their best pictures. And when you don't want noise, so do digital still cameras. When it comes to image quality, the CP 900 is still the best choice I think. The D700 is a real SLR, but somehow it smells very much like 'video camera'. The cons Yes there are. I think even more than lots of people would like to see. I will categorize them in lens, image and user interface. The lens Sony is a video and audio hardware company. And it shows. Like any decent professional video cameraman knows, you shouldn't trust Sony with lenses. They should at least have asked Fuji. And Sony did not, I think. And if they did, it has been a bad job. First and worst: It has a severe barrel distortion and it does not have a flat plane of focus in the wide angle position at short distances. And when I say severe barrel distortion, I mean severe. But the most stupid thing is that I've also made a (very underexposed) indoor picture that showed much less distortion. It feels as if the distortion depends on position and distance factors. I think the technology testers should pay a lot of attention to this subject, because it looks as if there is more to it than just plain barrel distortion. Look at the extreme distortion at www.mediacenter.demon.nl/dsc/barrel1.jpg and www.mediacenter.demon.nl/dsc/barrel2.jpg These are the worst examples I could generate. This distortion is gone at a focal length of about 10 mm (equals around 50mm focal length with a 35mm camera. This can be seen at: www.mediacenter.demon.nl/dsc/barrel3.jpg All in all this is very bad news I think. It can be corrected partly, using the 'pinch' filter in Photoshop, but that Photoshop filter does not recalculate the whole image. When anyone know of a filter that does, please tell me, because straight lines over the whole image in the wide angle position of this camera are curved. Badly curved. As already mentioned by someone else, the lense extends when zooming in, but it also extends when zooming out. Somewhere around 10 mm focal length it is at its shortest. Normally I try to make the lens as short as possible when putting the camera away. With this camera it's not enough to just turn it to one end. The image There is something strange about the colors. It has already been mentioned, but it shows a tendency to either flip to the purple/blue side or to the red/orange side. I think this is not such a huge problem. It can be corrected as every DC image needs some correction. It seems as if the saturation is too high. Saturation minus 30 in Photoshop and then a correction of levels did the job in a lot of situations. But I think part of the solution can also be found in the 'white balance hold' option. Manual white balance. The 'indoors' setting and the 'outdoors' setting are not enough. But there is a way out. With the 'White Balance Hold' option you can set the white balance manually, just like with any reasonable video camera. When you've made some tests using sheets of paper that are not white, you can get any white balance setting you want. You should be able to get a fairly constant result independant of the colors the camera normally gives. ('this light blue sheet is my 'glamour shot sheet' and this yellowish sheet is my 'high tech product sheet'). The auto white balance or white balance hold do not work at all with low light. You actually have to walk to a lamp to be able to get the white balance to do its job. After that you can go ahead. I have not looked for noise or artefacts in the image yet. There probably are, but I have to have more time to do more than just shoot some snapshots. And at this moment I just don't have that time. By the time I do, the results of images of others can probably be found all over the web. A first impression of the overall image quality: A quick view of several pictures shows that when you are used to a camera like the CP900, you shouldn't buy this camera for its image quality or color under low light condition. Pictures are more like the DC 260 images I won't argue... the images of the DC260 are just not as good as the CP 900 images ;-) As with any camera, the D700 has its special field in which it works best. Probably fast studio use. and for me that is a very good reason to keep the camera. The user interface. What happens when you print white letters on a silver surface? Right. The function of each button is sometimes only readable by turning the camera so the light falls on the text in the right way. The designers have made a decision where 'looks' have won over readability. The camera is switched on using a knob for the positions 'cam' and 'play'. Because of the position of the knob and the position of the locking button on the knob I've often turned it too far and set it to 'play' when I wanted it at the 'cam' position. It actually means that the start-up time is longer than needed. It takes 2 seconds to carefully switch on the camera and 5 second to be ready to shoot. A CP 900 can almost be switched on using your toes with your eyes closed. The D700 has to be switched on using small fingers and care. All functions can be seen at the LCD panel on to and the video display at the rear of the camera, but I haven't looked at