Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828

The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot it with no fill flash or reflector to open the shadows. The object is to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the DSC-F828 handled the challenge pretty well.

All of the shots here were captured using the F828's "real" color mode, which produced more natural-looking skin tones than did its "normal" color option. (See Far Field and Davebox tests below for examples comparing results from the Real and Normal color modes.) The shot at right was taken with no exposure compensation adjustment at all, very unusual for this test. I also used the camera's low contrast setting in the example at right, to help tame the harsh lighting. (The 828's normal contrast setting produced rather dark shadows and over-bright highlights, see the side by side comparison below to see the difference between the two.) Midtone detail is pretty good, with good detail in the shadows, and only the strongest highlights lost. I chose the Auto white balance, though the Daylight setting also produced good results.

Skin tones are about right, and the blue flowers in the bouquet and Marti's pants are only slightly darker than in real life. (Many digicams have trouble with this blue, but the F828 gets just about the right amount of purplish tint in them.) Overall color looks good throughout the rest of the frame as well, with good saturation. Resolution is excellent, with a lot of fine detail visible throughout the frame, even in the fabric texture of the flowers. Shadow detail is high as well, with reasonably low image noise. (Given its 8-megapixel sensor, I was expecting to see quite a lot of noise in the F828's images, but felt that in this instance at least, it wasn't all that bad. There's more noise here than I've seen in images from the best 5 megapixel cameras, but not an amount that I'd consider to be a problem. - What constitutes "acceptable" image noise is very much in the eye of the beholder though, so you may feel differently.)

Perhaps most interesting is how well Sony's RGB+E sensor technology preserves shape and shading in the red flowers. Most digicams tend to either under-saturate these, or lose much of the detail. The improved color accuracy of the RGB+E sensor appears to do an excellent job of preserving detail that others cameras typically lose.

Normal Contrast	Low Contrast
Contrast was high with the camera's default contrast setting, under the deliberately harsh lighting of this test.	The F828's low contrast adjustment moderated the effect of the lighting considerably, holding onto somewhat more highlight detail, while opening up the shadows nicely.

To view an entire exposure series from zero to +1.0 EV, see files F828OUTAP0r.HTM through F828OUTAP3r.HTM on the thumbnail index page. (Files with "LC" in the name, such as F828OUTALCP0r.HTM were shot with the contrast adjustment set to "low".)

Again, excellent resolution and detail, moderate noise.

Results in this close-up shot are similar to the wider shot above, and the F828's 7x lens does a great job of preventing any distortion of Marti's features. The shot at right was again shot with no exposure compensation adjustment. This time though, I shot with the normal contrast setting only, which resulted in good midtones, but with darker shadows and brighter highlights. Detail is outstanding, with sharp details in Marti's face and hair. (Probably more than Marti would care to see full-screen.;-) Perhaps because of the higher contrast and resulting darker shadows, there's more noise present in the shadows here. Still not what I'd call bad, but clearly more noticeable than on the best 5 megapixel cameras.

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +0.7 EV, see files F828FACAP0r.HTM through F828FACAP2r.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Normal Flash High Intensity

Slow-Sync Mode Normal Intensity

Good intensity and coverage with the built-in flash at the high intensity setting.

The F828's built-in flash illuminated the subject well with the High intensity setting, but the Normal and Low settings underexposed somewhat. Color is pretty good, though the incandescent lighting results in a slight orange cast on the background, some of which can be seen in Marti's features somewhat. The camera's Slow-Sync flash mode combines the flash with a longer exposure, allowing more ambient light into the image. Once again, I found the best results with the High intensity setting, as the Normal and Low settings both left the image too dark for my tastes. The longer exposure results in a more pronounced warm cast, but color is still pleasing overall.

(Note that this was shot with my new indoor test setup. The painted backdrop is slightly darker than was the wall in the original set, which may cause some cameras to require less exposure compensation than has been typical in the past. The overall light level and coloration are virtually identical to the old indoor shot though, to maintain compatibility with previous reviews.)

Auto White Balance

Incandescent White Balance

Manual White Balance

Great color with the Manual white balance setting, moderate image noise.

