Sony's high-end cameras have consistently impressed us at PC Authority, but just recently they’ve fallen short of Labs Winner status. The DSC-F717 changes all that, with its heady mix of image quality, features and design propelling it to the top of the pile.
Admittedly, the rotating body design won’t appeal to everyone, especially as the F717 is one of the larger cameras on test, but it makes it easier to take shots that aren’t at eye level. We also like the EVF (electronic viewfinder) that can be used for image playback as well as live shooting. Some may feel that the 5x optical zoom is small considering the F717's 151mm depth - after all, Pentax squeezes a 5x lens into a camera only 40mm deep - but the fast f/2-f/2.4 Carl Zeiss lens is one of the best to have ever been fitted to a consumer digital camera.
Image quality is as good as you’d expect and we found that even shots taken from the hip were always perfectly exposed and sharp, even at full telephoto. Indoors, the F717 produced almost clinically clean photos with low noise levels. Colours were slightly oversaturated, as we’ve come to expect from Sony, and note that the DSC-V1's saturation and contrast controls are missing.
Resolution was respectable from the 5-megapixel CCD, although some chromatic aberrations were introduced by the big lens. Outdoors, the Sony took superb shot after superb shot. Exposure on our portrait test was near perfect, while the fill-in flash intensity (which can be altered) again produced natural skin tones.
Macro ability is nowhere near as good as previous models, though - we captured an area of 39 x 29mm, but the corners of the image were quite blurred. However, this is more than made up for by other features, such as the night framing mode, which allows the camera to achieve perfect focus in complete darkness.
The sheer number of buttons and controls will intimidate most people, but the Jog Dial, metering and white-balance buttons are useful to have. A manual focus ring is also welcome, but it’s hard to check focus, even with the magnified preview. We could go on and talk about the Info-Lithium battery that lasts over four hours and the fast USB 2 interface, but the F717 is already the clear winner here. The only reason it doesn’t find itself on the A List is the arrival of Canon’s stunning EOS 300D, but this costs just shy of $2000.