A Sony?

[Mary Sparrow]

I went to the dppreview site at http://www.dpreview.com and posted what I wanted on a forum board. This is one of the responses I got, is anyone familiar with this camera?

Hi Mary,

Welcome to the digital world. I would advise the Sony 717.

Price drop, while the newer Sony 828 (with 8 million pixels) is hitting the market, brings it within your budget.

It has just a tad more zoom range than the Nikon 5000 and brings you the ideal distance for portraits.

Very fast lens let you make pictures inside without the need for flash: No bothering about nasty shadows or red eyes.

The camera is known to give excellent pictures, right out from the box, without steep learning curves.

It has a Lithium-ion battery: Keeps its full power, when you stow your camera away for weeks and weeks.

Has, at your choice, also the 2:3 format: That is the format used by the common print services. (The normal digital format is 3:4 and will be cropped: Or by yourself, or by the print service, but you don't get what your framed in, while shooting.)

And you can trust me on this one, because as happy Minolta D7 owner, I don't belong to the Sony camp.

Hans