Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200 gallery

Landscape: 3.09MB, Program, 1/500, f5.6, ISO 100, 7.6-22.8mm at 7.6mm (equivalent to 35mm)

  Our first sample image was taken on a very bright day with the W200 zoomed-out to wide angle and set to 100 ISO. As such this represents perfect conditions.

The crops are certainly very detailed, and unlike Panasonic’s compacts, there’s little to no visible noise – although to be fair you’d hope not at 100 ISO.

The high contrast deck of the boat does however reveal one of the W200’s optical weaknesses: coloured fringing. You’ll see it in several of our images.

     

Portrait: 3.21MB, Portrait mode, 1/800, f5.5, ISO 125, 7.6-22.8mm at 22.8mm (equivalent to 105mm)

  For this shot we switched the W200 into Portrait mode and zoomed-into its maximum focal length.

The W200 has sensibly opened the aperture to its widest setting, but there’s still not much of a blurring effect on the background.

The subject is nice and sharp though, again with plenty of detail and no artefacts to mention.

     

Building: 3.36MB, Program, 1/500, f5.6, ISO 100, 7.6-22.8mm at 7.6mm (equivalent to 35mm)

    Another shot taken under ideal conditions, and again the W200’s captured a high degree of detail.

We’d certainly expect it to given the bright light and 100 ISO setting, but these days it’s not a forgone conclusion you’ll get a great result with a compact even at 100 ISO.

So a good result here for the Sony, which proves – at 100 ISO anyway – there’s no compromise squeezing 12 Megapixels into a compact.

     
   
     
   

Landscape: 3.58MB, Program, 1/15, f2.8, ISO 100, 7.6-22.8mm at 7.6mm (equivalent to 35mm)

    Sticking to 100 ISO under much lower light conditions forced the W200 to select a relatively slow shutter speed of 1/15. This has however allowed the waterfall to blur nicely, while the optical stabilisation ensured the rest of the image was sharp.

The first crop taken from the upper right area though reveals some coloured fringing.

     
   
     
   

Indoor: 2.92MB, Program, 1/80, f2.8, ISO 400, 7.6-22.8mm at 7.6mm (equivalent to 35mm)

  The first of our higher-sensitivity indoor shots was taken at 400 ISO.

We expected the worst, given the W200’s high resolution, but the result isn’t actually that bad.

Sure there’s some image processing artefacts, but still plenty of detail present, and this would look acceptable at most print sizes.

     

Indoor: 2.86MB, Program, 1/13, f2.8, ISO 800, 7.6-22.8mm at 7.6mm (equivalent to 35mm)

 

Our second high-sensitivity indoor shot was taken at 800 ISO. The W200 metered this shot a little too dark, so we’ve applied +1EV compensation here.

As you’d expect, the increase in sensitivity has resulted in noticeably higher noise levels, but again while they’re now quite visible, there’s still a good degree of detail – and no drop in saturation that we’ve seen on other compacts.

You probably wouldn’t want to examine it too closely, but we’d say the W200 at 800 ISO is quite usable.

     

Indoor: 3.15MB, Program, 1/80, f2.8, ISO 1600, 7.6-22.8mm at 7.6mm (equivalent to 35mm)

  Our final high sensitivity indoor shot was taken with the W200 set to 1600 ISO, and now there’s a significant increase in noise and loss of detail.

The colour balance is still ok though, so you could make a fair looking small print with this image. Remember that the high resolution also means the noise artefacts will appear smaller than other compacts when printed the same size.

So overall, a surprisingly good set of results for the W200, considering its high resolution.

     

The following images were taken with the Sony Cyber-shot DSC-W200. The W200 was set to 12M mode and 4:3 aspect ratio with Auto White Balance, Multi metering, Normal Colour mode and the contrast set to the default DR option.

The individual exposure mode, file sizes, shutter speeds, aperture, ISO and lens focal length are listed for each image.

The crops are taken from the original files, reproduced at 100% and saved in Adobe Photoshop CS2 as JPEGs with the default Very High quality preset, while the resized images were made in Photoshop CS2 and saved with the default High quality preset.

The three crops are typically taken from far left, central and far right portions of each image.

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