13 out of 13 people found this review helpful.
Wonderful in theory, NOT in practice...
Date of Review: Dec 14, 2007
The Bottom Line: I highly recommend NOT buying this camera. It's cool to play with, but after several weeks of heavy usage, I think this is the worst camera I've owned from Sony.
I struggled for weeks over whether to buy this Sony DSC-T200, or the Canon 870IS. The Canon seemed to be the right choice, as I'm an avid photographer (often shooting with a pro-level DSLR) and ultimately felt that Canon's optics and wide angle lens was the right choice. But, I'm also a gadget geek, and the Sony just seemed so much more modern, and my experience with Sony compacts has been very good, all-in-all. Maybe it was because I wish I had an Apple iPhone, or maybe it was because I was upset by the plastic bits on the Canon, but at the last minute, I pulled the trigger on the Sony.
Big mistake.
TOUCHSCREEN:
As a previous review mentioned, the touch screen isn't a success. Obviously Sony invested countless hours trying to make it as easy to use as possible, and I respect their efforts. But, the fact is that it takes a longer time to do a lot of things that you do frequently, than it should. Everything is 2 or 3 pushes of a button, vs. 1 or 2 with a conventional interface. I'm very quick to work out technical stuff, so it's not that there's anything I can't work out, it's just that I'm already tired of having to do it, after several weeks of shooting with it. The size of the screen is amazing, but in the end, it doesn't really feel that much bigger than the screens on competitive cameras, even ones with a viewfinder. And, yes, you're constantly cleaning off smudges and fingerprints (it's got a strange finish to it, which doesn't clean easily). My hope is that I'd really enjoy showing pictures on the big screen, but since I shoot less with it, I show fewer pictures than I used to on my previous compact Sony. So, kudos to Sony for trying this, but it's not going to be a pleasant interface in the long run for most people. My wife, for example, hates using it. Says it's way too complex.
BATTERY LIFE:
The battery life just plain stinks. I'm used to using a compact for 2-3 days without being too concerned with recharging. With this one, from day 1, I've been stressed about not charging it nightly. And, even though I happily sacrificed the viewfinder for the larger screen at purchase, the lack of a viewfinder coupled with a weak battery = many missed pictures.
FEATURE SET:
The feature set is impressive. The smile feature kinda works... at least well enough to be fun to have. There are other crazy features like the ability to put starbursts on shiney things, and all sorts of stuff. Sony has thought of just about everything, but... ultimately the image quality and the other negatives aren't corrected by this feature set.
FLASH:
The flash is tiny and weak. A previous reviewer stated that the camera does well in low light. Well, sort of. What it does is barely illuminate the subject with the flash, and then crank up the ISO and then automatically brighten the image. What this means is that it looks perfect on the back of the camera, but when you look at them on your computer, they're grainy as any compact camera picture I've seen in years. They're soft, and undetailed. The contrast is excessive. Fleshtones are off. The pictures, effectively are correctly exposed, but very poor. I consider the flash/night pictures to be this camera's biggest weakness.
IMAGE QUALITY (DAYLIGHT):
The camera takes quite a lot of pretty good pictures in daylight. However, it often makes a mess of things, for some reason that I can't work out. The other day I shot a photo of a small white church in perfect afternoon light. It came out looking grainy and soft. It was in focus, but looked crappy. Again, I'm very familiar with photography, cameras, settings, etc. There was no reason for this. And, I find this to be the case about 10-15% of the time. I've never seen this with another Sony or other high-end compact.
COLOR ACCURACY:
There have been numerous examples of when the camera just can't handle certain colors, especially reds. If you take picture of a detailed red flower, you'll loose all the detail. It just goes full-on red, no shading, no hightlights. Just flat, bright red. I've seen it with purples too, but mostly with red. The sensor on this camera seems to have some issues.
BUILD QUALITY:
The camera is built very well. All metal. Feels great. Nice design. The sliding panel is a good device.
ERGONOMICS:
With this and other Sonys of this design, you'll find that you put your finger in front of the lens in a lot of pictures, as there's no natural place to put it. And, once you learn to hold it like a martini glass, every picture than you ask someone else to take will have they finger in the top of the picture. Not major, but a flaw in design.
Overall, this camera is fine for folks that are more concerned with the design of the camera than the quality of the pictures. It should stand up to a fair amount of abuse, other than scratches on the screen, and will capture the moments you want it to capture, if not beautifully all the time. But, for folks that ultimately want their pictures to look really good on their computers as well as on the little camera display, I'd avoid this camera like the plague. It has too many VERY SERIOUS image quality issues, especially in low light, but also in daylight, to be considered a good camera. I'm not sure where Sony went wrong, as I understood the T100 took good pictures. In my opinion, select a wide angle, image-stabilized Canon instead.
If you want this camera, look for me to be selling it on eBay as soon as this vacation is over, and taking my loss!
