Sony Cyber-shot DSC-F828 Digital Camera Review: Exposure & Flash (2024)

Exposure

In the Scene exposure mode, you have the option of shooting in Twilight, TwilightPortrait, Landscape, or Portrait preset modes. Twilight mode sets up the camerafor shooting night scenes, using a slower shutter speed to capture more ambientlight. Use Twilight mode in any situation where the lighting is too dim to givea good exposure in normal exposure mode, but be aware that the camera will beusing slower shutter speeds. Mount it on a tripod or otherwise provide stablesupport. Twilight Portrait operates under the same guidelines, but automaticallyuses the Slow Sync flash setting, so foreground subjects (people, for instance)will be properly illuminated by the flash, while any natural illumination inthe background will show up in the shot as well. Landscape mode simply usesa smaller lens aperture to increase the depth of field, keeping the foregroundand background in focus. Landscape mode typically uses slower shutter speeds,so a tripod is recommended in all but bright lighting. Portrait mode works inthe opposite manner, using a larger aperture to decrease the depth of field.This produces a sharply focused subject in front of a slightly blurred background.

The F828 employs a Multi-Pattern metering system as its default, dividing thescene into several small sections and taking exposure readings for each section.The readings are then evaluated (not necessarily averaged) to determine thebest overall exposure. Center-Weighted and Spot metering options are also available,accessed by pressing the Metering button on the side panel and turning the Commanddial. You can increase or decrease the exposure with the F828's Exposure Compensationadjustment, which ranges from -2 to +2 exposure values (EV) in one-third-stepincrements and which is adjusted by pressing the Exposure Compensation buttonon the top panel and turning the Command dial.

In addition to the F828's Night Shot and Night Framing low-light features (discussedin detail in the Viewfinder section earlier), the camera also offers an impressiveNoise Reduction system, adding "Clear Color Noise Reduction" and "ClearLuminance Noise Reduction" to the "NR Slow Shutter" found inthe F717. NR Slow Shutter is fairly conventional dark-frame subtraction noisereduction, but appears to go a bit further than most. Judging by the camera'soperation, it looks like the F828 is shooting a "dark" frame aftereach exposure when the noise reduction mode is active, and then subtractingthe noise in that dark frame from the captured image. It's obvious that thecamera is doing something like this, because it takes roughly twice as longfor it to complete a long exposure than the exposure time of the shot itself.With dark frame subtraction, any hot pixel that saturated and went all the wayto white ends up black in the final image, since it was pure white in both theactual photo and the dark frame itself. (By way of explanation, "white"means a value of 255. If the hot pixel was white in both the image and dark-noisereference frame, when the subtraction is done, 255-255=0, or black.)

Clear Color NR and Clear Luminance NR are a bit more mysterious. If I get furtherdetails on their operation from Sony, I'll pass them along here. From theirnames though, it sounds to me like Clear Color NR looks at color noise at higherlight levels, while Clear Luminance NR works on luminance (brightness) in darkerareas. AFAIK though, both are purely image processing techniques, not subtractingnoise patterns from the image data directly.

An AE Lock button on the rear panel lets you lock the exposure reading withoutalso locking the focus. (As happens when you half-press the Shutter button.)AE Lock works well with Spot and Center-Weighted metering, as you can base theexposure on a particular area of the subject without also having to lock thefocus on that area as well. Simply aim the center of the viewfinder at the portionof the subject you want properly exposed and press the AE Lock button. The exposurewill be locked until the Shutter button is fully depressed or until the AE Lockbutton is pressed again.

ISO can be adjusted to 100, 200, 400, or 800 sensitivity equivalents, or seton Auto. The F828's White Balance adjustment offers seven settings: One-Push(manual), Auto, Daylight, Cloudy, Fluorescent, Incandescent, and a new Flashsetting. The One-Push Set option lets you manually set the white balance, basedon a white card held in front of the lens. The 10-second Self-Timer mode isactivated via the Self-Timer/Index button on the rear panel. Once in Self-Timermode, a full press of the Shutter button kicks off the timer, which counts down10 seconds before firing the shutter.

The F828 also offers a versatile Picture Effects menu, a standard feature onSony digicams. The menu offers three creative options: Negative Art, Sepia,and Solarize. Negative Art reverses the color and brightness of the image. Sepiachanges the image into brown, monochromatic tones. The Solarize option is reallymore of a level-slicing function, dividing the image into areas of fairly "flat"color. (Not really a "solarization" effect as old-line film typeswould understand the term.) These effects are "live" in Record mode,so you get a preview of the effect on the LCD monitor before you record theimage. The F828 also offers a Sharpness function, as well as Saturation andContrast adjustments that weren't previously on the F717 model. A Color adjustmentoffers Real and Standard settings, with "Standard" apparently producingslightly more saturated images.

