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Author Topic: Killed my cell-phone, so I bought a Sony-Ericsson S710a  (Read 1586 times)
nelsonfoto
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« on: November 22, 2005, 11:28:04 AM »

Not a bad unit. A bit more than I wanted to have to pay, but I'm 10 months off the mark for an upgrade allowance which means - you guessed it - I had to pay full price for whatever I chose.

Lowest price I was going to get by with was around $300 for anything resembling quality. I'm not in the mood for another phone-fragging, so no more cheap-crap flip-phones.

The SE was $449 with a c-note rebate, which brings it down to the price of the slimmer, though less rugged/less loaded Razr V3 at $350 cash-n-carry (zero rebates). The Sony-Ericsson also takes SD mem cards up to 128mb (as told to me by my Cingular agent) which allows me to make many captures. The kit comes with a USB mem-card reader and 32mb of memory.

The S710a is a slider.... the face rotates, exposing the keypad. When closed, the phone resembles a P&S digi-camera. Hard to tell it's a phone at first glance.

The camera is a 1.3 mega-pixel unit recording stills and video with up to 8x zoom. It has a huge viewing screenfor you chimps - 2.3" and 262k colors. Spot-meter option equipped, though at this time I am not finding the info on that option, so not sure how many degrees, etc. Shooting modes include NEGATIVE, BLACK AND WHITE, SEPIA, & SOLARIZED. There is a WHITE BALANCE selector and a self-timer.

The lens specs are not listed in my documentation. However, I would guess the widest focal length to be around 28mm. I am including a few examples of images shot this morning. All were re-sized from 1280-wide to 600, rotated, etc.

Interesting piece of gear. It suits me as I often find myself wishing I had my camera on me, but I don't feel like carrying an SLR or RF unit 24/7. I always have something in the car, but many times I find myself away from the vehicle without time to run to the trunk to retrieve a shooter. I will post more as I determine certain facts and opinions.





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jake
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« Reply #1 on: November 22, 2005, 03:11:42 PM »

Amazing. Now you need one of them Moblogs where you walk around town and post to your blog simultaneously.

Actually I am being serious - some of the best have some really great writing to go along with them. A new art form.

Some of the award winning photographs of Beslan were shot with a phone & the earliest shots of the London subway bombing were posted directly from a phone to Flickr, so phone-cameras are serious tools for sure. They have also figured into the riots in France as well, albeit for the purposes of destruction and eluding police.

J Ake  :twisted:
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nelsonfoto
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« Reply #2 on: November 22, 2005, 03:30:15 PM »

It's a neat gadget. It pulls duty as an MP3 player also, so the idea of using it for spot news work is a possibility... I can record names, dates, short soundbytes, etc. I need to tinker some more in subtler lighting to see what it's capable of. From a design standpoint, it's one of the finer pieces of gear I've held.
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nelsonfoto
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« Reply #3 on: November 24, 2005, 07:51:24 AM »

Here are direct-from-device images. No post-processing, resizing, etc.

These should weigh around 300k to 400k, 1280 pixels wide:

http://nelsonfoto.com/sony_ericsson_S710a/112405/DSC00047.JPG
http://nelsonfoto.com/sony_ericsson_S710a/112405/DSC00048.JPG
http://nelsonfoto.com/sony_ericsson_S710a/112405/DSC00049.JPG
http://nelsonfoto.com/sony_ericsson_S710a/112405/DSC00050.JPG
http://nelsonfoto.com/sony_ericsson_S710a/112405/DSC00053.JPG
http://nelsonfoto.com/sony_ericsson_S710a/112405/DSC00054.JPG
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connealy
call me mike
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« Reply #4 on: November 24, 2005, 09:19:44 AM »

Those last shots are all very sharp looking, but there seem to be quite a bit of jpg jaggies along the diagonal edges.
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nelsonfoto
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« Reply #5 on: November 24, 2005, 09:44:27 AM »

Target print size would be 4x6... let me finish scanning Jay's negs and I will resize to 4x6 and see what they look like.
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nelsonfoto
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« Reply #6 on: November 24, 2005, 11:46:14 AM »

Ok, here are the same images, reduced to 6' width for print size @72dpi/ppi. Added a border to isolate, but otherwise no changes.






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connealy
call me mike
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« Reply #7 on: November 24, 2005, 12:07:23 PM »

I should probably just learn not to comment on image quality based on on-line examples.  If they seem ok to you up close, then I'm sure they are fine.  Your phone-cam really seems like an ideal application of digital to me.
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nelsonfoto
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« Reply #8 on: November 24, 2005, 12:23:31 PM »

Maybe I missed something in your original post. The initial images I pasted up are as-taken in the phone... the files are 1280-by-whatever, but not intended to be viewed at that size, rather, they're intended to look decent enough to make a 4x6 print out of.

I won't be making any prints, that I can foresee. However, it will make a nice thing to have on hand in a pinch.

Between you and I, I don't find the quality - yet - to be worthy of much more than web-images. I don't care for printing off my Fuji S5000 either, prone as it is to fringing, etc, though it has surprised me a time or two under ideal circumstances.
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Graham Serretta
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« Reply #9 on: November 25, 2005, 07:02:55 AM »

I love technology...!
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Graham S
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