This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting. The F828's Manual white balance produced excellent results here. The Auto and Incandescent settings resulted in warmer color casts, but some people may actually prefer the results from the Incandescent setting, as being more faithful to the color of the original lighting. The main shot was taken with a +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment, and once again, all images were shot in the camera's "real" color mode. Color is accurate with good saturation, and image noise is "moderate" - higher than the lowest I've seen on this shot, but not yet to the point that I'd consider really objectionable.

These images were shot at ISO 100, as that's about the lowest I'm comfortable going on this shot, given how long the exposure times become below that point. As noted, image noise here is higher than the best I've seen, and I'm a little on the fence as to how I feel about it. - While I'd definitely like to see less, I think I'd be happy with the results here, if I owned the F828. As I've often said though, this is a very subjective area, so everyone should look at the images closely themselves, and see how they feel about the noise levels. - See the results shot at ISO 64 below though, as the noise level there is indeed a good bit lower.

To see the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files F828INMP0r.HTM through F828INMP4r.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

ISO Series:
Noise on the F828 is overall a bit better than I'd expected, given its 8 megapixel sensor. At ISO 64, the image noise is low indeed, increasingly steadily with increasing ISO, reaching very high levels at ISO 800. (Keep in mind though, that, since this is an 8 megapixel sensor, one trick for shooting at very high ISO would be to just resample the images to a lower resolution. This has the effect of averaging-out the noise between adjacent pixels, possibly bringing the noise down to acceptable levels. This obviously doesn't work if you really need the full 8 megapixels of resolution, but if you're going to be printing images at smaller sizes for publication, you can easily get away with cutting the resolution down to 2-3 megapixels or so, for the sake of attaining lower noise levels.)

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Excellent resolution and detail, with nearly accurate color.

For this shot, I preferred the slightly cool cast of the Manual white balance setting to the slightly warm tone of the Auto white balance. (The Daylight setting resulted in a warmer, more yellow color cast.) Resolution is very high, with a lot of fine detail visible in the tree limbs and front shrubbery. (Keep in mind that the F828's 8.0-megapixel CCD really stretches the limits of this poster as a test target. Even though the poster was made from a 500MB scan of a 4x5 negative shot with a tack-sharp lens, the F828 extracts about all the detail that's to be found here.) Details are also sharp from corner to corner, with only the slightest softness in the top left corner.

Excellent resolution and detail, with a good dynamic range.

This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows.

This is my ultimate "resolution shot," given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the DSC-F828 performed exceptionally well, easily surpassing the best 6 megapixel cameras I've tested. Detail is outstanding in the tree limbs over the roof, as well as in fine foliage in front of the house, with great definition in the tree bark patterns and leaf details. Details are also sharp throughout the frame, without any obvious softness in the corners. Like most digicams, the F828 loses most of the detail in the bright white paint surrounding the bay window, a trouble spot for many digicams. Detail is strong in the shadow area above the front door though (perhaps helped slightly by the porch light seen in the photo), evidence of the DSC-F828's excellent dynamic range. Contrast was high with the default setting, so I snapped this series with the camera's low contrast option. The table below shows a standard resolution and quality series, followed by ISO, sharpness, saturation, and contrast series.

Resolution Series:

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG	"Normal" JPEG
3,264 x 2,448	F828FARLC3264Fr	F828FARLC3264Nr
2,592 x 1,944	F828FARLC2592Fr	-
2,048 x 1,536	F828FARLC2048Fr	-
1,280 x 960	F828FARLC1280Fr	-
640 x 480	F828FARLC0640Fr	-

ISO Series:

Sharpness Series:

Saturation Series:
The shots below show the effect of the saturation adjustment of the F828, as well as the difference between its "Normal" and "Real" color settings. The "Normal" color setting is more saturated, a little bit too much so for my personal taste, but many people will likely prefer it. The "Real" color option produces colors more representative of the original scene.

Normal Color
Low	Normal	High

Low	Normal	High
Real Color

Contrast Series:
The F828's contrast adjustment works exactly as you'd expect it to, cutting or boosting contrast, without affecting either exposure or color rendering as I've often found to be the case with such controls on other cameras.

