Sony CyberShot DSC-P200 Review

Overall Rating

Great image resolution
Solid build quality
Nice features interface
Good basic video

A little bit easy to take out of focus pictures
Not brilliant in less than optimal lighting conditions - even with the flash.

The Sony CyberShot DSC-P200 is first 'proper' digital camera, and one I'm happy to recommend to anyone. I paid a little bit more than I was intending to when choosing a camera, but I don't regret the extra spend at all.

Firstly, it feels very solid in my hands. I've handled a few digital cameras before, and often they've felt a little bit 'brittle' or plastic-y, whereas the DSCP200 feels remarkably heavy for such a small camera.

I don't know an awful lot about digital camera technology, but a name I recognise in lenses from my experience with binoculars and telescopes is Carl Zeiss. The DSCP200 has a Zeiss lens, which to me at least indicates great quality. I like the fact that Sony have outsourced the lens manufacture on this camera - it suggests to me that they're prepared to use the best components rather than just trying to build everything in house.

In terms of use, it's got great default 'pick up and click' features. My wife (much less prone to fiddling with the settings than I!) is happy to use it as it comes. The manual settings are very easy to find and use through an intuitive interface. Again, the simplicity of the feature set is a great bonus. Doubtless for serious photographers the settings may be a little limited, but for the average bloke they are more than adequate, and have encouraged me to get interested in depth of field, focus settings and so on.

There are one or two little gripes. In light that isn't very dim at all, I have found it very easy to take red tinged photographs when really the camera should have been able to deal with the light - especially with the flash activated. Also, like a lot of digital cameras, the pause between the camera focussing and actually taking the picture means it is easy to lose focus. If you're not familiar with auto-focussing, it is easy to snap dozens of pictures without realising that they are actually out of focus.

The battery life and screen resolution are both very good. In the 5 months or so that I've had the camera, I've taken hundreds of pictures and only recharged it 4-5 times.

Overall, a very good little camera with a couple of flaws that it probably shares with all digital cameras. Maybe a little bit pricey for a casual user, but if you've got the money then I'd recommend it for the huge 7mp resolution if nothing else.