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Rating: - my baby....
In English

she is my favorite... . it enchants to me. it is small cofashion, practices. the screen is helpful since I am very short. and I can raise camara or to remove... or to remove photos from the floor with no need from tirarme.. to do it... I have removed photos at night with triprunes and without. they very leave or those that remove in very slow slow speed. or in bulb. they enchanted to me... very recommendable. but I have found out that konicaminolta this letting do them... is a true pain. because it is by much very good... for my anything that to envy to other used marks but. excellent. I recommend it.

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Rating: - Good camera -- bad warrenty
I've been using Minolta equipment of some sort for over 20 years now. Had a 7Hi which is a good camera but this a200 is even better. 8 Mega pixels is way better than 5.1 -- the movie options are better (800x600) -- the anti-shake feature is a lot better than the 7Hi. Limitations however are as others describe--battery is difficult to find, if you use the RAW format (which why would you NOT use the maximum capacity of the camera) it becomes a storage hog. I routinely convert the RAW file to TIFF to use with iPhoto and suddenly a 11 MB file jumps to over 45! Ouch!

I am currently in the middle of switching computers and I hope that using Apeture will create a lot of hard drive space that was otherwise soaked up by this supersize TIFF's.

Durability--the 7Hi is a durable day to day camera--dropped it a lot--finally had to buy a new camera because the power switch broke internally. The a200 is a tempermental camera--I'm on my second because my first one got dropped gently onto pavement from a car seat--no big deal I thought until I turned it on and it was clearly out of whack -- couldn't focus properly and there was a slight vignette on one side. Sent it off to be repaired--this was March--months later (July?) Sony says they won't fix it (no parts etc--) I insist they do have parts and to send them. Meanwhile I bought a new one for less than I spent on the first one and it's been dropped twice and it doesn't seem to mind. Sony has agreed to reinburse my cost of the first camera but I can't get either the repair place or Sony to write me a letter. Sony is very bad in my book these days. Camera wise anyway.

I use my a200 as a day to day haul along in the car to take pictures of whatever as I see fit. It is great for this sort of thing--flowers, fall leaves, people, cars, whatever. It is a good all rounder without spending thousands of dollars. I'd give it 5 stars if it weren't for my bad experiences with Sony trying to get them to honor the warrenty. Bad Sony! =(

Things I have that I'd get more of--more than one spare battery, a spare charger, at least 1 GB flash card -- haven't tried a faster type of card to see if that improves things but it does get slow with the RAW setting--but the movie option makes up for that.

I'd get a high end camera like a Canon but they don't offer a movie feature--nor do they have a swivel view finder (really do use that feature regularly).

For $500 or so--it's a good deal--especially if your'e like me and just don't want to invest big bucks in something that is too easily damaged, lost, or out right stolen.

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Rating: - Great camera
I have travelled to Europe twice and counted on this camera to bring back great shots, and I haven't been disappointed. Added the wide angle lens and it has been outstanding.
The only thing negative I would say is that the batteries are hard to find if you are in a foreign city.

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Rating: - One year later, what do I think?
I reviewed my a200 last summer, I thought it would be interesting to note how I feel about the camera now.

For the majority of people wanting a "pro" looking camera without having to buy all the accessories it'll do, but I've run up into several limitations.

A lot of people haven't heard that Konica-Minolta has left the camera business, and in particular this camera seems like an orphan stepchild. There's no battery grip or underwater housings available, nor any extended batteries save the very expensive and hard to find EBP-100.

Last fall I bought a Nikon D50, and the difference couldn't be bigger. The Minolta has an incredibly slow autofocus, an ISO sensitvity of only up to 800, lots of noise in the pictures, and the RAW format files are something like 11 megs per picture. It has little infrared sensitivity and good luck getting anything other than a Minolta flash for it.

The higher sensivity of the D50 pretty much negates the advantages of the Minolta's "anti-shake," I just turn up the sensitivty or use a wider apeture, and the pictures look fine.

The average person will likely say, "yeah, but I don't care about all that," in which case the a200 would be a good choice for them. I quickly found myself hitting it's limits, and grudgingly keep it as a backup camera/camcorder. The movies it takes are actually pretty good, but even then there's some workararounds. Quicktime isn't supported very well by free movie editors, and the included verion of Ulead only makes Video CD's.

I pinched for a copy of Sony Vegas as I can use it for other things, but it's gotten to the point I no longer care for this camera and wish I hadn't spent so much money on it. Bottom line, if you're serious about doing real photography, get a digital SLR.

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Rating: - konica minolta a200 not what it is cracked up to be
I bought the Konica Minolta A200 , took it on vacation with me, took numerous pictures with it and printed several of them. The quality of the prints were awful, I have a HP 3.3 mp digital camera that take much better pictures. I have tried different program for printing the pictures, I have went through the manual, I have used the tripod, nothing seems to work. If there is not anything wrong with this camera it is not worth $552, and I have no vacation pictures to enjoy & share.