Sony has announced the Cyber-shot DSC-F828 digital camera, featuring an 8-megapixel CCD sensor with a new four-colour filter.

 

Sony has announced the Cyber-shot DSC-F828 digital camera, featuring an 8-megapixel CCD sensor with a new four-colour filter. It is the company’s first camera with dual CompactFlash and Memory Stick slots.

The new model is targeted at serious photographers and boasts a Carl Zeiss Vario-Sonnar T* 7x zoom lens with a focal length equivalent to 28-200mm on a 35mm camera and maximum aperture range of f2.0-2.8. Like the F717, Sony’s previous top-of-the-range model, the F828 has a lens-centred swivelling body that allows the lens to be rotated upwards through 70 degrees and downwards through 30 degrees. The body is made from a rugged and light black magnesium alloy, and the camera weighs only 906 grams when kitted out with battery and cards. It also has an electronic viewfinder and the same sized (1.8-inch) LCD monitor as the F717.

The new camera offers an extensive range of manual controls, including P/A/S/M shooting modes plus scene selections for Twilight, Twilight Portrait, Landscape and Portrait photographs. Shutter speeds range from 30 seconds to 1/3200 sec and apertures can be set from f2.0 (wide) or f2.8 (tele) to f8. Centre-weighted average, multi-pattern and spot metering are provided, along with ISO settings from 100 to 800.

The lens can focus to within 2cm from a subject in macro mode and has a normal focusing range from 50cm to infinity. The Five-Area Multi-Point Auto Focus system evaluates five separate areas of the frame and intelligently focuses on the subject, displaying the selected focus point. Users can also choose any of the five points for manual focus control.

The F828 includes Sony’s NightShot and NightFraming functions. The former allows the camera to capture infrared images in total darkness at a distance of up to 3 metres, while the latter uses a Hologram AF illuminator to light up the subject, then lights up the scene with the appropriate level of flash.

Sony’s new RGB+E four-colour filter system, which is used with the F828’s 8-megapixel CCD image sensor, adds an ’emerald’ patch to the filter pattern, making its response closer to human colour perception. This is said to give the new camera excellent colour reproduction, particularly with blue, blue-green and red hues. Maximum image resolution is 3360 x 2460 pixels.
A new Real Imaging Processor uses linear matrix processing to convert the four-colour signal into an ideal RGB colour space and claims to reduce data processing time by almost 40%. Its higher efficiency also reduces power consumption and gives the camera improved responsiveness, minimising shutter lag and cycle time. Sony claims the Cyber-shot F828 can capture an eight-megapixel image in almost half the time required by typical five-megapixel cameras.

The F828 records video with 640 x 480 pixel resolution at 30 frames per second in MPEG-VX format. Clip capacity is limited by available storage. The camera is expected to go on sale in Australia during November at a price yet to be determined.