Contrast Series
Low	Normal	High

Lens Zoom Range

Excellent 7x zoom range.

I routinely shoot this series of images to show the range of field of view for each camera, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto (7x, in this case), and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. The DSC-F828's lens is equivalent to a 28-200mm zoom on a 35mm camera. That corresponds to a good wide angle to a pretty substantial telephoto. (Most cameras' zooms only go to about 35mm at the wide end, so the extra coverage of a 28mm equivalent is very welcome for anyone working close quarters.) Following are the results at each zoom setting.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Pretty good color, with great resolution and detail.

This shot is often a tough test for digicams, as the abundance of blue in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into producing a warm color balance. The F828's white balance system did very well with it though, the Auto white balance setting surprisingly producing the best results overall, though the Daylight setting produced similar color. (The Manual setting was a bit too cool.) Skin tones are pretty good, though a hint warm, and the blue robe looks nearly right, without any purplish tints in the shadows. Resolution is excellent in the embroidery of the blue robe and on the red vest, but the camera's 8.0-megapixel CCD is easily capable of showing more detail than this poster has in it. (The original data file for this poster was only 20MB.)

Standard Macro Shot

Macro with Flash

A very small macro area with excellent detail in the dollar bill. The flash is blocked by the lens at closest approach, however, and there's quite a bit of barrel distortion present (although not obvious in this shot).

The F828 performed very well in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of only 2.11 x 1.58 inches (54 x 40 millimeters). Resolution is very high, and detail is excellent in the dollar bill. However, the coins and brooch are soft due to the very short shooting distance. There's a lot of softness in the corners, particulalry on the left side of the frame. Also, while it's not obvious in this shot, there's quite a bit of barrel distortion present, due to the lens having to be used at its maximum wide angle setting. Partly because maximum macro is only available at the widest-angle zoom setting, the F828's long lens barrel blocks the flash here, making it ineffective for this close-up shot. - Plan on using external lighting for the closest macro shots.

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Manual White Balance

Very nice color and exposure.

The F828's Manual white balance setting did the best job here, with a good white value in the mini resolution target and large color block. However, the Auto and Daylight settings resulted in warmer images. Exposure is about right, and the F828 has no trouble distinguishing the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 target. The large color blocks look pretty good, with about accurate saturation and color. The shadow area of the charcoal briquettes shows great detail, with low noise. Following are ISO, contrast, sharpness, saturation, and effects series.

ISO Series:

Sharpness Series:

Saturation Series:

Normal Color
Low	Normal	High

Low	Normal	High
Real Color

Contrast Series:

Normal Color
Low	Normal	High

Low	Normal	High
Real Color

Effects Series:

Effects Series
Normal	Negative Art	Solarize	Sepia

Low-Light Tests

Excellent low-light performance, with great color balance, and accurate framing and focusing in total darkness, but more visible noise than the best 5 megapixel models.

The F828 did very well in my low-light tests, offering full manual exposure control and a maximum exposure time of 30 seconds. The F828 also offers Sony's outstanding infrared-based Night Framing and Hologram Autofocus options for excellent framing and focusing capability, even in complete darkness.

The F828 produced clear, bright, usable images down to the 1/16 foot-candle (0.67 lux) limit of my test, with good color at all five ISO settings. The F828's Noise Reduction system did an good job of keeping noise in check, but I noticed more black speckles in the images caused by the dark-frame subtraction noise reduction process' handling of hot pixels. As I've been finding with other digicams, the normal noise measurement (standard deviation of luminance) does a poor job of characterizing what's going on in the F828's images. Even though the standard deviation is lower than high-end five-megapixel camera models (such as the Canon PowerShot G5), the noise in the 828's images is more visually distracting, and a fair bit of fine detail is lost to the noise-suppression processing. The results aren't bad, far from it, they're just not as good as I've seen from the category-leading 5 megapixel cameras.

As more 8-megapixel cameras make it onto the market, we'll see how the 828 stacks up against them. For now though, it appears that the jump from 5 to 8 megapixels may well be the point at which there are some noticeable tradeoffs to be made between resolution and image noise.

The table below shows the best exposure I was able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.

