The F2.8 to 5.2 aperture is nice and bright at the wide end, but less useful at the long end of the range, which means slower shutter speeds or increasing the CCD sensitivity. The P200 inherits the excellent 38-114mm equivalent 3x Carl Zeiss Vario-Tessar lens from the P100 and P150 before it. For social snaps of small groups or a little fill-flash it's fine, but don't expect miracles. The red-eye reduction (using a burst of pre-flashes) has to be turned on and off via the setup menu, which is fiddly, but you do at least get a slow synch function and a three-step output level control (-, normal, +). The small flash is a little underpowered (a quoted range 3.5m), which is perhaps why Sony sells an optional bolt-on slave flash unit. This plugs into a small proprietary socket under a flap in the battery/card compartment cover. The InfoLITHIUM battery is charged in-camera using the supplied mains adapter. The P200 accepts Memory Stick and Memory Stick PRO cards (PRO cards are faster and offer higher capacities - up to 2GB). Battery life from the Li-Ion cell (370 shots, CIPA standard testing) is excellent. Both battery and card click into place, so no danger of losing one when changing the other. The combined battery/Memory Stick compartment sits under a sturdy spring-hinged 'slide out and swing open' door. We saw this in some of our quickly 'grabbed' shots at speeds as high as 1/200 second. This means camera shake is an ever-present threat when shooting single-handedly (a small movement of your hand can mean a big movement of the lens). The camera feels well balanced, but a word of caution the lens is on the far left (looking from the back), and your hand is on the far right. This means it's perfectly safe to shoot one-handed, though I personally found the zoom a lot easier to operate if i supported the P200 with my left hand when shooting. At 180g fully loaded it is just heavy enough to feel solid and stable, and the lack of any grip on the front of the camera is offset by a small 'thumb grip' on the far right of the rear panel. It may not look it, but the P200 handles really well. All the buttons and switches are metal too - mostly chrome - giving the camera a slightly more serious feel than appearances might suggest. The all-metal body exudes quality, and feels remarkably solid in the hand. The lens retracts fully into the body when powered down, meaning the P2000 is truly pocketable. Aside from the power (on/off) and shutter release buttons, which sit on the top of the thin body, the cameras controls are all on the rear plate, to the right of the 2.0 " LCD. Externally the P200 is virtually identical to its predecessor, aside from a few design tweaks (including a smoother body and slight re-jigging of the controls) and a slightly larger screen.
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