We used the built-in lenses at their widest and longest focal lengths with the apertures wide open. The crops are taken from the upper left corner of the chart and presented here at 100%.

Like most compacts, the W200 exhibits coloured fringing in the corners when zoomed-out and zoomed-in, although it’s no worse than typical models. Note the Panasonic FX30 performs better in this respect.

To measure and compare the Sony Cyber-shot DSC W200’s macro performance we photographed a custom chart using it and a number of rival models with their bundled lenses.

Each camera was positioned at a distance and set to a focal length which delivered the maximum possible reproduction.

The dark lines are 10mm apart and the result is not cropped. Smaller areas are preferred in this test.

The image left was taken with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200 in its Macro mode.

Switch the W200 to macro mode and you can focus as close as 5cm with the lens set to wide angle. From this distance the W200 captured an area measuring 58x42mm, which while similar to the Fuji F30 and Panasonic FX30, is behind that of the Canon A640’s impressive close-up result. Now let’s have a look at the Sony W200’s geometric distortion.