1,769,472 more pixels than my last camera (Minolta Dimage 7)

Member Name: kingseany

Product:	Minolta Dimage 7
Date:	27/03/04 (153 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Loads of features, Nice looking, Quality images

Disadvantages: Slow focus, Battery life isn't too hot

Let me start by saying, this is no camera for the novice. If you're the point n click type person, you might as well stop reading right now. OK, so if you are still reading then I'm assuming you treat your photography quite seriously, you may even class yourself as a semi-pro.

The Minolta Dimage 7 isn't a brand new camera (it's been around since about July 2001), but it's worth mentioning as they crop up second-hand a fair bit these days. It's original price in the UK was a staggering £999, but typically expect them to go for around £300 now on Ebay.

Even for it's age, the features of this camera are impressive. A 5.24Megapixel CCD outputting a 2560 x 1920 pixel image. Add this to the 28-200mm lens (7x optical), full manual settings and potential to store up to 1Gb of data in JPG,TIFF or RAW format, it is a powerful machine. Storage can either be via Compact Flash cards (types I and II) or an IBM Microdrive, and it'll connect up to your computer using the USB standard. The original package came only with a 16Mb Compact Flash card - extremely mean, so I'm using two additional 256Mb cards (price around £35 each).

It's a good looking camera, this isn't just my opinion, others have passed comment when using it. It's also a very daunting looking camera, with all manner of dials and buttons located around the die cast magnesium alloy body. It's heavy (over half a kilo), and feels extremely solid, it looks like it'll withstand a beating or a few drops, although I've not tried it yet. The full colour electronic viewfinder which can swivel 90 degrees can detect your eye looking through it, and automatically turn on or off - as well as switch off the LCD monit
or if you want. On the top is a LCD display panel (backlit when needed), which gives you important information such as remaining shots, battery life and all the various settings such as exposure and so on. This display is replicated in both the EVF and the colour back display.

To one side is a door giving access to the card slot, and also the mini-usb cable socket. The battery compartment is on the back, which is very secure, no chance of it opening accidentally. The sockets on the back are covered with plastic plugs, when opened provide power, video out and remote facilities. There's no power adapter supplied as standard, but these can be bought for £30 or so, I'd say it's almost essential to have one especially for transferring images, which can drain batteries. Underneath is a metal tripod mount, pretty standard.

Whilst this could be a very lengthy review, I'll try and condense it a little, touch on it's strengths and weaknesses, and throw in some essential technical details too, rather than re-writing it's hefty printed user guide (which I seem to have mis-laid anyway).

Image Quality
As mentioned earlier, this is essentially a 5 megapixel camera, offering 2560x1920, 1600x1200, 1280x960 or VGA 640x480. The inclusion of the TIFF and RAW formats in addition to the usual JPG mean that phoot quality is not compromised by compressing your shots. Of course you can still use JPG compression, and 3 levels are available. I'd suggest using the camera in full auto mode first of all, and work form there. The professional options are massive - they just take a lot of learning, but once mastered the images that can be captured will be as good as you believe they should be.

Useful features
Zoom - an extremely powerful 7x Optical zoo
m, which really lets you get close to the action. The zoom is on the barrel of the camera, as in a 35MM, and so traditional photographers should take to this like a duck to water. Wide angle is provided at the other end of the scale, and images taken in this way suffer very little barrel distortion. A 2x digital zoom is also provided, but I'd always recommened leaving this to post image manipulation.

Exposure modes
As well as full manual mode, the camera can be set to Aperture Priority or Shutter Priority, as well as pre-sets such as Portrait, Sports, Sunset, Night and Text.

Image enhancement
Sharpness, colour saturation and contrast as all provided, as well as a B&W mode. I'd still suggest that these functions left to post-capture, as they are more controllable using Photoshop and the like. White balance can be left at auto or set to any of Daylight, Tungsten, Fluorescent or Cloudy - you can also fine tune this in the custom mode. I'd suggest leaving this at auto, if you are using the RAW format, as white balance can be corrected on the PC with instant results.

Focus - both manual and automatic. The auto focus is perhaps something which lets the camera down, for it's price it should be ultra fast, but it is slow, sometimes taking more than a second to lock in. I've also found that the focus is far from perfect in many a situation, often leading to out-of-focus images. Although the large 1.8inch TFT screen and the Electronic viewfinder provide a reasonable guide, it's still a lucky guess to tell if the focus is perfect, either in auto or manual focus. When taking close-ups in low light, I'd recommend the use of a tripod for sure. As for macro, it's suggested minimum focal length is around 13cm, and while this isn't
terribly close in this day and age, it's been clsoe enough for most applications.

Shutter speed - 1/2000sec - 4 sec, plus a 30 second bulb setting are available. In normal use, this range is adequate for most situations from fast action shots to low light indoor work. The inclusion of a bulb setting is great for experimenting in long exposure times to achieve some stunning and interesting visual effects.

Flash - Both a built in pop up flash is provided, plus a hot-shoe for an external unit. Whilst I haven't had the need to use an external flash yet, it's something I'll consider adding soon, and should really make indoor posed shots for instance a lot easier to deal with. Flash modes are pretty standard, including red-eye reduction (works well), slow sync, fill in and auto. The built in flash is effective up to about 3 metres. Flash can be fine tuned using flash compensation control.

Self timer - as with all cameras these days, a self timer of 10 seconds allows you to include yourself in the picture. A remote control socket is also provided for even simpler control.

Movie clips - I don't consider it important to include the ability to shoot video on a camera, but for those who do, 60 second videos can be recorded at a basic resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, the file format used is AVI. There is no microphone on this camera, so movies are silent.

Battery life - Rather than opting for Lithium type batteries, Minolta decided to stick with more traditional AA's. Although you can use standard AA's, a few shots life is hardly much fun on your pocket, so Ni-MH are the way to go. These are reasonably priced and can generall be charged 1000 times or so, The battery life though is poor compared to many other digitals. On a full charge of four Ni-MH batteri
es, don't expect to get more than 80 shots or so - and that's being generous. It's therfore essential to invest in extra sets, although the constant charging can become a pain if you are using the camera daily.

File sizes
An uncompressed TIFF will be over 14Mb, and a RAW file, just under 10Mb. A JPG with lowest compression will be around 2Mb, and with highest compression just over 500k.

More features
ISO 100-800, Time lapse, data imprinting, continuous shooting, auto bracketing, exposure compensation, custom setting memories, DPOF printing, slideshow playback, image copying, power saving, four language menus, folder creation....As said earlier, I've really glossed over everything quickly, there is a lot more to talk about but it would bore you.

Software
The camera comes with the Minolta Dimage Viewer Utility. This is the typical kind of software which comes with digital cameras these days. It provides the functions to transfer images from the camera to the computer, as well as perform rotation and image enhancements. The software is also used to convert RAW files into TIFF or JPG.

Conclusion
certainly enough powerful professional features, and most importantly wonderful quality images, which can be enlarged and printed up to A3 with no obvious pixellation. At it's original price, I'd have probably looked elsewhere, due to the slow auto focus and battery hungry issues, but on the second hand market, surely a good buy if you want more than just a point n click.

Summary: