Sony A200

Playback Mode (7.75)
Playback mode offers four different on-screen displays, toggled by pressing the DISP button to the left of the LCD. In addition to a clean-screen full-frame view of your photo and a view with basic image data overlaid (file name and shot number, image size and quality, shutter speed and aperture, date, time and ISO setting), there is a very nice histogram display. In addition to picture information, the histogram view shows a smaller imge of the photo flashing areas that are overexposed, and a stacked four-part histogram along the right with separate luminance graphs for the overall image and the red, green and blue channels. The fourth display is another favorite. It shows one large image at the bottom, with shooting information overlaid, along with five thumbnails along the top.  This is particularly useful if you've shot a sequence of similar shots (during a sporting event, for example) and want to quickly scroll through them to find the one that captures just the right moment.  

Of course, there's also a familiar full-screen index view, enabled by pressing the shared exposure compensation / index view button to the left of the viewfinder. The first press displays 9 images, the second 25, the third 4. You can cursor from one image to another using the four-way controller and press the center button for a full-screen view of your chosen photo.

When you want to see the detail in a shot you've taken, one press of the zoom button takes you to 6.1x magnification, which presents a reasonable close-up view (though why 6.1 and not an even 6 remains a mystery). Repeatedly pressing the zoom button ramps up the magnification to a maximum of 12x. One feature we particularly like here: once you've zoomed in, you can scroll through images by turning the control wheel and maintain the same magnified view from image to image. It's a real boon when you're trying to figure out which shot captured the most fine detail.

If you've chosen not to have portrait-mode images rotated automatically during playback, you can manually rotate the image by pressing the Fn button.

There's also a basic slide show mode, inconveniently located on the main menu instead of with the other playback mode controls.

Custom Image Presets (6.00)
Like the Nikon D60 and Canon XSi, Sony has made access to scene mode presets simple for SLR novices by putting them right on the control dial for quick and easy access.