Joe_Bloggs
Active member
Previous cameras used: Nikon Cookpix 995 (good for its time), Fujifilm s5500 (great, but we gave it to someone else as a present)
Construction: nothing I can find to complain about. This camera looks and handles every bit like a $780 camera.
Features: 7x zoom, flip-out and twist LCD, EVF, scene modes, custom modes, flash hotshoe... the list goes on. But one thing I really miss is a focus assist lamp. The Fuji s5500 has one and it's half the price of this camera! Auto focusing at telephoto really suffers because of this and I'd rank it below the Fuji for focussing.
ISO 800 is really hard to find on a consumer camera these days and I'm glad to find it here. Together with the anti-shake this would have been the perfect prosumer camera for night photos if not for the lack of a focus assist lamp.
Anti-shake works but doesn't produce miracles. When I was testing cameras in shops Nikon's Coolpix 8800's Vibration Reduction seemed to work better. But the 8800's shot to shot delay is intolerably slow. This a200 is much snappier in comparison.
Image quality:
Spades of detail at 8mp and ISO 50. However there's obvious purple fringing in high contrast scenes. At ISO 200 photos will come out just fine on the computer screen but 100% zoom will show noticeable noise. At ISO 800 there you will probably see noise even in a 4R print.
Ease of use: Auto mode works ok, although auto white balance doesn't compensate enough for incandescent lighting.
Common functions are quickly accessible but this is not a camera that you can learn fully without the manual. KM seems to emphasize speed of operation over simplicity. (i.e. there are separate buttons for lots of operations and quick shortcuts for others. But that means you can't just look at the buttons and figure out what they do.)
For manual focus this camera gives a focus distance reading and zooms into the middle of the frame for fine focussing, but still the zoomed in part is so noisy that it's hard to judge correct focus even with the zoom.
This camera can operate as a point-and-shooter but because of its bulk, the flip out and twist lcd and the long lens with manual zoom ring, this camera WILL be awkward in the hands of a novice. Something to consider if you are going to depend on others to hold the camera for you. Many of the photos taken by other people were out of focus or suffered from extreme hand-shake (even with the anti-shake on...)... and they'll probably ask you how the zoom works on this thing. (the woohs and ahs when they learn about the zoom ring is almost worth it, though) Oh, and they may even mistake the on/off button for the shutter release and turn your camera off. So remember to tell them which button to press.
Overall: this camera's feature list reads like a prosumer's dream but purple fringing and some problems with focusing doesn't allow this to quite become a dream camera.
Problems:
No focus assist lamp, manual focus is hard to get right.
_UPDATE_: I can't imagine what John is talking about when he said 'I didn't realize how much I missed the LCD panel until you don't have one. Must look in viewfinder for shots and battery status.' There certainly is an LCD on the A200, it's flip out and twist, better than the one on the A2! Did he actually use the camera?
Still having problems with handing the camera over to others for shots. The camera is just too imposing, people who are handed the camera seem to lose what little experience they have with their own cameras, commit silly errors more often and get rather intimidated in general.
The lack of the focus assist lamp really came back to haunt me in the New Year's eve. When this big camera takes forever to focus compared to someone else's compact with a focus assist lamp, the owner of this big expensive camera becomes the laughing stock of the whole party. Most embarrassing when the one holding the camera doesn't know to half press and so after he counts to three we have to wait until something like 'five' or 'six' for the flash to fire and the photo to be taken. Makes me wish I still had my Fuji s5500.
This camera did a great job photographing Christmas decorations but I am having trouble with shots where I need to photograph some actual people along with the decorations. Of course the slow sync setting in P mode gives an exposure time that's way to long for handheld, so I'd been trying to go for a compromise in M mode--opening the aperture to maximum size and setting the shutter to something reasonable, about 1/10 (better make that 1/15 or 1/20 if someone else is holding the camera...) at wide angle. On one occasion the flash worked just right in auto mode and 0EV. On New Year's Eve though, it overexposed my face, so when it's time for me to take command of the camera again I set it to manual flash control, 1/4 flash power. Oops, the group shot was way too dim. Changed back to 1/2 and finally full power and I got the exposure right for the group shot. The group got rather impatient while I was doing my thing.
I still haven't got the hang of setting up the flash for shooting both people and decorations. Perhaps this is my fault and not the fault of the camera, perhaps not. Can someone more experienced chime in on this issue? ... Even if the blame doesn't solely lie on the camera, there's definitely room for improvement here. If the camera did a pre-flash it could have metered more accurately, maybe even focus more quickly!
----
Just went out to shoot some night scenery (Hong Kong harbour). I manually set the focus to infinity, but the pictures of the Christmas lights is more blurred than when using auto focus. So, manual focus seems to be off for the infinity point?
