Gordon Laing posted his latest retro review of the Sony Cyber-shot F505, which came from an exciting period of time full of experimental point-and-shoot designs. You can watch his full-view review above or get the key points below:
- Nontraditional camera design is still fresh today
- Sony worked with Carel Zeiss, which gave them legitimacy
- Utilized memory stick
- Grab the barrel with your left hand and tilt the body with your right hand for easy framing
- Very good for waist-level shooting
- The twisting mechanism feels great
- The lens contains a sensor and controls
- The body contains the main controls, screen, and the memory card
- Most cameras had 3x optical zooms, while the Sony had 5x, which was equivalent to 38-190mm
- It would have been nice if the lens started a little wider
- The zoom is motorized, and it moves smoothly and allows for fine adjustments
- You can zoom optically while shooting video
- The aperture is f/2.8-3.4, with f/2.8 covering half the range and f/3.4 the rest
- There was no magnified focus assist, but there was an indicator icon
- There is a pop-up flash on the camera and a tripod mount on the optical access
- The rear screen is 2″ and the only way to compose with a transflective hybrid panel that can use ambient light or a backlight
- The transflective technology works well if you angle it right
- The transflective screen saved power
- There are two JPEG compression options and three resolution options, but no uncompressed option
- 2.1MP 1/2 CCD sensor that captures a max resolution of 1600×1200 with a typical file size of 500k in best quality
- Video at 320×240 or 160×120 at 15fps for 5, 10, 15 seconds a clip or a min in the low-resolution mode
- It was bundled with a 4MP card
- The battery was charged externally
- Proprietary USB connector
- Great camera in 1995 and is still great today
- The design remained relevant until 2003
Follow SonyAddict on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube
Plus our owners’ groups
Sony a1 Owners Group
Sony a9 Owners Group
Sony a7 Owners Group