Digital Camera Review

Digital Camera Review

Jan 14, 2005 - By Emily Raymond
The P-series of Sony digital cameras turns five this year. To celebrate, they’re putting out an upgrade to last year’s Cyber-shot P150. The new Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P200 boasts 7.2 megapixels in a compact point-and-shoot form. The digital camera sticks with the classic P-series frame: a rectangle with a rounded left side. The P200 will be available in Europe and the United States in February 2005 for $399. The price is a welcome downgrade from the P150’s retail price of $499. The two cameras are strikingly similar. They have the same 7.2 megapixels, 3x optical zoom lens and the same menus and options. The only difference is that the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P200 has a larger 2-inch LCD and a wide groove along the top to provide a left finger grip and added shooting support.
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Movie Mode
As with most of the models in the Cyber-shot series, the P200 has an above average movie mode for a compact camera. The Movie mode captures clips in 640 x 480 resolution at a rate of 30 frames per second in MPEG file format. The movie clips are recorded and played back with audio. There are three settings within the Movie mode: Fine, Standard, and Economy. The Fine setting is the aforementioned 640 x 480 at 30 fps; the Standard setting has the same VGA 640 x 480, but at 16 fps; the Economy mode operates at 320 x 116 and 8 fps. This Movie mode lets the user records clips high-quality enough for television and low-quality enough for easy e-mailing.

Drive / Burst Mode
The press release materials from the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-P200 claim that the Sony Real Imaging Processor enables fast start-up and burst shooting. Sony advertises the P200 will take 1.3 seconds to power up and take its first shot. The menu on the camera reveals three shooting speed modes: Multi-Burst, Burst, and Normal. The Multi-Burst mode takes 16 consecutive shots at 320 x 240 resolution and stitches them together to

form a single 1280 x 960 picture. The Burst mode can take five pictures consecutively at a rate of 1.1 frames per second when at full resolution. This model’s burst mode isn’t very impressive when other manufacturers are introducing reasonably priced cameras that can shoot 2 or 3 frames per second at full resolution.

Playback Mode
This Sony doesn’t have any incredible features on its Playback mode, but certainly enough to function comfortably. The 2-inch LCD is large enough to see pictures clearly, but the 5x playback zoom certainly helps. Pictures can be resized and printed. Movies can be shown with audio and slideshows can be played.

Custom Image Presets
For users that need special settings in a short amount of time, there are nine preset scene modes: Twilight, Landscape, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Candle, High Speed Shutter, Twilight Portrait, and Soft Snap. These settings cover almost all of the basics, although a setting optimized for portraits in daylight would be nice.

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