Digital Trends

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200

July 23rd, 2007 | by David Elrich

Features and Design

The DSC-W200 is a very unassuming digicam, looking like an Altoids tin with a silvery all-metal body with some nice accents. In other words, no one but you and few eagle-eyed friends will know you’re holding a cutting-edge digital camera. For the record, Casio recently introduced the 12MP EX-Z1200 ($399 USD) and Panasonic has the DMC-FX100, also $399 USD and 12 megapixels so the Sony isn’t the coolest camera ever. As a matter of fact, the Panasonic has a 28mm lens, one of my favorite features—but that’s a story for another day.

The Sony measures 3.4 x 2.3 x 1.1 and weighs 6.2 ounces with battery and MS Duo card. This is a very compact camera—fitting just about anywhere--and feels very solid. The front is dominated by a 3x Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens with the standard focal length of 35-105mm. You can buy wide or tele conversion lenses to juice things up but you’ll need to buy an adaptor ring as well. Also here are the flash, AF Assist lamp and window for the tiny viewfinder. There are a few embossed decals and another stating “12.1 Megapixels.”

The top only has the shutter button, on/off switch and microphone. The rear, as you’d expect, is dominated by a 2.5-inch LCD screen rated 115K pixels. I know Sony is trying to hit a price but they really should’ve used the higher-quality screen found in the T series (230K pixels). Fortunately, there’s a small viewfinder to use if you feel the screen is too wiped out. You’ll also find the wide/tele zoom toggle switch, a main mode dial, four-way controller with OK/set button and dedicated keys for playback, Menu and Home. The main mode dial gives you quick access to your shooting settings including Auto, Program Auto, Manual (aperture and shutter speed adjustment), Soft Snap for portraits, Twilight Portrait, Twilight, Landscape, and additional Scene settings (ISO+, beach, snow and fireworks). There’s also a Movie mode (640 x 480 at 30 fps). The four-way controller is similar to almost every digicam on the market, letting you tweak the flash, self timer, switch to macro and adjust the display (with grid lines, without and so on).

On the right side is the compartment for the lithium ion battery and MS Pro Duo card slot. On the bottom are the speaker, tripod mount and the connection for the hydra-headed cable for USB and AV and hookups. Again, I have to complain Sony touts the fact this camera offers Full HD 1080 out but makes you buy a cable (around $35 USD) to view them on your HDTV.

The DSC-W200 has an OK kit. You get the camera, battery, charger, strap, hydra-headed connector and an abbreviated owner’s guide to get you started. The rest of the manual is on the supplied CD ROM in PDF form along with basic Picture Motion Browser ver. 2.0.05 software for downloading images. And don’t forget a Memory Stick Pro Duo card (at least a gig). We didn’t and after charging the battery, loading a card, it was time to see how good 12MP images can be.

Image Courtesy of Sony