Sony Cyber-shot DSC-T200

I've been using a DSC-T30 for a year, everything about this camera is just fine. But I was seduced by the beautiful look of the red DSC-T200, and its large touch screen, so bought one as soon as I could. I returned it after a couple days of playing with it.

Sony has added marginal features to the T200, but has downgraded the important basic features. The T30 has a rather large 4.4Wh battery, the T200's is a puny 2.4Wh and runs down very fast, especially with the LCD turned to its most bright setting. With the T200 you're going to have to carry spare charged batteries. This is annoying.

Worst problem is indoor 'point & shoot' photos with the camera on "Automatic," most images come out grainy and noisy. Heck, that's what an ultracompact camera is for. I don't know why this is, maybe because the flash lamp on the T200 is much smaller than the T30's flash? I open every photo I take in "Photoshop" and try to improve them, but these take too much work. Outdoor photos are better, but not totally wonderful, just OK.

The LCD on the back of the camera isn't all that great. Instead of glass (like my new iPod Touch) the T200 has a somewhat flexible plastic membrane cover which requires a pretty firm 'push' to activate. When I push it to set the focus point while taking a shot, for example, the camera moves a bit.

I've always hated having to remove the battery from the T30 to charge it, (because of the flimsy plastic cover), so was hoping the T200 might have a charging base accessory. Not. Oh, enough. I could go on. The T200 touch screen menus are very clear and simple to understand though, let me at least give Sony credit for that. And it's such a pretty camera!

Sony T200 is a best buy. I have owned several Canon A series and SD series cameras up from 3MP, and this is the first Sony camera I bought, so here is my opinion comparing Sony T200 against Canon ones.

1) Adjustable flash intensity: T200 offers three levels of internal flash intensity: soft, normal and strong, user selectable. I haven't seen it on my Canon yet. Soft flash is particularly useful for taking pictures on my kids. Their eyes are so precious to protect.

2) Smile face scene mode: Sony innovation. No Canon has this yet. It makes life easy when picturing my little kids. With other cameras, I have to shoot 10+ pictures in high speed mode and hope that one of them would come out with that beautiful natural smile. Definitely Sony advantage.

3) 3.5" LCD touch screen: another Sony innovation on camera, (only Apple iPod Touch has a similar size). As I measured, 3.5" is the screen horizontal dimension, corner to corner is about 3.75", no Canon has this LCD size at this moment. Bright, clear and beautiful. LCD surface has special coating, so no light reflection found on most other cameras. Plain fun to frame a picture and review photos with this Large LCD. Touch screen replaced those many traditional tiny navigation/select buttons, very nice to me. Big Sony advantage.

4) 5X optical lens: most Canon SD series cameras have 3X or 4X lens, but Sony T200 has 5X. Lens quality is very good, as the pictures are sharp and clear. Sony advantage.

5) Anti-vibration: Sony uses Super Steadyshot feature which is a sensor based floating feature to compensate for vibration. Canon SD870IS uses lens based stabilization feature. They are both quite effective on this kind of compact cameras. I don't see much difference on pictures.

6) Face detection: both Sony and Canon digit III have this new feature, very good for taking portraits alike. Sony and Canon equal.

7) Simple, easy to use menu: without even looking at the user manual, I can touch through the menus and start taking pictures in minutes. Canon has a good menu system too, I don't see either superior than the other however.

8) Battery: Sony T200 has a relative small 680mAH battery and is rated for 250 shots, it does run down fairly quickly. Canon SD870IS cameras is rated for 270 shots, not any better. Generally speaking, compact cameras using LITHIUM ION rechargeable battery requires frequent charging because their tiny size has usually less than 1000mAH in capacity. If you are looking for cameras with long lasting battery, buy a Canon A series which uses AA NiMH battery with 2500+mAH capacity, you may then totally forget about charging issues. It's bulkier though.

9) Picture quality: nothing above is important if the pictures doesn't turn out great. In side by side comparison, Sony natural color mode is close to Canon vivid color mode. Sony color saturation are great and close to life. Canon pictures is more earth and natural. I personally prefer Sony color as I most often take family pictures and sightseeing pictures and would like a rich looking color scheme.

10) Picture noise: outdoors, both Sony and Canon did a good job, no visible noise. Indoors, Canon does a better job in noise reduction than Sony. Canon indoor pictures may be printed directly without noticeable noise. Sony is slightly worse than Canon, although much better than Panasonic FX9 which produced horrible noise. However, T200 doesn't bother me, as I have Neat Image software to filter out the noise. After filtering, Sony T200 pictures turn out to be even better than Canon unprocessed pictures, noise is completely gone.

11) Video: Sony uses MPEG codec while Canon uses motion JPEG codec. For same time duration and 640x480 fine mode, Sony video file is half size of a Canon video file, so memory card may store twice the videos on Sony because of the MPEG codec. This is Sony advantage. In outdoor environment, video quality between Sony and Canon are comparable. Indoors low light, Sony seems to automatically switch to higher ISO to keep higher shuttle speed, the good side is the higher shuttle speed the better image quality (less ghosting like on Canon), the bad side is the higher ISO the slightly more image noise than Canon. Nevertheless, none of Canon or Sony camera-based video can match to an average camcorder. They are both good for day-to-day quick life snap, for best video quality, go for a camcorder.

12) Some reviewer complains about Sony T200 auto mode performance at indoor low light shots. It is true, but this is not just Sony. Like all other cameras, including Canon, auto mode is only suitable for outdoor shots or well lite area, unless you don't care of the picture quality. Tips: for good indoors shots, use T200 program mode where there are more choices in ISO setting, white balance etc for fine tuning to get a good picture.

