After having positive experience with the Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W7 7.2-Megapixel camera, I decided to give a similarly-featured, but differently styled Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 7.2-Megapixel camera a try. Let's see how good it is.

Pictures

The pictures of the Sony DSC-P200 as well as sample photos I took using it are available at the address below:

Click here to see the sample photos I took with this Sony P200 camera and photos of the camera

What Is Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 (DSCP200)?

The Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 is a 7.2-Megapixel stylish digital camera with a 3x optical zoom (38-114 mm equivalent, f/2.8-5.2), a 2-inch LCD screen, Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar optics, powered by a supplied rechargeable battery.

The camera stores pictures on a proprietary Sony Memory Stick or Memory Stick Pro and features fast USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection to PC and Mac computers. It comes with a 32-MB Memory Stick to get you started. The camera is somewhat similar to the Sony DSC-W7, which also has 7.2 MP resolution, but differs in some other areas.

Getting Started

Once my camera arrived, I opened the box and was surprised how good it looked. The camera is made of sturdy plastic with some metal elements. In particular, the buttons and controls are made either of metal or of metal-like material.

The controls have substantial feel to them, albeit they have slightly too much resistance and require a bit too much force.

The camera came with a 32-MB Memory Stick card, a rechargeable InfoLithium battery, a charger/power adaptor, cables, manual and software as well as a camera strap.

The battery is compact and is placed inside the camera for charging. The same lid (on the side of the camera) covers the battery, the memory card and the DC jack. In the Sony tradition, the lid has a smaller lid in it, which can open separately, giving you access to the power port only, so that you can charge the battery without opening the larger lid.

The power supply/adaptor has a separate AC power cord, which may prove useful when traveling in other countries. As far as I recall, the power adaptor supports all voltages (110-240 V, 50/60 Hz).

The Camera Itself

The camera has an offset lens, which surprisingly works well. If you look at the rear of the camera, both the lens and the 2-inch LCD are offset to the left with the buttons and controls in the right part. The rear panel also has a mode wheel (Auto, Program, Manual, Scene modes, Movie and Review).

The camera has an optical zooming viewfinder as well. The buttons and controls are clearly marked and the tactile feel is generally good, but the control on the rear panel at a bit stiff.

The bottom panel of the camera has a proprietary jack, which accepts the supplied cable. The cable has a USB and an A/V out on the other side.

The camera itself looks nice and feels sturdy and hefty in your hand. It looks and feels durable. It is also quite compact. I was carrying it in a knee pocket of my shorts.

Usage

The camera has an on/off button on the top deck, which powers the camera on/off when depressed and held. Once powered, the camera extends its lens forward and opens the lens lid. It happens very fast and you are ready to shoot in about a second after you turn the camera on. The green ring around the on/off button illuminates when the camera is on.

Once you turn the camera on, the shutdown is even faster. The lens retracts very fast and the camera is off.

The camera is very easy to use. I have not read the manual, but was able to use the camera and all its features in no time. The camera can be used by any member of the family and by photographers of all levels of expertise from novices to advanced ones (albeit it will not give you much control over the shutter speed or aperture).

Current Sony cameras use menus that look almost exactly the same. If you are upgrading from another Sony model or getting a second camera with the first one being also Sony, the learning curve might be nonexistent. The camera comes pre-set to Auto mode (green camera pictogram on the mode wheel). You do not have to do anything other than point and shoot - the camera takes care of the rest.

The camera uses 5-area smart autofocus (in non-manual modes, you can also select spot autofocus, continuous autofocus or preset manual focus to 0.5m, 1m, 3m, 7m or infinity). You press the shutter release button halfway to make camera focus (the camera shows you that it focused and beeps to confirm focus) and then you take the picture by pressing the shutter release button all the way.

You zoom in and out by using the zoom buttons on the rear of the camera. The camera has an optical viewfinder and a large, 2-inch LCD screen that is accurate, fluid (slightly less fluid in the dark) and works well in the sun and dim light.

If you want more control, you can select the scene modes by rotating the mode dial on the rear panel. For even more control, you can select Program mode, in which you can select ISO (100-400), white balance (including custom setting), exposure compensation, flash output adjustment (normal, low, high), metering mode (multi, spot), sharpness adjustment, contrast adjustment, saturation adjustment, color and picture effects, etc.