Construction: nothing I can find to complain about. This camera looks and handles every bit like a $780 camera.
Features: 7x zoom, flip-out and twist LCD, EVF, scene modes, custom modes, flash hotshoe... the list goes on. But one thing I really miss is a focus assist lamp. The Fuji s5500 has one and it's half the price of this camera! Auto focusing at telephoto really suffers because of this and I'd rank it below the Fuji for focussing.
ISO 800 is really hard to find on a consumer camera these days and I'm glad to find it here. Together with the anti-shake this would have been the perfect prosumer camera for night photos if not for the lack of a focus assist lamp.
Anti-shake works but doesn't produce miracles. When I was testing cameras in shops Nikon's Coolpix 8800's Vibration Reduction seemed to work better. But the 8800's shot to shot delay is intolerably slow. This a200 is much snappier in comparison.
Image quality:
Spades of detail at 8mp and ISO 50. However there's obvious purple fringing in high contrast scenes. At ISO 200 photos will come out just fine on the computer screen but 100% zoom will show noticeable noise. At ISO 800 there you will probably see noise even in a 4R print.
Ease of use: Auto mode works ok, although auto white balance doesn't compensate enough for incandescent lighting.
Common functions are quickly accessible but this is not a camera that you can learn fully without the manual. KM seems to emphasize speed of operation over simplicity. (i.e. there are separate buttons for lots of operations and quick shortcuts for others. But that means you can't just look at the buttons and figure out what they do.)
For manual focus this camera gives a focus distance reading and zooms into the middle of the frame for fine focussing, but still the zoomed in part is so noisy that it's hard to judge correct focus even with the zoom.
This camera can operate as a point-and-shooter but because of its bulk, the flip out and twist lcd and the long lens with manual zoom ring, this camera WILL be awkward in the hands of a novice. Something to consider if you are going to depend on others to hold the camera for you. Many of the photos taken by other people were out of focus or suffered from extreme hand-shake (even with the anti-shake on...)... and they'll probably ask you how the zoom works on this thing. (the woohs and ahs when they learn about the zoom ring is almost worth it, though) Oh, and they may even mistake the on/off button for the shutter release and turn your camera off. So remember to tell them which button to press.
Overall: this camera's feature list reads like a prosumer's dream but purple fringing and some problems with focusing doesn't allow this to quite become a dream camera.
Problems:
No focus assist lamp, manual focus is hard to get right.
_UPDATE_: I can't imagine what John is talking about when he said 'I didn't realize how much I missed the LCD panel until you don't have one. Must look in viewfinder for shots and battery status.' There certainly is an LCD on the A200, it's flip out and twist, better than the one on the A2! Did he actually use the camera?
Still having problems with handing the camera over to others for shots. The camera is just too imposing, people who are handed the camera seem to lose what little experience they have with their own cameras, commit silly errors more often and get rather intimidated in general.
The lack of the focus assist lamp really came back to haunt me in the New Year's eve. When this big camera takes forever to focus compared to someone else's compact with a focus assist lamp, the owner of this big expensive camera becomes the laughing stock of the whole party. Most embarrassing when the one holding the camera doesn't know to half press and so after he counts to three we have to wait until something like 'five' or 'six' for the flash to fire and the photo to be taken. Makes me wish I still had my Fuji s5500.
This camera did a great job photographing Christmas decorations but I am having trouble with shots where I need to photograph some actual people along with the decorations. Of course the slow sync setting in P mode gives an exposure time that's way to long for handheld, so I'd been trying to go for a compromise in M mode--opening the aperture to maximum size and setting the shutter to something reasonable, about 1/10 (better make that 1/15 or 1/20 if someone else is holding the camera...) at wide angle. On one occasion the flash worked just right in auto mode and 0EV. On New Year's Eve though, it overexposed my face, so when it's time for me to take command of the camera again I set it to manual flash control, 1/4 flash power. Oops, the group shot was way too dim. Changed back to 1/2 and finally full power and I got the exposure right for the group shot. The group got rather impatient while I was doing my thing.
I still haven't got the hang of setting up the flash for shooting both people and decorations. Perhaps this is my fault and not the fault of the camera, perhaps not. Can someone more experienced chime in on this issue? ... Even if the blame doesn't solely lie on the camera, there's definitely room for improvement here. If the camera did a pre-flash it could have metered more accurately, maybe even focus more quickly!
----
Just went out to shoot some night scenery (Hong Kong harbour). I manually set the focus to infinity, but the pictures of the Christmas lights is more blurred than when using auto focus. So, manual focus seems to be off for the infinity point?