Slightly warm color cast, but good detail.

The extreme tonal range of this image makes it a tough shot for many digicams, which is precisely why I set it up this way, and why I shoot it with no fill flash or reflector to open up the shadows. The object is to hold both highlight and shadow detail without producing a "flat" picture with muddy colors, and the A200 performed reasonably well in this respect. That said, the camera's fixed-focal-length lens does produce some distortion in Marti's features.

The shot at right was taken with a +0.6 EV exposure compensation adjustment, which resulted in slightly dark midtones. I chose the Auto white balance setting, which is just slightly warm and yellowish, but which looked somewhat better than the daylight option. (Sorry, no sample here of the daylight white balance.) Skin tones look pretty good, though a hint yellow in places, and the blue flowers in the bouquet came out just about right. (This is a very difficult blue for many digicams to get right, and the A200 produces only faint purplish tints.) Resolution is good, with nice detail for a 2.0-megapixel camera. Shadow detail is good too, although there's some noise present there.

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files A20OUTAP0.HTM through A20OUTAP4.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Closer Portrait:

Some distortion from the fixed focal length lens, but good resolution.

Overall results are similar to the wider shot above in terms of color, though the A200's fixed focal length lens distorts Marti's features a little. Detail is stronger in Marti's face and hair, and details are reasonably sharp as well. In shooting this image, I had the camera very close to Marti's face, a consequence of the moderate wide angle focal length. I normally try to fill the frame with her face for this shot, but the A200 wouldn't hold sharp focus that close, without going to macro mode, which required a too-close shooting distance. The shot at right was taken with a +0.9 EV exposure compensation adjustment, which resulted in hot highlights, but left the midtones about where they belonged. Shadow detail is good in this shot though, with only moderate noise. As usual, a camera like the A200 with a fixed focal length, wide-angle lens wouldn't be your first choice for shooting closeup portraits like this...

To view the entire exposure series from zero to +1.3 EV, see files A20FACAP0.HTM through A20FACAP4.HTM on the thumbnail index page.

Indoor Portrait, Flash:

Normal Flash

Slow-Sync Flash

Slightly low intensity but good coverage with the built-in flash, good color as well.

The A200's built-in flash is slightly dim here, albeit bright enough to illuminate Marti reasonably well. The background incandescent lighting produces a dark orange cast on the back wall, which spills onto Marti's features slightly. Overall color is still pretty good, though. The camera's Slow Sync flash mode combines the flash with a longer exposure, allowing more ambient light into the image. The overall exposure is much brighter, though the orange cast is stronger and more visible on Marti's face and blouse.

Indoor Portrait, No Flash:

Auto White Balance

Incandescent White Balance

Minor color casts from the incandescent lighting, but good exposure.

This shot is always a very tough test of a camera's white balance capability, given the strong, yellowish color cast of the household incandescent bulbs used for the lighting. The A200 had a little difficulty here, producing color casts at both white balance settings, but the overall result wasn't too bad. The Incandescent image is warm and yellowish, while the Auto setting has a pink cast. I chose the auto setting because it had the least color cast, and the shots at right were taken with a +0.7 EV exposure compensation adjustment.

House Shot:

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Good color, with moderate resolution.

The A200's Auto white balance setting produced the best results here, though slightly yellow. The Daylight setting produced similar results, but with a stronger yellow cast. Overall color is good however, despite the warmth. Resolution is moderate, with good detail in the tree limbs and shrubbery. Details are a little soft throughout the frame, but the very corners of the frame are very blurred. This doesn't extend too far into the frame, but it's still more corner softness than I'd like to see.

Far-Field Test

Good overall resolution and color, but limited dynamic range.

This image is shot at infinity to test far-field lens performance. NOTE that this image cannot be directly compared to the other "house" shot, which is a poster, shot in the studio. The rendering of detail in the poster will be very different than in this shot, and color values (and even the presence or absence of leaves on the trees!) will vary in this subject as the seasons progress. In general though, you can evaluate detail in the bricks, shingles and window detail, and in the tree branches against the sky. Compression artifacts are most likely to show in the trim along the edge of the roof, in the bricks, or in the relatively "flat" areas in the windows.

This is my ultimate "resolution shot," given the infinite range of detail in a natural scene like this, and the A200 performs well, given its modest feature set. Detail is reasonable in the tree limbs over the roof, albeit a little soft. The shrubbery in front of the house fares about the same, with soft details in the fine foliage. A good bit of softness is present in all four corners of the frame, again strongest in the top two corners. The camera loses detail in the bright white paint surrounding the bay window, tricked by the bright sunlight. Detail is also limited in the shadow area above the front door, with the brick pattern just visible. Overall color looks good though. The table below shows a standard resolution and quality series.