In summary, given that the current market price for Sony T200 and Canon SD870IS are similar, and all the points above, I consider my Sony T200 is a best buy, without regret.

Starts up at once with no noticeable 'boot up' time. Touch screen is cool and navigation is smooth, I actually am not missing those physical buttons, not even those dials. But I wish there was a way to lock it away at times when you don't want the settings to get changed by unintended touches while shooting. You need only shutter and telly/wide buttons while shooting, right? Kids just might find it hard to operate it without disturbing the settings.

One of the things that its 3.5" screen has made possible though is that it displays a good amount of info about your shot while keeping all the setups/presets/menus available on the screen at the same time. While you are focusing, it tells you in order the shutter speed, aperture value, sensitivity and exposure value, which is cool.

Enough maneuverability with great many presets for WB (white balance), ISO (sensor sensitivity); an EV(exposure value); etc. for the professionally inclined to get the best out of this camera. In PGM mode (program mode) WB, ISO, shutter speed and aperture can be played with but they are all given in the forms of presets to choose from (with the exception of EV that's given in the form of a scale). I have a stand with me, I took some photos of far off objects using zoom to its limit, and keeping the sensitivity low (ISO 80)- a way to tell the camera to prolong the exposure, I really got good details, I think I got more that what I expected as it is not a professional camera.

Night mode worked well, but its not outstanding.

Smile shutter is an interesting feature but I found holding the shutter button pressed a bit tedious for continuous shots, if only there was a way of integrating it with timer.

Macro mode gave pretty good pictures of rather close by objects.

Back and white photographs were cool but don't expect too much. it aint flexible there as it provides no way of optimization. The grey tones are rather limited.

Sepia mode is cool so are color mode and vivid color modes.

It doubles up reasonably well as a camcorder (zooming works really well while shooting movies too), just that mic and speaker quality is a bit of an issue. It's a still camera but the length of the movie is only limited by the size of the memory and quality is great (you can choose from three quality presets, I shot the movie at Fine) which tempted me to suggest that it would actually be great if it had some sort of mic attachment provision in it. Speakers are weak too but the movie sounds well when played on TV. Its not a camcorder but the overall out come looked simply great on TV.

When you run slide show on the camera, the music is hardly audible. But you can add better quality music files to the camera from your computer.

Face detection is good, automatically focuses the faces and adjusts the exposure etc to best depict them, when multiple faces are being detected you can also touch a face to keep it on priority.

Super steady is handy but doesn't help when there is a real and unavoidable shake.

Computer and TV connectivity is painless. Movies play directly on TV or on media player.

I think the interface has been kept simple, I cribbed a bit for a while for no textual names for most of the menus but now I actually think that I would myself had turned the text names off after a while. Although the features are numerous the camera is very easy to operate just that you would need to keep the instruction manual with you for a while initially, the camera keeps you abreast of the things its doing for most purposes.

In-camera touch up software is fun. Good many frame types and clip art to chose from. You can draw on the snaps with the paint pen, but one thing that I missed while playing with a snap was `thought balloon' in the clip art. ;). Time to get creative !

With so much, the battery had to take a toll. It is sort of lagging behind. The camera promises 250 shots per charge but I don't think with so many features you would use it in a disciplined manner. I personally played a lot with it and I had to recharge it within 4 hours of fully charging it. When, however, I use it `reasonably' the battery did last long enough, there is room for improvement there still.

Overall a great camera for the price.

This camera is amazing! It takes great photos and the 3.5" widescreen touchscreen is very fun and functional at the same time (let the jealousy begin!). I have had no problems selecting options and such with the touchscreen with my finger or the little "stylus" attachment that comes with the camera that attaches to the wriststrap. I was very impressed with the Slideshow mode, which has different style and music options for you to choose (e.g: the "nostalgia" mode plays photos in sepia toning and has slower music). Slideshows also look great when you connect the camera to a a TV. There is also a fun option that lets you draw and put stamps onto photos that you take. Even though I love the camera, there are a few issues that made me give it only 4 stars. The first is that the screen is not very sharp when you are taking photos. In comparison to a Canon Powershot 750 (3" non-widescreen), the viewfinder is a lot more blurry and pixilated, although the photos become much more clear in photo preview mode. I've read that the T200's widescreen has the same amount of pixels as the old T100 3" screen, so maybe this explains the blurriness. Another issue is that as a touchscreen, fingerprints get all over the screen and dust tends to collect at the edges of the screen. Since the back of the camera is all screen (which is awesome), this makes it sometimes awkward to hold the camera when shooting (while also trying to avoid fingers blocking the lens). I used to hold my old Canon a certain way and I had to adopt a whole new way to avoid touching the screen while shooting. I've noticed the screen is easily cleaned though, so it isn't too big a deal if it gets smudgy. Overall, this is a devastatingly stylish camera that you may have to guard with your life when friends come by!

I have found the LCD to be very clear. It also has a bright mode that makes it still pretty easy to see outside on a sunny day. Here are some of my favorite features:
1 - Touch focus! When setting up a shot, you can touch the screen where you want it to focus. (Functional and really cool).
2 - Widescreen LCD. You can take pictures in either the standard or widescreen aspect ratio. This provides a lot of flexibility if you edit and print yourself.
3 - Touch zoom. When reviewing photos, you can zoom in on any part of the photo by touching it on the screen.
4 - Great pictures. There are lots of features you can set to create your perfect shot. I love the white balance, and image stabalization. The out-of-the-box auto pics are great too. The images are very clear and beautiful.
This camera is great. It is small enough to take with you anywhere, it takes great pictures, and it takes advantage of new technology.