And if you want even more control, you can switch to the Manual mode, where you get to control aperture and shutter speed directly. The only caveat is you can only have two aperture values per focal length: e.g. f/2.8 or f/5.6 at wide angle.

The flash mode can be selected by pushing the arrow up button on the rear panel, the macro mode can be selected by using the arrow right, the timer by arrow down and the review of the last picture by arrow left.

Performance

I have used the P200 for several days both indoors and outdoors, with the flash on and off.

The camera is very fast in operation. The camera takes less than a second to power itself on in either review or shooting mode. It feels almost instantaneous. It can capture images at about 1 per second in burst mode. In single-frame mode, the camera could snap pictures as fast as I could push the shutter release button - also about one a second. The focusing takes less than a second and the shutter lag (the time between the moment you push the button and the moment when the picture is taken), when pre-focused, is almost unnoticeable.

The focusing is slower in the dimly-lit environments (the camera has an auto-focus assist light) and may take up to 2 seconds at wide angle and up to 3 second at full telephoto.

The zooming is pretty fast too. It is smooth and lets you fine-tune your composition well.

The camera has a 3x optical zoom (38-114 mm equivalent focal length) with f/2.8 maximum aperture at wide angle, f/5.2 at telephoto, which is rather good.

The camera lets you select the resolution for your images between 7M (3072x2304), 5M (2592x1944), 3M (2048x1536), 1M (1280x960) and VGA (E-mail) mode (640x480). You also get a choice between Standard and Fine quality. The Fine mode uses about 6:1 compression and the Standard uses about 11:1. Obviously, the Standard file size is half that of the Fine: about 1.8 MB vs. 3.7 MB at the highest resolution.

The supplied 32 MB memory can fit about 8 photos at the highest resolution and best quality or 16 photos with Standard quality. You will definitely need to get a larger memory card (Memory Stick or Memory Stick Pro). I have used Standard mode for my test and the supplied sample photos are in Standard mode at 7MP resolution.

The fully charged battery last about 150-200 minutes in shooting mode (about 300-400 photos) and about twice as long in review mode (up to 400 minutes), which is very good.

The InfoLithium battery lets you see the approximate remaining battery power in minutes, based on the current energy consumption. I find this very useful.

Image Quality

The camera produces very good photos with well-exposed, sharp, contrasty and richly-colored images. The camera has excellent auto white balance. Some cameras have trouble with incandescent lighting in automatic white balance mode and have to be explicitly set to Tungsten or Incandescent mode. Not so the P200 - it handles the incandescent light easily, avoiding yellow-tinted photos automatically. The photos in the incandescent light are slightly warm, but I don't mind. After all, you wouldn't want them to be cool.

The flash does not create a cool cast, unlike some other cameras. It worked well indoors and outdoors (fill-flash), brightening people's faces and preventing them from being too dark against the sunlit backgrounds. I saw no red eye in the outdoor pictures taken with flash, even with red-eye reduction mode off.

The people photos featured pleasing skin colors (sometimes too warm/pinkish, which makes them look better than in real life).

The photos are rather sharp with only very small amount of softening in the corners of the frame - a non-issue as at most print sizes the corners are usually cut off. Again, this will not be noticeable in printed pictures however since corners normally don't make it to the print due to the aspect ratio difference and other factors. Plus, the blurriness is so small, you have to enlarge the image to 100% on the computer screen to notice it.

The camera lets you select automatic ISO or set ISO 100, 200 or 400. The image noise is slight at the ISO 100 in the shadows, gets more pronounced at ISO 200 and gets worse at ISO 400 (and some fine detail get softer to diminish noise). Still, if you are printing 6x4 or 5x7 pictures, the noise should not be visible at all and will only be slightly visible at ISO 400 with larger prints. With 7.2-megapixel shots it produces, you can print your photos at up to 13x19 inches with good detail (ISO 100 or 200).

Features and Specifications

• 7.2-megapixel CCD
• Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar 3x optical zoom lens
• 35mm equivalent lens focal length: 38-114mm
• 2" color LCD
• Resolution: 3072 x 2304; 2592 x 1944; 2048 x 1536; 1280 x 960; 640 x 480
• five-area multipoint autofocus and continuous autofocus
• variable ISO sensitivity and selectable ISO 100, 200 and 400
• macro mode
• built-in flash
• built-in mono microphone and speaker
• USB 2.0 Hi-Speed interface (backward-compatible with older USB 1.1 interface)
• compatible with Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO (32MB Memory Stick supplied)
• audio/video output for connection to a TV

Supplied Accessories

• rechargeable InfoLithium battery
• AC charger
• USB/A/V cable
• wrist strap
• software CD-ROM (for Windows® and Mac)
• manuals

More on Features and Controls

The camera has a low-light focus assist illuminator that helps it focus in low light. It focuses very fast in both bright and dark environments.

