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Sony Electronics is breaking the $1000 price barrier with the introduction of a five-megapixel digital camera loaded with consumer-friendly features.

The Cyber-shot DSC-F707 features Carl Zeiss optics, an advanced automatic flash system, and improved controls to enhance focus, exposure, and composition.

The $999 camera captures images in a variety of formats, including JPEG and TIFF, as well as formats ready for pasting into e-mail and documents. It also supports MPEG-HQ and MPEG-EX video modes, Clip Motion animated GIF, and has in-camera editing functions. It comes with a 16MB Memory Stick media card that can store up to 11 still images in standard mode and six in fine mode.

"We think this will appeal to 'photo purists,' people who understand the composition, light, and focusing needs to create well-composed photographs," says Cozette Phifer, a Sony Electronics spokesperson. "It's not necessarily your first digital camera, but more for people who are ready to have a camera with more functionality, more tools, and more ways to become creative."

Minolta was first to crack the five-megapixel level, showing its 5.24-megapixel Dimage 7 at PC Expo in June. Minolta is pricing it at $1499 when it ships this month. Four-megapixel cameras are still considered the high end, while the more plentiful 3.3-megapixel models sometimes also approach $1000 price tags.

Digital Features

Sony put a number of improved controls into the new model, including:

• Zoom. The unit uses a Vario Sonnar 5X optical zoom lens with F2.0 aperture.
  
  
• Dual LCDs. Photographers can choose to frame shots using either the 1.8-inch Liquid Crystal Display screen or a new eye-level electronic viewfinder.
  
  
• Hologram AF. Sony's exclusive laser focusing system is designed to achieve accurate focus on subjects with little contrast in dark conditions.
  
  
• Pre-flash Metering. This system actually measures the light from the flash as it passes through the lens to calculate correct exposure. At exposure, the flash fires once to illuminate the subject and calculate correct exposure, then it fires a second time to record the image with the best exposure possible.
  
  
• Multi-Pattern Metering. For the first time in one of its digital still cameras, Sony uses multi-pattern metering to divide a scene into a matrix of separate cells. Each cell can be metered independently to more accurately calculate the best possible exposure.
  
  

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