the video display for reading the functions yet. The buttons are in a position that more or less forces you to look at the LCD. It saves batteries too. The viewfinder cap has flipped out of my fingers a number of times. It slides off but it is made of a kind of plastic that feels slippery. I won't use it anymore unless there is a chance that the light of the sun might reach the imager via the viewfinder when making an exposure. Conclusion: I'm going to keep it. I'm not in heaven with the image quality I've reached so far (although my external flash test at F 8.0 is still to be done and that might give me a different opinion on th image than my current. F2.4 1/30 exposures due to bad weather here do not produce the best a camera can deliver. I'll get over that barrel distortion which in lots of situations might not even be visible. But I am fully in love with the possibilities and the large video display of the camera. It makes you feel more like a photographer again. I'll answer all questions re the D700 but please don't mail me, because then nobody can read the answers and others might be interested too. Frank ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ADDITION Two days after the review above, I added some words in rec.photo.digital after I had explored the camera a bit more. My opinion changed in a positive way. I think this addition was neccesary to give the camera the credits it deserves. Especially when it comes to the image quality that can be achieved. Frank ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Author: Frank van der Pol Email: frank@mediacenter.demon.nl Date: 1998/12/05 Forums: rec.photo.digital First a small addition. I wrote: > It's average in speed (almost immediate display of LCD image image > after exposure, storage of high Q image in 4 seconds). With almost immediate display I meant the live image when you don't choose the 'review' option. A lot of things can be customized with this camera, so you can also choose if and for how long you want to see the picture you just took. When you have chosen not to, you can always look at the last image by pushing a seperate 'review' button. > rotating the first knob. By pressing a button you activate a submenu > and by rotating another knob you actually choose an option within the > menu. This is true for about 50% of the functions, mostly dealing with the 'photography part' of the camera. The other half are storage, display, less used and user preference functions mainly and can be reached by the buttons on the back of the camera. Simple and quick navigation through the functions here. I already mentioned the remote control, but the D700 also has time lapse up to 99hrs 59min 59secs in 1 sec increments and a self timer up to 30 seconds in 1 sec increments and continuous mode (2 fps at lo res lo Q mode) There is one thing they forgot at Sony: The 'fly by wire' way of focussing has already been mentioned. As a result of this, the lens shows no indication of distance. When you have a situation with very low light and as a result of this, the autofocus does not work and when you can't even focus on your subject through the viewfinder, your last possibility (estimating distance and turning the focus ring to that distance) does not exist, because there is no indication of distance on the focus ring. It's what I would call a bit of a design error. I found a sharp, normal and soft mode of which each step is equal to about half the effect of a Photoshop 'sharpen' filter. The 'soft' position eliminates some of the artefacts that have been seen. I still wonder if the 'soft' mode is a softened normal image or that the 'normal' image is a slightly sharpened soft (untouched) image. I am not able to determine. Now for image quality: I've been asked if I really meant what I said about the CP 900 having a better image and that the D700 smells a bit like video camera. Uhmm, well... yes, I did. At first sight... especially looking at the .jpg pictures I had seen and the ones I took here in bad weather. They did not have as much 'work space' as the CP900 to correct images without artefacts showing up. But I don't anymore. I was dead wrong. About the image part, that is. Actually, after I chose the 'soft' setting I mentioned above, I just took a stupid picture of the current spaghetti at the rear of my PC at F8 and 1/30 in uncompressed mode using only a simple halogen light and a tripod. The result changed my thoughts completely. I think that this camera, treated in the proper manner and used with enough light and patience, can deliver great results and have the CP900 and the DCS 315 bite the dust. I can imagine nobody would believe me after making such a change in opinion, but you can see it for yourself. I only cropped the image, just to reduce download time and put it on line at: http://www.mediacenter.demon.nl/dsc/untouched.tif (650Kb) I haven't scaled it. It is absolutely untouched except for the cropping and the Macintoch/Windows byte order). It's an image that has almost no color because of the subject, but it gives a good indication of noise levels in each color channel. I will work on a more colorful image somewhere in the next days. Frank