A light and reliable companion (Minolta Dimage 7i)

Member Name: librelola

Product:	Minolta Dimage 7i
Date:	11/10/05 (192 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Quite light for a semi professional camera

Disadvantages: Battery life

I bought my Minolta Dimage 7i about 3 years ago, but only started getting really acquainted with it about a year and a half later.

I was travelling a lot and I prefer to use film cameras when I travel and for "serious" photographic work, as I provide a couple of Photo Libraries with images, and most of them still prefer slides, although many do accept digital images of high quality and resolution.

A big reason for not using it more often at first was my unfamiliarity with digital cameras prior to my purchasing the Dimage 7i, but the main reason is the fact that I still prefer the colour intensity of my Fuji Velvias and Provias.

I started using the Dimage 7i more and more for practical reasons: it is so light (608g with batteries - dimensions are 117 x 91 x 113mm, which is 4.6 x 3.6x 4.5 in) compared to the SLRs I am used to carrying around. Of course, compared to the tiny cameras you get nowadays, it isn't the lightest, but it is semi-professional, has a lot of features, 5.0 megapixels and a zoom range of 28mm to 200mm (a 7x optical zoom), but I will go into its features a little later.

Nowadays, I like to keep it in my bag almost every time I go out, I take a lot of pictures of my son and you never know when this magic ray of light is going to strike for a few seconds on a tree trunk or flower and then disappear again as if is it was just an illusion. This is when you have to grab the camera and be quick, but precise.

I have now grown to love my Dimage 7i, it is easy to handle, has a very useful hand grip that allows you to grab it firmly without fearing it will slip out. Its LCD monitor is quite large at 1.8 inches, but I find the electronic view finder not wide enough to use with full confidence. While I tend to use the LCD more often, this is almost impossible in bright light, as you can hardly see anything, unless you keep moving it about, but then this ruins your composition and you have to use the viewfinder in order to get a decent picture. The electronic viewfinder can be moved up and down, but I did not find that this helped me much.

Along with the narrow viewfinder (to my liking anyway), the only other thing that annoys me with this camera is the rather low life of the rechargeable batteries. I always carry an extra set or two if I know I may be taking lots of pictures, but I am always frustrated when the first set of batteries dies out after about 60 or 70 pictures. I do take some time in preparing the composition, so the camera is on a lot, but I feel that a photographer, amateur or professional, should not have to feel stressed while taking pictures because of battery matters, at least not at such an early time…perhaps I just take too many pictures. But I think most digital cameras do eat up battery life much faster than SLRs do. In any case, as long as you are well prepared, all should be swell.

The zoom is very easy to use and you can switch from auto-focus to manual focus, which is very useful. It also has a very handy macro feature, which allows you to focus at a distance of 13cm, the normal focus range is 38cm, which is not bad at all.

The Minolta Dimage 7i has a lot of features, I would say too many almost, but if you like to play around, they are fun, although I do not use them much.

The features which I find to be the most useful are the Aperture and shutter priority and the full manual mode (the aperture range is f2.8-f3.5/f8 and the shutter speed range is bulb at 30 sec for the slowest and 1/2000sec for the fastest).
It has an exposure compensation of -2 EV to +2 EV in 1/3 EV steps, this is usually what you get on most SLRs.

Metering modes are multi-segment, center-weighted and spot metering.

It has a built-in flash, good for close portraits but do not use it for anything too remote (I think 2 metres is already a bit far). You can change the flash mode from auto to fill-in to red-eye reduction to slow sync, but it will only really work if you are using an external flash, for which the camera has a hot-shoe.

It has different filter modes for taking pictures in black and white, infrared and sepia style, which are a nice extra.

You can change the picture quality from fine to standard to economy, to save memory. The maximum resolution is 2560 x 1920 and the low resolutions are 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960 and 640 x 480.

And this brings us to the fact that card it uses is a compact flash card, this is what is so nice about digital cameras, you take lots of pictures on one or more cards, depending on the megabytes it has (the camera comes with a 16MB card), download them onto your computer, save them onto a disc (I advise always making extra copies) and then erase them and use the card again. What an economy.

The camera comes with a USB adapter to allow you to download them but if you have a flashcard slot on your computer, it is, of course, much better. And you save batteries unless you buy the special adapter, which I never have, as it was a bit expensive.

You can also record short movies of up to 60 sec, a feature which I have often used and which is a useful bonus.

The quality of the images (I always use the highest resolution) is very good, with fantastic sharpness and the colours are very natural.

The thing I most dislike about printing digital images at home is that, the image you see on the computer is almost never the one that will print out. Depending on the program you are using (photoshop elements, photoshop 6 or 5….) the paper you are using, the way you have saved your image and other little details, you will get a different image. You also spend a lot of money on ink. But if you stick to one sort of paper (I recomment Ilford Galerie smooth or classic) and ink, after a while, you know whether you have to add or take away contrast or brightness from the image etc… It is a matter of practice and patience.

The camera comes with a battery charger and 4 rechargeable batteries (AA NiMH), but I bought different batteries which last longer than the ones it came with (I bought the Fameart rechargeable Ni.MH 1.2V - 2300mAh)

It has a remote control as well, which I have never used, and the self-timer lasts 10 sec, and thankfully, it has a tripod mount.

I really do like this camera, but I don't use it for professional work. I think it is fantastic if you are an amateur and do not intend to sell your pictures, it is very flexible and the Minolta customer assistance have been very helpful when I had a problem with a camera once, which turned out to be my fault, and this is my only warning to you:

Never EVER open the Compact Flash compartment either to put or remove a card, when the camera is on and the light is still on in the data panel, as this will erase all your pictures and render the card unusable. This is the mistake I made and I lost 70 photos… this really hurt. I do believe this goes not only for the Dimage 7i but for all digital cameras. Please do remember this.

When I bought my camera, it cost £900, it is cheaper now. But I am happy that I've got it.

If I said that I do not use it for professional work, it is simply that the photo libraries I provide images to do not take digital photos yet, and because I sooooo enjoy slides and printing my own B&W photos, there is something magical about this and I love to "paint with light" in the darkroom.

But, having said this, I have taken some superb photos with the 7i, if I knew how to add photos to this review, I would add them but I don't, so I can't!

Another thing is, you can mess around so much with digital photos by using photoshop and other programs and create ever so easily (sometimes not, when you have a precise idea in mind) really weird images by sing the brightness/contrast and levels features and so many others. If you haven't yet, do try it, it is really fun.

So all in all, I think this camera is great. And I do believe that both film cameras and digital ones each have their special magic, which, one has to learn to appreciate.

Patience, constancy and a lot of love… this should do the trick.

Summary: Light, easy to handle and carry and gives good quality images

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