P200 - blurry pics/lens that wiggles when touched

[chinaw]

Hi. This is my first time posting ... I purchased a P200 a few weeks ago. Nice camera, with cool features, but ... A good 50% of the pictures I take are blurry. I noticed that the lens, when it is extended is "jiggly" - ie, you can wiggle it around, or if you shake the camera, you can hear movement. My old camera - a Canon, which I loved - did not do this - the lens was "solid" in the camera casing, no wiggle at all. So I thought maybe it was defect in the particular P200 I purchased. So I exchanged my P200 for another of the same model. The lens on the second camera does the same thing.

My questions are:

1. Is the "wiggly, jiggly" lens on the P200 normal, or have I just gotten two defective cameras?
2. Could the wiggliness of the lens be causing my blurry pictures?
3. Or am I just using the camera incorrectly? (My Canon SD400 took beautiful, clear shots with no effort from me whatsoever - and that's what I want the P200 to do, too!)

Thanks for any help you can provide!
~China

[speaklightly]

China-

The Sony P-200 is really a great digital camera. I think that all you have to do is to increase the ISO setting and you will no longer have fuzzy photos.

Sarah Joyce

[kezs]

coincidentally I took quite a few pictures with a p200, and I paid attention to what you'd said. well, the lens did wiggle just a little bit, and I did get a lot of blurry pics... till I realized the macro option was on. it does focus on far objects when it's on, but there's a chance the camera will get confused and totally blur out the pic. so you might wanna check that.

my 2 pennies. ;)

[chinaw]

Thanks very much for your input! ... I'm really undecided if I want to keep the P200 or go to the Canon SD500. The P200 has sooo many cool features that the Canon doesn't have, but ease of use is very important to me. I want to be able to hand the camera off to someone else and be reasonably assured the picture they take will turn out ... But I'll try the ISO trick this afternoon and see what happens ... In any case, I need to decide before tomorrow. I have tons of fun Halloween plans and want to take lots of pictures this weekend! :)