Do any current digicam owners plan to upgrade to the DSC-D700? If so, what are you replacing? The advantages seem to be: nice lens and more control (incl flash sync, uncompressed images, manual exposure). The main disadvantage is HIGH price for almost no increase in resolution (the images are 64 pixels wider than a D600L or CP900 and actually smaller than a DC260, price rumored to be US$1800).

If it had killer resolution (at least 1536x1024) it would be a much more attractive camera. At this point I have to see more output from the camera to decide what it's worth. I'm afraid that the high price point will mean little penetration into the "casual" digicam shooter market and hence few, if any sample galleries (witness RD-175, DCS4xx, DCS5xx, etc).

-- Ben Jackson (ben@ben.com), October 23, 1998

Answers

Yeah I'm buying one, sort of, only it's called the Minolta Dimage 1500. Minolta uses the same CCD (1/2" Sony wfine) as the Sony D700, and will cost less than half as much. The Sonys resolution will be (slightly) higher than Minoltas, only because Sony hung that monstrosity of a lens in front to make it happen, but as for the other features you mentioned? The Dimage is right there with you. I'm replacing my DC-120, sold back in July

-- Foote (jonfoo@ptinet.net), October 24, 1998.

Ben, let me know where you read the SONY DSC-D700 has manual exposure (not exposure override!)?

Ako

-- akos szilvasi (akos@mediaone.net), November 05, 1998.

I was just looking at a Japanese page on the PC Watch site (sorry, don't have the URL handy) that sounded like it was just AP, SP autoexposure, not full manual. (I'd thought it offered full manual also.) But then, my translation capabilities from Japanese aren't so hot! I should be talking to a Sony guy in that division in the next few days, will ask him, report back here whatever I find.

-- Dave Etchells (detchells@imaging-resource.com), November 05, 1998.