Sony A200

Direct Print Options (6.00)
The capabilities provided here are pretty bare bones. The A200 can print directly to a PictBridge-enabled printer via USB. In addition to specifying paper size and deciding whether or not to overlay the date and/or day and time on the print, your choices include bordered or borderless single-image prints, 1-, 2-, 3-, 4- or 5-up print layouts or an index print. If you prefer having your files printed professionally, you can save a DPOF order onto the memory card that specifies which images to print, and how many of each. You have no editing options with either of these printing features, though, which compares poorly to a camera like the Canon XSi, which offers trimming and red-eye correction when using PictBridge, or the Nikon D60, with its cornucopia of in-camera image editing options.

Battery (10.00)
Sony makes great batteries. They power your gear for a nice long time, last through hundreds of charging cycles, and with their InfoLITHIUM technology, you get a very accurate percentage reading of the remaining power status on the LCD screen, a big improvement over the imprecise charge-remaining icon indicators on other SLRs. The A200 is powered by an 8.4-volt NP-FM500H battery pack, rated at 750 pictures by the manufacturer. It rarely had to be charged even during our intensive testing procedures.

 

Memory (3.00)
While the manual is quick to explain that you can, in fact, use Sony's beloved Memory Stick Duo format in their camera (by purchasing an optional adapter), the good news is that the A200 relies on good old, inexpensive CompactFlash cards, in either Type I or the thicker Type II format. It will even accept an old microdrive if you have one of those in a drawer somewhere.
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Other features (6.25)
Dust Reduction – In addition to an antistatic coating on the low-pass filter in front of the sensor, Sony has implemented a vibration system that shakes dust away from the sensor automatically, every time the camera is powered down.

Super SteadyShot Image Stabilization –Sony, like Olympus, has opted to incorporate sensor-shift image stabilization within the camera body itself. The key advantage of this system is that every lens you lock onto the camera can take advantage of stabilization, versus either doing without or having to buy more expensive lenses with their own internal optical stabilization system, as Nikon and Canon prefer. Sony claims that the Super SteadyShot system provides up to 3.5 stops of compensation, meaning you can hand-hold a telephoto lens at a slower shutter speed or higher ISO setting without suffering visible blurring in the image.  In our experience, the Sony system worked well.  We even managed to squeeze off a few shots of distant sights from in a moving car… from the passenger side, it's worth noting.

Dynamic Range (D-Range) Optimizer – Like Nikon's D-Lighting system, the D-Range Optimizer function aims to tame the loss of detail in deep shadow or particularly bright areas of a photo by analyzing an image mathematically and controlling the contrast to optimize image detail. There are two settings for this process: Standard, which analyzes the entire image quickly and applies adjustments across the board, and Advanced, which breaks the image up into discrete sections and fine-tunes the contrast with more precision, but significantly more slowly. The function can also be turned off altogether. D-Range optimization is only available while shooting, though, unlike Nikon's D-Lighting system, which lets you choose between image processing while shooting, or post-processing images afterward.

Auto Focus Eye Sensor – This is certainly one of the more distinctive features of the Sony design. A small sensor located immediately below the optical viewfinder senses when you bring the camera up to your eye and begins the autofocus process, without waiting for you to press the shutter button halfway down. If nothing else, it's a great way to freak out your friends who don't know about the feature – a camera that starts whirring its focus motor at you before you even touch a control has a certain haunted-house quality.

The eye sensor can help you grab a shot more quickly, since the focusing process is often finished by the time you line your eye up to shoot. On the other hand, it's exceedingly easy to trigger that sensor accidentally, whether you're wearing the camera on a strap or just grabbing it to carry somewhere. After just a few days of shooting, we went into the custom settings menu and turned it off.