Resolution Series:

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG	"Normal" JPEG
1,600 x 1,200	A20FARLF	A20FARLN
1,280 x 960		A20FARMN
640 x 480		A20FARSN

Lens Zoom Range

Fixed focal length lens, modest digital telephoto performance.

I routinely shoot this series of images to show the field of view for each camera, with the lens at full wide angle, at maximum telephoto, and at full telephoto with the digital zoom enabled. However, the A200 has a fixed focal length lens, equivalent to a 36mm lens on a 35mm camera, with only digital telephoto available. To their credit though, Fuji doesn't attempt to resample the digitally zoomed images, limiting the amount of digital zoom to that determined by the difference between the current resolution setting and the full resolution of the CCD. Following are the results at wide angle, and at the 2x and 4x digital zoom settings.

Musicians Poster

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Warm color balance, but good detail.

This shot is often a tough test for digicams, as the abundance of blue in the composition frequently tricks white balance systems into producing a warm color balance. The A200's Auto and Daylight settings responded with warm casts, with the Auto setting producing the strongest cast. The blue robe is greenish, without any strong purple tints in the shadow areas. Resolution is moderate, with good detail in the embroidery of the blue robe.

Macro Shot

Standard Macro Shot

Macro with Flash

About average macro area, good detail and color.

The A200 turned in about an average performance in the macro category, capturing a minimum area of 3.22 x 2.41 inches (82 x 61 millimeters). Resolution is high, with good detail in the dollar bill, coins and brooch. Details are slightly soft, and the corners of the frame get quite blurred. (A common failing in digicam macro focusing.) The camera's flash throttled down a bit too much for the macro area, and it's off-center position produced a shadow at the bottom and right sides of the frame.

"Davebox" Test Target

Auto White Balance

Daylight White Balance

Good overall exposure and color, with good saturation.

Both the Auto and Daylight settings produced identical results here, with warm, yellow color casts. Colors are bright and vibrant in the large color blocks, although the large yellow, red, and blue blocks are a tiny bit oversaturated. The images are just slightly underexposed, but the A200 distinguished the subtle tonal variations of the Q60 target well. Detail is moderate in the shadow area of the charcoal briquettes, and noise is moderate as well. Overall, a good performance, with very pleasing color.

Low-Light Tests

Very limited low-light capability: Not sensitive enough for average city street lighting at night.

The A200's automatic exposure control and maximum shutter time of 1/2 second limits its low-light shooting capabilities a great deal. The A200 produced usable images only as low as eight foot-candles (88 lux). The target was visible at the four foot-candle light level (44 lux), but the exposure was quite dim. Since average city street lighting at night corresponds to approximately one foot-candle, you'll most likely need the built-in flash for any night shots. Color was good in most instances from the Auto white balance setting, and noise was fairly low. The table below shows the best exposure I was able to obtain for each of a range of illumination levels. Images in this table (like all of our sample photos) are untouched, exactly as they came from the camera.

Flash Range Test

A powerful enough flash for this camera, but intensity decreased incrementally with distance.

In my testing, the A200's flash illuminated the test target all the way out to 14 feet, though with a noticeable decrease in intensity. Flash power was brightest to about 10 feet, and dropped off from there. I'd therefore rate its flash range at about 10 feet. Below is the flash range series, with distances from eight to 14 feet from the target.

8 ft	9 ft	10 ft	11 ft	12 ft	13 ft	14 ft
1/ 60 secs F4.6	1/ 60 secs F4.6	1/ 60 secs F4.6	1/ 60 secs F4.6	1/ 60 secs F4.6	1/ 60 secs F4.6	1/ 60 secs F4.6

ISO-12233 (WG-18) Resolution Test

Moderate resolution, with 800 lines of "strong detail." Low barrel distortion, but very pronounced softness in the corners of the frame.

The A200 performed about average for its 2.0-megapixel class on the "laboratory" resolution test chart. It started showing artifacts in the test patterns at resolutions as low as 600 lines per picture height horizontally, and around 500 lines vertically. I found "strong detail" out to about 800 lines. "Extinction" of the target patterns occurred at about 950 lines.

Optical distortion on the A200 is low, as I measured approximately 0.2 percent barrel distortion. Chromatic aberration is fairly low, as there's only a small amount of color surrounding the target lines in the corners of the field of view. The most prominent distortion is the rather severe softness in the extreme corners of the image, particularly in the upper left.

Resolution Series, Wide Angle

Wide Angle	"Fine" JPEG	"Normal" JPEG
1,600 x 1,200	A20RESLF	A20RESLN
1,280 x 960	A20RESMF
640 x 480	A20RESSF