Sony A200 Review
Review Date: March 27th 2008
Author: Mark Goldstein
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Image Quality
All of the sample images in this Review were taken using the 10 megapixel Fine JPEG setting, which gives an average image size of around
4Mb.
Noise
There are 6 ISO settings available
on the Sony A200 which you can select at any time if
the camera is in the creative shooting modes.
There is virtually no discernible
noise at the slowest settings of ISO 100, 200 and 400.
Noise is starting to appear at ISO 800, but it is still
well controlled
even at ISO 1600, although there is significant loss of detail. As you might expect, a lot of detail
is lost at the fastest speed of ISO 3200, with the images
having a "painted" feel, making this setting suitable only for emergency use. Here are some 100% crops which show the noise levels for
each ISO setting:
Sharpening
Here are two 100% crops which have
been Saved as Web - Quality 50 in Photoshop. The right-hand
image has had some sharpening applied in Photoshop. The out-of-the
camera images are quite soft using the creative style
of Standard with its default setting of 0 sharpening. You can change the in-camera sharpening level for any creative style
if you don't like the
default look.
Chromatic Aberrations
The Sony A200's 18-70mm (27-105mm equivalent) kit lens
handled chromatic aberrations well during the review,
with small levels of purple fringing mainly present
around the edges of objects in high-contrast situations at the edges of the image,
as shown in the example below.
RAW Format
The Sony A200 enables users to capture
RAW and JPEG format files. RAW files can be
saved in the .ARW
format. We've provided a few samples for you to download.
Download
Example #1
Download
Example #2
Download
Example #3
Download
Example #4
Download
Example #5
Flash
The flash settings on the Sony A200 are Autoflash, Fill-flash, Rear flash sync., Slow Sync and Wireless. Red-eye Reduction is also available in the main menu. These shots of a white
coloured wall were taken at a distance of 1.5m.
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Auto
Flash - Telephoto (105mm) |
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And here are some portrait shots.
Neither the Fill-flash or
Red-eye reduction settings caused any amount of red-eye.
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Fill-flash
(100% Crop) |
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Fill-flash & Red-eye
reduction (100% Crop) |
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Night Shot
The Sony A200's maximum shutter
speed is 30 seconds and there's also a Bulb mode for exposures
up to 30 minutes long, which is excellent news if you're
seriously interested in
night
photography.
The
shot
below
was taken
using a shutter speed of 10 seconds, aperture of f/8 at
ISO 100. I've included a 100% crop of the image to show
what the quality is like.
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Night
Shot (100% Crop) |
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Anti Shake
The Sony A200 has an anti-shake mechanism, which allows you to
take sharp photos at slower shutter speeds than other digital
cameras. To test this, I took 2 handheld shots of the same
subject with the same settings. The first shot was taken
with anti-shake turned off, the second with it turned on.
Here is a 100% crop of the image to show the results. As
you can see, with anti-shake turned on, the images are much
sharper than with anti-shake turned off. This feature really
does seem to make a difference and could mean capturing a
successful, sharp shot or missing the opportunity altogether.
Dynamic Range Optimizer
Sony's D-Range (Dynamic Range)
Optimiser adjusts brightness or contrast
across the whole scene and is claimed to be particularly effective
for high contrast, backlit scenes. When shooting in either JPEG or RAW, this mode improves shadow detail using standard gamma curves. The A200 has a simpler system than its big brother, the A700, offering 3 different DR settings (Off, Standard and Advanced).
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(100% Crop) |
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Overall Image Quality
The Sony A200 produced images of very good
quality during the review period. The 10 megapixel images
are soft straight out of the camera using the default creative style and ideally
require some further sharpening in an application like Adobe
Photoshop, or you can change the in-camera sharpening to
one of six different levels. The Sony A200 handled chromatic
aberrations well, with limited purple fringing effects appearing
only in high contrast situations. The built-in flash worked very well
indoors with no red-eye and good overall exposure. The night
photograph was excellent, with the maximum shutter speed
of 30 seconds and the Bulb mode offering lots of scope for creative night photography.
The Sony A200's first impressive feature in terms of image
quality is
the extensive and very usable ISO range of 100-3200. ISO
100-400 is noise-free, whilst ISO 800 and 1600 produce
more than acceptable results, and the fastest speed of ISO 3200 is OK for emergency use. The second one is the effective Dynamic Range Optimizer function, which extracts more detail from the shadow and highlight areas in an image, without introducing any unwanted noise or other artifacts. Overall then an impressive performance - just make sure that you either increase the in-camera sharpening level for JPEGs, or you're happy to post-process the images in Photoshop later.
 PhotographyBLOG
is a member of the DIWA
organisation. Our test results for the Sony A200 have been submitted to DIWA
for comparison with test results for different samples of
the same camera model supplied by other DIWA
member sites.
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