	1fc 11lux	1/2fc 5.5lux	1/4fc 2.7lux	1/8fc 1.3lux	1/16fc 0.67lx
ISO 64	2 secs F2.2	4 secs F2.2	8 secs F2.2	15 secs F2.2	30 secs F2.2
ISO 100	1.6 secs F2.2	3 secs F2.2	7 secs F2.2	13 secs F2.2	25 secs F2.2
ISO 200	1 secs F2.2	2 secs F2.2	4 secs F2.2	8 secs F2.2	20 secs F2.2
ISO 400	1/ 2 secs F2.2	1 secs F2.2	2 secs F2.2	4 secs F2.2	10 secs F2.2
ISO 800	1/ 4 secs F2.2	1/ 2 secs F2.2	1 secs F2.2	2.5 secs F2.2	5 secs F2.2
"Night Shot" scene mode	1.3 secs F2.2	2 secs F2.2	2 secs F2.2	2 secs F2.2	2 secs F2.2

Flash Range Test

A powerful flash, only very slight falloff at the 14 foot limit of our test.

In my testing, the F828's flash illuminated the test target all the way out to 14 feet, without any significant decrease in intensity. (And the 828 doesn't resort to the trick of "secretly" boosting ISO to get greater flash range performance, as is done by many digicams these days.) Below is the flash range series, showing the results with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target.

8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft	12 ft	13 ft	14 ft
1/ 80 secs F2.5	1/ 80 secs F2.5	1/ 80 secs F2.5	1/ 80 secs F2.5	1/ 80 secs F2.5	1/ 80 secs F2.8	1/ 80 secs F2.8

ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test

Very high resolution, 1,600- 1,650 lines of "strong detail." Average barrel distortion, higher than average pincushion though.

The F828 performed very well on the "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 1,200 lines per picture height, in both horizontal and vertical directions, but I found "strong detail" out to at least 1,600 lines vertically, and perhaps 1,650 lines in the horizontal direction. "Extinction" of the target patterns didn't occur until about 1,950 lines.

Optical distortion on the F828 is lower than average at the wide-angle end, where I measured approximately 0.7 percent barrel distortion, very good for a 28mm zoom, but still more than I like to see. (Barrel and pincushion distortion are pet peeves of mine. Most digicam lenses show 0.8-1.0 percent barrel distortion at the wide angle end, so it's not fair to single out any one manufacturer's cameras, but I'd really like to see all lenses improve in this area.) Interestingly though, the F828 gets better quickly as you zoom away from the full wide-angle setting. At an equivalent focal length of only 33.5mm, the barrel distortion drops to only 0.25 percent, an excellent figure by any measure. As usual, the extreme telephoto end did a little better, as I measured a 0.32 percent pincushion distortion there.

Chromatic aberration looks to be higher than average, showing about nine or ten pixels of fairly strong coloration on either side of the target lines. (This distortion is visible as a very slight colored fringe around the objects at the edges of the field of view on the resolution target.)

In my test shooting, I found some evidence of the "purple fringe" problem, but seemingly less than some other reviewers did. (This is an optical phenomena that produces bright purple fringes around the edges of very bright objects in the image. It's apparently caused by some combination of conventional chromatic aberration and diffraction by the microlenses on the surface of the CCD itself.) I was able to trigger the purple fringe problem in the studio, particularly with very strong light sources, at relatively close range, and with the lens set to its wide angle position and maximum aperture. For whatever reason though, I saw little or no evidence of it in most of my test images. Not to say that the problem isn't there, just that the range of shooting conditions I worked under didn't seem to trigger it to the extent seen by some reviewers. For what it's worth, it does seem to require a pretty severe light overload to trigger the phenomena.

Resolution Series, Wide Angle

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG	"Normal" JPEG
3,264 x 2,448	F828RESWLF	F828RESWLN
2,592 x 1,944	F828RESMF	-
2,048 x 1,536	F828RESWSF	-
1,280 x 960	F828RESWTF	-
640 x 480	F828RESWTTF	-

Resolution Test, Telephoto

3,264 x 2,448 (Fine, Tele)

F828RESTLF

Sharpness Series

Sharpness Series
Soft	Normal	Sharp