You can use the exposure compensation in the Program mode and it comes in handy in some situations. There are a bunch of scene modes as well, which help the camera tweak the focusing and exposure settings according to the type of scene.

Manual Focusing

The camera lets you select among 0.5m, 1m, 3m, 7m or infinity.

More on Image Quality

The camera produces contrasty photos that have a pleasing color with slight oversaturation (by default) and a slight warm cast. The dynamic range of the photos seems to be slightly limited, especially in highlights (as in other consumer-level digicams). In harsh lighting conditions, the highlights can be blown out. Overall, the dynamic range is rather good, comparing to other compact cameras. The high default contrast will please consumers.

I was not able to find much chromatic aberration (purple fringing) in the areas of high contrast. There is a small amount of blurring in the corners of the frame, but it does not extend far into the image.

White Balance

The P200 has auto white balance or you can choose among several presets including flash white balance (gives pictures too warm of a cast), halogen, incandescent, sunny, cloudy, etc. The camera has custom white balance setting (using a grey card). The camera's automatic white balance favors warmer color casts, but does a good job overall, even with incandescent light.

Camera Sounds

The camera itself is rather quiet in operation. You can customize the sounds it makes through its speaker and their volume. The speaker is located in the bottom panel and has an indentation that you tend to place your finger in while shooting, which makes the sounds much quieter. What were they thinking?

Build Quality and Ergonomics

The camera has a solid feel and good build quality. The major controls are within easy reach and the tactile response is good overall.

Menu System

I have not read the manual, yet was able to use the camera in all modes. I like Sony's menus less than recent Canon menus or Panasonic ones. But they are certainly usable, it just takes more time to do the same thing with Sony menus than it does with Canon or Panasonic.

LCD

The camera has a 2-inch non-articulated (fixed) LCD screen and an optical viewfinder. The LCD coverage as about 100% - you can see exactly what will be recorded. The LCD is bright, fluid (unless it is dark), has good visibility in sunlight or darkness and very good resolution, which helps you confirm the focus.

The camera also has an optical viewfinder, that is on the tight side. You will not see everything that will end up on the picture you take, but it is a usual situation with zooming optical viewfinders and is preferred to the opposite (having thought something will be in the frame and then not finding it in the resultant picture).

Computer Connectivity

The camera uses USB 2.0 Hi-Speed connection to transfer pictures to a computer. You can also remove the Memory Stick memory card (if you use it) and use a memory card reader (if you have one).

I used the camera with the USB cable supplied. I did not need to install any USB drivers on my Windows 2000 SP4 computer. The file transfer was very fast at about 2,000 KB/s using the supplied memory card. You might be able to get faster speeds with Memory Stick Pro. This is very fast! I also used the Memory Stick with my USB 2.0 card reader.

I have not used the software that was provided with the camera since I have Adobe Photoshop CS2.

Histogram

The camera can display a live histogram in the shooting mode as well as in the review mode to show you if you have overexposed the highlights or underexposed the shadows. I useful feature when you don't trust the LCD.

Reservations

I wish the camera has less noise an ISO 400. Still, you can print 5x7 or 6x4 at ISO 400.

I dislike the fact that the camera uses expensive (and Sony-exclusive) Memory Stick media. SD cards would be a much better choice for us, consumers. But Memory Stick is much better choice for Sony. That way they can make more money.

Also, the camera uses a two-step exposure control, which means you only get two aperture settings per focal length in the Manual mode. Not a big deal with small-sensor digicams, but Canon has real aperture control in their A510 and A520 cameras.

Bottom Line

I highly recommend Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 if you want a cool yet capable camera with good optics, 7.2-megapixels, fast operation, long-lasting battery and a good LCD screen that produces excellent photos with print sizes of up 13x19 inches.

Recommended
Yes

Product Rating
(Excellent)

This review is also available at Epinions.com: Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-P200 (DSCP200) 7.2-Megapixel Digital Camera Review on Epinions.com

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