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“I bought this camera as a replacement for a Fuji...”

written by Dogmad on 29/11/2008

Good Points
Good battery life.
In my opinion a good intuitive menu.
Plenty of function buttons to get you straight in to the memory

General Comments
I bought this camera as a replacement for a Fuji S9500, although the pixel count is not that much different, 9 million on the Fuji and 10 million on the Sony, I find the Sony blows the Fuji away, but then we are talking compact camera verses DSLR, so not really a fair comparison.



My camera came with the supplied kit lens, a Sony 18-70mm F3.5-F5.6 and a dealer supplied lens, 70-300mm F4.5-F5.6.



I've found the 18-70 mm lens to be pretty good quality, unlike some bundled lenses with other cameras, the images come a little soft out of the camera, I shoot with no sharpening, preferring to sharpen with a dedicated image program on the computer.



I've just shot this years Christmas cards using the lens and the results are excellent.



Images from the 70-300mm lens, which is a Konica-Minolta lens are good, the lens does struggle some what in less then good light, an issue easily resolved by pushing the ISO up.



There are a lot of Konica-Minolta lens that fit the Sony range, browsing Ebay and second hand shops there's a lot of choice.



ISO range is 100-3200, I wouldn't use anything over 400 and have some good results with no noticeable noise.



The camera has image stabilisation built in to the camera, the advantage being that any lens you attach will have the benefits of image stabilisation, then manufacturer believes this gives you a 2.5 to 3.5 stop advantage when shooting held hand.



The camera focus's fast and has an eye start up system where the camera begins focusing as soon as you put your eye to the view finder, this means the camera is already focusing before you even line up the shot.



Burst mode is a 3 frames per second in any format, images can be captured in Jpeg, RAW or Raw+Jpeg, there are also a number of image quality modes.



The camera has a 2.7" monitor with all relative information displayed in either a simple mode or an advanced mode, you also review images through this monitor.



The sensor has a cleaning system which shakes dust off the sensor at start up and shut down, the sensor is, I'm reliably informed, is an updated version of the sensor in the Nikon D200, a camera that cost a lot more then the Sony A200.



If you want live view then Jessops have the A300, which is the same camera with a few design tweaks to accommodate the live, Jessops are the only outlet for the A300 in the UK, unless you're doing a lot of macro photography, then personally I don't think live view is worth the extra cost.



All in all I'm very pleased with my Sony A200, and can recommend it to any one wanting a first DSLR.