12 out of 12 people found this review helpful.
You get exactly what you pay for: size!
Date of Review: Apr 20, 2005
The Bottom Line: SD200 is a decent camera for straight point and shot in good light only. No advanced controls.
I have been a digital camera enthusiast for longest time ever. I had owned Canon PowerShot S200, S320, S400 and SD200 from the PowerShot family.
Here is my story with SD200. I was amazed by the camera's overall size, feel and fit. Because I had owned quite a few PowerShots which were all a great quality small cameras, I decided to purchase this one mainly its overall size, large LCD, overall shiny metallic look and of course PowerShot s fame. After purchasing SD200, I tested it extensively both outside and indoors using various light conditions, flash and focus settings as well as creative (fun) settings. I have a photo website which has many of my SD200 shots (http://www.fotki.com/irinette) if you would like to check the quality of shots. The camera model and EXIF would be displayed to the right of each picture.
PICTURE QUALITY
When it comes to overall quality I found SD200 to be very much like my old S200. The picture quality outdoors with bright sun light was amazing, pretty crisp and detailed. The best pictures I took with SD200 were in plenty day light and beautiful nature such as the beach, parks, flowers, lakes etc. However, I found that the colors were not as rich as those taken with S320 and S400. In addition, even though the outdoors pictures were clear, a little pixelation was visible. Specifically, this pixelation could be visible on the pictures of the trees, or trees on the background. Pictures taken outside with not a bright sun light but rather low light came out fine, but not great. In many cases, the noise and pixilation was more than expected. Overall, the pictures taken in the day light whether bright or not were the nicest pictures taken with this camera so far.
As for taking pictures indoors with low light, most of the shots showed a great deal of noise in addition to general pixelation. In account for this, SD200 could seem a bit cheap with low quality kind of shots. Even with flash, the dark areas still appeared very blurry and noisy . Unlike the pictures taken with other previously released PowerShots in low light indoor conditions, pictures taken with SD200 did not come out as sharp in detail and smooth in contours. The contours of people s faces and skin appeared rather pixelated and not crisp and fresh. Furthemore, as many other small PowerShot family cameras, SD200 displayed a great deal of red eye, perhaps more than other cameras I have ever owned. When taking pictures of people using the red eye reduction setting and in a portrait mode, the red eye was significantly reduced, especially on a very close up shots. However, pictures of the group with red eye reduction (not a close up) did come out with strong red eye.
FEATURES
Even though SD200 is presented as a straight point and shoot kind of camera, it shares many of the features from the PowerShot family. For instance, the fun options such as Sepia or Black and White pictures. As I played more and more with these options, I realized that the Sepia quality of S400 was a lot more sharper than of SD200. The Sepia and Black/White pictures came out very grainy on SD200.
I have also played with white balance, it works pretty cool, as you can decrease or increase the white tone of the picture, that is, make it darker or lighter. It works normal like it should be, I did not see any abnormalities from other PowerShots. Self-Timer works great, although it does come out with red eye as described above. There is also an auto focus which you can turn on and off. Sometimes turning the auto focus off lets you take better pictures, however, I kept the auto focus on most of my pictures.
As for other features such as Kids and Pets, Under Water, Indoors etc, they might come useful in some situations. For example, I used Indoors option when I was taking pictures at the birthday party. It made the overal lighting a bit brighter, but still the pictures came out very dull (indoor quality described above). Under Water function appeared to be pretty useless, I never used it.
SD200 features 3X optical zoom like its other PowerShot brothers. For the small sized camera it is, 3X is OK, and very useful. I totally recommend to use only optical zoom and not digital. Pictures come out sharper and crispier that way. I hope one day Canon will come out with at least 5X optical zoom for small sized cameras like this. That would have been so cool!!
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS
One thing I really like about SD200 is the fast speed of processing the taken images. It might be due to the SD card (which is faster than old CF cards used for S PowerShot series). It is a pleasure to search through hundreds of pictures on the large 2 inch screen. I have purchased 1GB SD memory card, and it is so nice to keep hundreds of pictures taken even on the highest 3.2 mgpx resolution.
In terms of resolution, I took most of my shots at the medium level with the smallest compression. The pictures came out nice. I also took some pictures at the Large (3.2) resolution with the smallest compression. Honestly, I did not see much difference when viewing on my 15 inch computer screen, other than the size of the pictures came out to be twice bigger than of those taken at Medium Size / Smallest Compression setting.
The Video came out great on this little camera, for which I would give it a definete extra plus. I took few video shots of salsa dancing at the highest 640 by 480 resolution. The videos came out great. The bad news is that you cannot zoom during video recording as you can now do on new SD500. I also taped a short movie clip from the TV to test the video. The sound and video quality is fine!
SUMMARY OF THINGS I LIKED
- Very light
- Looks good and sturdy
- Tiny and Shiny
- Great Video capabilities
- Records on SD
- Fast processing speed
- Big 2 inch LCD
- Great outdoor shots
SUMMARY OF THINGS I DISLIKED
- No zoom on video recording
- Low light pictures are very grainy
- Very prominent Red Eye
- No advanced manual controls
- Many pictures show pixellation and noise
- Colors are not as bright as other PowerShots
- Focus
- Optical zoom is only 3x
- Camera is easy to be shaken during picture taken, no image stabilization
- Small resolution
THIS CAMERA IS USEFUL FOR: Outdoor shots with a lot of sunlight & close ups (macros) of things (remember to take time before pressing the button, give the camera enough time to focus)
THIS CAMERA IS USELESS FOR: Night shots, group shots at the distance (non portrait mode), low light shots
THE REASON I SOLD MY SD200: I want sharper bigger images with no noise
RECOMMENDATION
I would totally recommend this camera to people who need a tiny and light camera to fit any pocket and carry out at all times. Also, SD200 has a great two inch screen which is wonderful when viewing photos. I would definitely recommend this camera to vacationers and people always on the go who don't want to miss a great outside moment (like bikers). I would not recommend this camera to people who want perfection in a small metal body. This is not going to happen with SD200!!
