Rating: 
Summary: Great camera, very professional, great pictures.
Review: This is a great product. If anyone got one that doesn't give him great shots, you should try and replace it, you must have had bad luck. When used properly, and when you know what you are doing the camera gives great results. Be aware that the camera is a little big, and a little heavy, but for me that is good in a camera. It is harder to make it shake if you are holding it properly. If you are only a tourist, you may be better of with a smaller model. I used to make great pictures out of my OLYMPUS 5050, it's nearly professional, but the SONY f-828 is for serious photogrphers. It's got a great feel like a 35mm and it does give me more benefits than the OLYMPUS 5050. Be sure to read the manual, there is a lot to this camera, you can't say it doesn't work properly or that it's not as good as other models untill you really know all it's options. If you don't need all its features, a smaller camera would be better, easier, and cheaper. But this camera is worth every dollar if you are serious about photography. Manual focus and manual zoom justa like a 35mm, and even the autofocus is very fast and acurate. The way it measures light and flash intensity is great, even flash pictures (with the built in flash) are very good if not excelent.
Rating:
Summary: Wonderful on Asia Trip
Review: I recently took this camera on a 3 week trip to Asia. I was most satisfied with its performance. In combination with my Motion Ml300 slate computer, I trot nor 1800 pictures. My problem is I have so many wonderful pictures, it is difficult to pick the ones I want to keep. In a group with 4 and 5 megapixel cameras, its 8mp was an eye opener. It is somewhat largish, but fits well to had. Good battery life. Takes either memory sticks or compact flash . With 2 spare batteries and a 1 GB CF card, it was great!
Rating:
Summary: if you were a photgrapher, you'd not have a problem.
Review: Love the camera, shot over 700 images with it after i got is, and before i read about this purple crap. havn't seen any of the purple in my shots. maybe its because its winter, and i take indoor pics, or maybe its because i had it less than 12 hours when i bought a UV(0) filter on it. maybe that is the answer to that problem, and if it is, then its not a problem, anyone without some kind of fliter is an idiot. 15 bucks and the lens is much safer. the lack of BW does annoy me, but PS it to BW is easy, or shoot in nightshot with a red filter. it makes nice IR pics, but i still need a darker filter to do anything outside, its still to bright.
Rating: 
Summary: A camera of extremes - good and bad
Review: I have been using this camera extensively for two weeks, although it belongs to a friend. I suppose that may make me more objective than someone who actually owns one, because I don't have to rationalize having made a $1000 investment. I wanted very much to like this camera, and there are certain things that I love about it. However, there is no way that I could use this as my primary camera. First, the good. It is absolutely the coolest lens I have ever seen, particularly on a digital camera. The zoom covers almost any shooting situation I would need, from landscape, to portraits, to sports. The fact that you can zoom by turning a ring makes it far superior to the "fly by wire" zooms so common on digital cameras. The user interface is great. It is far better than other digital cameras I have owned by Nikon, Olympus, Pentax and Ricoh. I was able to use just about every cool feature without ever looking at the owner's manual. It is very intuitive. It is much easier to use than a Nikon film camera as well. Mechanically, the camera is a gem. It feels about as rugged as my Nikon F5 (although it probably isn't.) It is incredibly solid. It is also very fast, both in the time it takes to turn on and off, and also in terms of delay when you push the shutter. For all intents and purposes, there are no delays at all, except sometimes when writing an image to storage, but even that is faster than on most other cameras. It is just a very responsive camera. Battery life is great. I never ran low, and only charged it occasionally. The movie mode is great. Easy to use, and good quality images and sound. It wouldn't totally replace a video camera, but it would be fine for occasional use. Now, the bad. All the negative things you may have read about purple fringing are true. It is not difficult to find a scene where this shows up in an unacceptable way. The white balance is really off in many scenes I've photographed. Snow looks medium grey. I know that I could probably do better on this if I read the manual, or post processed in Photoshop, but it is disturbing that with the default settings, it records scenes so inaccurately. It is not a great camera for available light. I was not able to handhold it for shots that could esily be done with my Olympus 5050. I think it is partly because of the aperature, and partly because it is an extremely long camera, where any movement is exaggerated. In side by side comparisons, some of the images from my 5 megapixel Olympus are superior to the 8 megapixel Sony 828 images, in terms of color and sharpness. Sony is really on to something here, and it is possible that some of these problems could be fixed in a future version. But I am not planning to buy one of these now. The weird thing is that now the bar has been set very high for what I would want from a user interface and lens. So even if I found a camera with better image quality (which wouldn't be hard), it would not compare favorably to the Sony in other dimensions. This two week testing period makes me want to wait a while for Sony to fix the issues with the 828, or for other companies to catch up to Sony in terms of other features.
Rating: 
Summary: What are you looking for?
