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382 of 391 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
New to digital photography, but all I can say is WOW!, 16 Feb 2005
By A Customer
Bought this last week with a 512MB memory stick pro (Sandisk - Sony too expensive for basically the same product!). The memory stick Pro is a must have if you want to get quality video from this camera by the way!Anyway, the camera itself has been dubbed a P150 makeover but I am already getting the impression it is a little more than a quick nip and tuck job. Yes it has a more desirable 2inch screen crammed inside a small frame and boasts much the same features as it's P150 predecessor, but it also has a much sought after (in the P150 model) auto white balance mode. Yes, it DOES exist and it DOES work! Ignore anyone who says this mode does not exist on this model - it is a lie! The picture quality at 7mp is excellent - a few indoor shots we took in auto mode were sharp but maybe would have benefitted from some manual tinkering to get the colours a bit better. My wife who works on quality graphics and photos in her job thinks the noise levels are fine and she works on some quality photos. The movie mode is capable, although we found the focus was slow to catch up with our daughter's first steps towards us! Also the files come in mpeg format which we found can be pain to convert into anything else (such as DV) but there's plenty of software/freeware out there that can sort that out. The video quality is close to, but not quite as good as our Panasonic DV camera which is 3 years old, if thats anything to judge by. Impressive in my opinion that it is so close to DV quality. A 512MB stick will hold about 6 minutes of video at hi-res. At low-res (for email) you could fit a full length movie onto it! Design is great, and for it's slight stature it seems solid and robust - no doubt a carry case will be a requirement eventually though. Red eye reduction mode works a dream - my daughters blue eyes had next to no red-eye in them when usually she normally photographs looking like some sort of demon! Macro mode is great too - you can zoom right into a very small area and the detail is astonishing. We took a photo of our baby monitor and only then realised how grubby it was!!! There's plenty of options to play around with, and although this is essentially meant to be a point and shoot, I have a feeling more experienced photographers will like whats on offer here. There are also extras that can be added such as additional lenses, filters, and a slave flash to name but three. One downside if you are a P150 owner - the Cybershot station for P150 is NOT compatible with the P200 - there is a new Cybershot station for the P200. Although this doesn't affect me, I've docked a star for this point as I am sure it will be a problem for some looking to upgrade. Haven't used any of the software provided - prefer to use our own - and in any case you can download the pictures/movies straight off the Memory stick onto your computer anyway. Otherwise thoroughly pleased with this purchase and Amazon's price is the cheapest I've seen so far.
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