Sony Alpha DSLR-A200K review

Sony's new DSLR is remarkably affordable, coming in at the same price as Nikon's ancient D40.

There's no evidence of a budget design, though, with a 10 megapixel sensor, 2.7 inch screen, and optical image stabilisation built in. The lens has a 4x zoom range 'a significant improvement on the 3x zooms offered by the other manufacturers'kit lenses.

The controls are well laid out for quick operation. There are dedicated buttons for ISO speed, drive mode, exposure compensation and exposure lock. Drive modes include the usual continuous and self-timer options plus bracketing of automatic exposure and white balance. These modes take three pictures, with one at normal settings and the other two at higher and lower values, allowing you to choose the best one later.

A Fn (function) button provides quick access to other key photographic controls such as metering and focus modes and white balance options. The Menu button reveals further options including aspect ratio, with a choice of 3:2 (typical for an SLR camera) and 16:9 (to match widescreen TVs). A Creative Style option presents seven colour presets with names such as Standard, Vivid and Sunset. Most of these presets didn't appear to affect image quality much, but we liked the way contrast, sharpness and saturation could be adjusted and saved as part of each preset.

View to a kill

The viewfinder shows the shutter speed, aperture and various other settings, and also an indicator of how steadily the camera is being held. It's not an essential feature, but we found it helpful in encouraging us to take our time to ensure the camera was still. A flashing wobbly hand icon warns when slow shutter speeds are likely to induce blur, sensibly taking the zoom position into account (telephoto increases the likelihood of blur).

A sensor just below the viewfinder detects when the camera is lifted up to the eye, whereupon the A200K enters a continuous autofocus mode. This effectively eliminates autofocus times. Continuous shooting ran at 2.64fps in our tests - short of Sony's 3fps claim, but still an impressive result. In RAW mode, continuous shooting slowed down to 1.38fps after seven shots, but this was still one of the fastest RAW continuous speeds on test. Continuous performance became a little erratic when the Dynamic Range Optimiser was enabled, but an average of 1.86fps is still an excellent result. The A200 produced consistently excellent photos. The autofocus performed impeccably, and details were sharp right up into the corners of frames.

Lead shot

Automatic exposures tended to be a touch brighter than on the other cameras. This sometimes meant that highlight details were lost, but more often than not it flattered subjects. Noise levels overall weren't quite as low as with the Canon or Nikon, but were better than the other three cameras on test. Photos were detailed and reasonably smooth at ISO 1600, and even the top ISO 3200 setting gave usable results.

The A200 doesn't quite have the best image quality here, but it isn't far behind the front runners and, crucially, has no significant faults. Performance doesn't excel, but is far from lacking. The controls are excellent, and features such as the extended zoom range, 750 shot battery life and Dynamic Range Optimisation give it an edge. However, it's the price that makes the A200 really stand out. It's hard to justify spending more when the A200 is such a balanced and capable camera.