Review: I love this camera. I have two children and need a camera that can take good photos as well as good video, the f828 is the only camera can can provide both. 640*480 video at 30fps ,bet you cant find better. The lens has versatility a SLR camera doesnt, 28-200mm it takes two Canon lenses to cover that lenghth. Yes there is noise and purple fringing(sometimes), but if all you want is phtots and no video then you cant loose with the Digital Rebel. But if you want a versatile camera that can handle just about any event, look no further than the F828. sample pics:
http://home.satx.rr.com/javierandsons/
Rating:
Summary: Additional info on the purple fringing problem
Review: I don't own this camera, but have been researching it online. It seems there is disagreement among reviewers here regarding the alleged chromatic aberration (purple fringing) issue. The most thorough and objective online review site I know of for digital cameras is Digital Photography Review (www.dpreview.com). As an aid to other consumers concerned about this issue, I offer the following quote from their review of this camera: "It's a huge pity but the DSC-F828 has a fringing problem. We'll call it 'purple fringing' but it's clearly a combination of chromatic aberrations caused by the interaction of the lens and the microlenses on the sensor and enhanced by a certain amount of blooming which carries the color out further than the original artifact. While worse at full wide angle and maximum aperture (28 mm equiv., F2.0) it is visible throughout the zoom range and at smaller apertures. It's clearly possible to take images which will never suffer from this effect, it does require either a strong backlight or sunlight reflection to become apparent. The issue really is that in a normal shooting situation you would have no real idea if the image had suffered until you return to your computer and view the image at full size. It's also possible to reduce the visiblity of these artifacts with careful post-processing, using specific CA reduction tools or simple color replacement filters. However there is no getting away from the fact that these artifacts should not be there." I've viewed about a dozen sample photos that illustrate this aberration, and I agree with the above assessment. Also, I was not at all impressed with the DSC-F828's noise level in low-light situations given this camera's price point. There is a lot of potential in this model (8MP, Carl Zeiss lens, etc.), but at the end of the day, image quality is what matters most in a camera. Sony has consistently upgraded this camera about every 12 months for the last four years (F505 - Aug '99; F505V - Apr '00; F707 - Aug '01; F717 - Sep '02; F828 - Aug '03). I'm going to hold off until the next iteration which should be due out around August 2004. Hopefully, Sony will address these issues.
Rating: 
Summary: Purple People Eaters!
Review: Perhaps Sony made this camera specifically for Prince. I'm not sure who else would enjoy having all this purple added to nearly every single picture. It's terrible that for 1000 bucks, you have ot put up with this shoddy performance. Folks, 8 megapixels don't mean a darned thing when the implementation is this horrible. I returned mine and I used the money on a Digital Rebel and a Sigma 75-300 mm lens for the same price. I get much better pictures, and I can use the lenses I buy on future cameras I buy. Good riddance, Sony. Now apparently your cameras are as bad as your customer support has always been.
Rating:
Summary: what a joke
Review: This camera produces very large files with poor quality. I get similar results with a 4mp and 5mp digital camera. Noise level too high. Definitely not worth the money.
Rating:
Summary: I fell in love, and then got a divorce
Review: I am an owner of the F505V and the F717. When I saw the F828, I fell in love. They fixed (and improved) many of the things that bothered me about the F717. The swivel is much stronger, the flash pops out much smoother, the menus are animated, the ER emitters are no longer in the lens area (which creates a problem when using filters). Those are just some of the untechnical things that popped out to me. Anyways, I read the reviews and they complained about the "purple fringe" which Id never heard about before. I decided to buy the camera anyway. When the camera arrived last night, I took some shots around the house with the F828 and the same shots with the F717. I absolutely need to agree with the reviews about the purple problem. Its super obvious and very annoying. Around the edges of objects (when shooting towards light) have a purple glow to one side. The gold chain holding a light on the ceiling had a red glow to one side of it (I assume that is the purple and gold mixing). Every single shot (shot towards light) had a noticable purple fringe. I reviewed the same shots with the F717. For the first time, I noticed the "purple fringe" on my F717. However, it is so faint it is *almost* unnoticeable. So faint, that at normal zoom it would never be seen. Much, much better than the F828. I am not going to be like those who give this product 1 star because of this problem. Its an amazing camera but with a serious flaw. I'll give it three stars, subtracting two for the image quality issues. If Sony releases a new updated version with this problem fixed, I will rush out and get it. Mine went back to the store.
Rating:
Summary: As good as it gets.
Review: Exceptional, fantastic, more than you can possibly expect for this price. It's not absolute perfection, but how close to perfect do you need to get? Michael Reichmann's reviews will tell you a lot more than I can in 1,000 words: www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/cameras/sony828.shtml www.luminous-landscape.com/essays/cognative.shtml The only thing I would add to his comments is: get a polarizing filter! For $30 you can fix almost all chromatic abberation (CA)and blooming, which most consumers can't even find in these pictures. Thank you Sony for making a digicam that will take filters! And if the high-ISO noise bothers you and you can't avoid using high ISO numbers (why not?), buy Noise Ninja for $29 and clean it up quickly and easily. But these issues only come up when compared to professional digital SLR backs. You won't see the F828 compared to any other "regular" digital camera because there just is no comparison. This is, as of January 2004, as good as it gets. Unless you're willing to trade your car for a camera...
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