A200 review - Endless thread or Case closed.

After reaching the 150 limit, the thread that Simon started with the announcement of the review of the A200 ended. Or did it?

Question: what are reviews of digital cameras about?

Answer: it’s about giving truthful information about the quality and possibilities of a camera.

Question: what makes a good and useful review?

Answer: a review based on facts and which presents as much relevant data (from a photographers point of view) as possible.

Does the review of the A200 qualify for the title ‘good review’? I certainly won’t be the judge on that one. But a thread of now 150 messages might be an indication that there is some doubt among the readers about this particular review on some issues. This is confirmed when reading the thread, which point to several inaccuracies, that Simon in some cases gracefully corrected. But still ….

So Simon, please get off your high horse. We all acknowledge that you are a pro and we are grateful for your reviewing efforts. A bit of positive criticism doesn’t hurt. It keeps us sharp.

What your review did accomplish was, that we (our studio, we are specialised in product-photography) felt an urge (because of the let’s say a bit ambiguous results of your review) to do some testing ourselves. Our friendly supplier was kind enough to lend us six 8 MP cameras (including the A200). We took resolution chart and real life pictures with them in jpeg and RAW (used ACR 2.4 for all of them). And guess what?

The results of the RAW-pictures were very similar. No real winner. The A200 was certainly no worse than the other cameras. That changed a bit in jpeg, especially in default mode. The A200 pictures were a little soft and dull. But why not use all the magnificent settings to make the images more ‘spicy’? With a few minor adjustments form the settings Filter, Colour saturation and sharpness the results were absolutely on par with the rest. So now we finally new the answer to the question what the camera was capable of. It would have been nice if your review would have given that answer. Not all people (and certainly not the ones that go for a prosumer with all kinds of extra settings) are only interested in the performance of the camera out-of –the-box in default mode. Debatable is the decision of Minolta to deliver cameras (A2 and A200) with a default mode that can produce unappealing soft and dull jpegs. A sure way to scare away customers.

We rest our case …. or …?