Flash
The pop-up flash on the F828 features true TTL (Through The Lens)metering, for more accurate flash exposures. (This is surprisingly rare inthe current digicam market. Many cameras from "camera" companiesthat you would think surely would have TTL metering do not.) The flash operatesin Auto (no icon), Forced, Suppressed, and Slow-Sync modes, with a Red-EyeReduction mode that can be enabled through the Setup menu. Auto mode letsthe camera decide when to fire the flash, based on existing lighting conditions.Forced means that the flash always fires, regardless of light, and Suppressedsimply means that the flash never fires. Slow-Sync mode times the flash witha slower shutter speed, allowing more ambient light in to balance the flashexposure. Red-Eye Reduction mode tells the camera to fire a small pre-flashbefore firing the full flash to reduce the effect of red-eye. Once enabledthrough the Setup menu, the Red-Eye Reduction flash fires with both Autoand Forced modes. Flash intensity can be manually controlled via the Recordmenu with choices of High, Normal, and Low. A sliding switch on the sideof the flash compartment releases the flash. However, through the Setup menu,you can set the flash to automatically pop up whenever an active flash modeis enabled.

The F828 features a true hot-shoe external flash connection on top of thecamera. This greatly increases the options for connecting an external flash.The F828 also has the ACC Sony accessory flash/remote trigger input socketon the side of the lens. (Note though, that the ACC connection is proprietaryto the Sony external flash units.) Thanks to an array of extra contacts inits hot shoe (and associated camera smarts to go along with them), the F828supports Sony's neat new HVL-F32X external flash unit, which offers the higherpower capability of an external unit, while still retaining the advantagesof true TTL flash metering. (This combo of TTL flash metering with an externalflash unit is even more rare than TTL flash metering itself.)

Special Recording Modes
Like many Sony digicams, the F828 offers a number of special recording modes,including RAW, TIFF, Voice, E-Mail, Exposure Bracketing, and Burst. The TIFFoption saves a high-resolution uncompressed TIFF version of each image, inaddition to the standard JPEG version, at whatever image size you'veselected. Voice mode lets you record a five-second sound clip to accompanya still image, with the audio recording starting immediately after the imagecapture. The E-Mail option records a still image at the 320 x 240-pixel JPEGsize for easy E-mail transmission, again in addition to a full-resolutionfile, at whatever image size you've selected in the menu system. This letsyou capture full-resolution images for storage and printing, while at thesame time recording smaller versions that you can just drop into an E-mailto share with others.

Exposure Bracketing captures three images with one press of the Shutter button(one at the normal exposure, one underexposed, and one overexposed). Theamount of variation between exposures is adjustable through the Record menu,with options of 0.3, 0.7, and 1.0 EV steps. "Burst" mode capturesa rapid series of seven images. (The actual frame rate and the number ofimages in the series may be limited by available memory card space, dependingon the resolution and quality settings, though.) Through the Drive setting,you can opt for Speed Priority Burst mode or Framing Priority Burst mode.Speed Priority blanks the viewfinder display to improve cycle time slightly,while Framing Priority keeps the display live so you can see what the imageis pointed at. As it turns out, there isn't a huge difference between thetwo modes, but Speed Priority is indeed a little faster.

Movie Mode
The Movie mode is accessed via the Mode dial on top of the camera, by selectingthe film frame icon. You can record moving images with sound at either 640x 480 or 160 x 112 pixels, with Fine and Standard quality options for the640-pixel size. (Full 640x480 movies are very rare in the digicam world,and even more rare is the F828's ability to record them nonstop at 30 frames/second.(Note though, that this recording rate can only be sustained when using aMemory Stick PRO or IBM/Hitachi Microdrive CFII card. Even very fast chip-basedCF cards won't work, the camera apparently checks specifically for a Microdrivebefore it will let you use this mode when the CF slot is selected.) The F828employs Sony's MPEG VX technology, which lets you record for as long as thememory card has space. (The amount of available space varies with the qualitysetting and resolution.) A timer appears in the LCD monitor to let you knowhow long you've been recording and approximately how much recording timeis available.

The F828 also provides limited movie editing capabilities. While most digicamusers won't be looking for full A/B roll video editing from their cameras,I've often found that I wanted to trim off material from the beginning orend of a video I've recorded, or to extract an interesting bit of actionfrom the middle of a much longer clip. The F828 provides for this via anoption on the Playback menu called Divide. As its name suggests, Divide worksby dividing movies into two segments. Do this once to trim away spuriousmaterial at the front of the clip you're interested in, and do it a secondtime to remove unwanted footage at the end. Once you've split the movie intoparts like this, throw away the segments you don't need, or keep them aroundto show your viewers how lucky they are that you're only showing them the"interesting" parts. ;-) The screenshot at right shows the Dividefunction in action.

After enabling the Divide function through the Playback menu, the F828 startsto play back the movie. You simply press the center of the Multi-Controllerto stop the playback where you'd like to make an edit. From there, you canscroll backward or forward frame-by-frame until you find the point whereyou'd like to divide the movie. You can then either delete the unwanted portionof the movie or keep it on the memory card. As noted, the Divide functionis great for "editing" out the best part of a movie file, giventhat you can make an unlimited number of divides. You just can't put thepieces back together again in the camera. For that, you'll have to use theincluded software.

Multi Burst
Also accessed through the Movie option under the Setup menu, the F828features a Multi Burst mode, which captures a rapid burst of 16 images. Oncecaptured, the images are played back as a movie file. Because image captureis so fast, the effect is of a slow-motion sequence. Three frame intervalrates are available through the Record menu, 1/7.5, 1/15, and 1/30. You canalso set image quality (Fine or Standard), Picture Effects, and Sharpness.

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