Sony Cybershot DSC-P200

I picked this little compact camera for a song quite a few years back. In fact it was what we call a "bin find".  If it is in a bin/trashcan and on the street, i.e. in a public place, it is free to whoever wants it. 

Front view

It came "as seen" with no accessories other than the Sony proprietary Memory Stick. At a meagre 32mb it wasn't going to get many photos before it would fill up.

My shooting habits are to keep as much on the card as possible, download to the PC what I want though "Picasa 3" and leave the card as it is. A 32mb simply not enough.

I found a charger on eBay but the memory stick proved less successful. I got a 1gb stick, badged as Sony, but it kept having faults on it, so I junked it. You get what you pay for! 

Why Sony opted to go down this path is no doubt on Google somewhere. Another VHS versus Betamax mistake?

Anyway, the camera became my "go to" pocket special. It's quite rugged and had a viewfinder not just the power sapping screen.

Back view

On bike trips it fits easily in my jacket pocket. Battery life is also good.

I fixed the memory problem with a rather convoluted multi adapter solution. 

To use a Micro SD I had to buy the middle one from eBay. It all works very well. The top one was in the camera with the 32mb card.

The Cybershot didn't need any firmware to accept 8gb. 

However, that's as far as it will go. I tried a 16gb card and it errors. Still, 8gb gives over 2000 pictures at the 7.2meg setting. 

So what went wrong? 

Last week I charged it up to take with me on my day trip to the Somme on the Rocket. 

Checking it was working revealed some sort of software error. Whatever the shooting menu was set to, it simply stuck to video recording. 

In Auto mode

In the end the Samsung WB30F got the gig. It's not as robust but works and has the added plus point that it has WiFi built-in to connect to a smartphone. 

And to today. 

I saw it languishing on the bookcase and turned it on. The battery is almost depleted, not a good sign in a week, it is still not right.

A few minutes on Google came up with this:

Reset the camera to factory settings. To reset turn off the camera and remove the battery. Hold down the power button for 15 seconds then release.

I did it. And despite not believing anything could happen without the battery... It seems fixed. 

And now it is charging again to see if it is still working okay.

The wonders of the 'net?