Good, small camera from Sony
Written: Apr 06 '05
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Pros: Excellent image quality, battery life, functionality, small and light.
Cons: Unexplained blurry shots at full telephoto, method of charging.
The Bottom Line: A very good performer, small and lightweight, but not so impressive zoom quality.
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| knight_m8's Full Review: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 Digital Camera |
I've had quite a camera history, from owning the basic Canon Powershot A300 up to the 7mp beast of the Canon Powershot S70, and every camera in between from Canon. I decided to broaden my selection and stray away from Canon for a bit, but ended up back with them. The camera I decided to try out was the Sony Cybershot DSC-P200. I've read all the reviews from the big camera websites like DPReview.com and Imaging-Resource.com, and more, and they all seem to have nice things to say about this camera. I figured it wouldn't be bad to try it out.
The Powershot S70, the camera before the Sony, is literally a flawless camera for what you get, pound for pound beats the Sony, but I wanted something more portable and lighter, and pocketable. The P-200 and S70, and also the G6, all use the same 7.2mp CCD imaging chip, so it would all be up to Sony and Canon on how they process the images and such since the chip is the same for all. Like I said, I wanted something small and light, and I chose the P-200.
Camera wise it is nice. Its form factor is nice and compact, with plenty of room to place your fingers. It has a rather large 2" LCD which is bright and very responsive, with pretty much all the info you need on it to keep you aware and picture happy. For example, the battery meter is a plus, but it also shows you the minutes left on the battery, which I thought was real cool. Pretty much if you have a setting set that wasn't default or normal, it will show on the screen. One thing I didn't care to much is that whenever I turn the LCD off, to conserve battery life, it won't show the shot I just took for review. Instead you have to press a button to see the last picture taken. I didn't like that at all. If your like me and use the optical viewfinder instead of the LCD to save battery, be prepared to press a button to see the results. Then again, you might need to as the battery life is incredible. Fully charge I get about 205mins of use. Sony claims 300+ shots w/ the LCD on, which is real good considering other companies top out at about 150 or with the LCD on. Good job Sony! The menu took a bit to get the hang off, it wasn't as simple as a Canon. There is also the mode dial which you can switch between Auto mode, Manual, P mode( which is like Auto w/ the majority of the functions unlocked, Review mode and Movie mode. You'll even get a nice display on the LCD showing you which mode your switch too, which is a nice little thing.
The P-200 is equipped with a 38-114mm lens, which comes out to 3x optical. You do have a digital zoom, but its not recommended, in fact it was the first thing I turned off when I got the camera. Since the lens starts at 38mm you'll probably will be backing up a bit if your trying to fit something big in the picture, but the 114mm telephoto is quite good for a camera this size if you want to get up close. One thing Sony has done that Canon seems to have trouble with is low light focusing, this camera has a remarkable low light performance, possible a good selling point. If you turn off all the lights, or in a very dark area, the auto focus light takes it time making sure whatever your focusing on will be sharp and clear, and it just does that, take the shot, and you'll be amazed on how good it is, I was. I said the battery life was good, but the way to charge it I didn't care too much for, as you have to have the battery in the camera in order to charge. I would of liked a seperate battery charger as it would be more convenient, but then again, if you ever need to take a quick shot you can just take the camera off the charger and shoot, rather than inserting the battery and such, so I guess it has a little advantage. Performance wise, the camera is lighting fast, as soon as you press the power button the lens shoots out and ready to, same when powering down. Very cool. Shutter lag and focusing is fast too, and the camera writes to the Memory stick pretty quick though, but I just had the one that came with the camera, so Im sure if you buy one of the Memory Stick Pros' or one with a very fast write speed, it will be even quicker. Overall Im happy with the performance of the P-200.
Image quality is really top notch aswell. Colors are nice and vibrant, and exposure is on point too. Image noise is quite low, especially for a 7mp camera. ISO 100 is literally flawless, ISO 200 starts to pick up a bit, and ISO 400 adds the noise, but not as much as one might think. While playing with the camera's settings, mainly the image size, I found out the lower the picture size, the more reduced the image noise gets. I wonder why reviews didn't mind pointing this out. At 3mp size, ISO 400 is barely even noticable, and can perfectly be used or print, up to 8x10 size. 5mp size is almost the same, ISO 400 is pretty usable. So if you don't need to shoot at 7mp, or want to save space on the memory stick, 3mp and 5mp will give you very good results. I choose the 5mp setting as it gives good balance with noise, yet good enough to get a high quality 8x10 print.
This camera is quite a good camera, so why did I go back to Canon like I said, well this is where the cons come in. Image quality is top notch, and so is performance, but when zooming in on subjects that I was focusing on, thats where the camera start to fault. I took nearly 25 or so shots at full telephoto, and nearly 3/4rths of them came out blurry. On bright, sunny days I would think there would be enough light, but I don't think that was the problem. Im not a camera guru, but I think it has something to do with the aperture value set at full telephoto, which is 5.2...at first I thought it was my shaky hands, but according to the LCD the shot was going to shoot at like 1/50th or even 1/80th of a second, which is plenty fast take it that your not shaking the camera up and down fast. I even raised the ISO to 200, even 400, and I still got some blurry shots, so thats when I realized there is something wrong. At wide angle though, no problems at all, very sharp and good pictures. It seemed the only way to get sharp shots were to turn on the flash, but even that didn't always work. For that I returned the camera. I've read that Sony cameras do sometimes give out blurry results, but I didn't bother with it and purchased one anyway. I don't know how much this impacts on a buying decision, but I would be lying to say this camera is flawless and would be wrong not to mention it. Unless you don't like to zoom, then I would recommend this camera, otherwise I honestly don't since of the blurry results. Overall Ill give this camera what its worth, a decent, excellent picture taking 7mp camera w/ slight flaws.
Recommended:
No
Amount Paid (US$): 399.99
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Easy Enough for Anyone to Use
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Epinions.com ID:
knight_m8
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Reviews written: 27
Trusted by: 1 member
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