small, slim, light, but with big features (Minolta Dimage Xt)

Member Name: harry15678

Product:	Minolta Dimage Xt
Date:	11/08/04 (159 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: small size, light weight, built in 3x optical zoom

Disadvantages: so small that it fits in my pocket, thus the lcd is a little scratched

This is a great camera for outdoor use; I recently took it on a cruise around Mediterranean and Egypt. The pictures of the pyramids and other outdoor attractions are fantastic, I can?t fault them, but the pictures from inside are disappointing. The flash doesn't seem to travel all that far, but it is fine for portraits. You can alter some of the settings so you get better pictures when not using the flash.

Build of the camera

The camera is very well built I have dropped it on hard surfaces many times and it still works fine. This I believe is due to a full metal body, no plastic to be found; also the battery compartment is covered by a sturdy metal guard. I also like the USB cover; it slides as opposed to folding out which means it won?t break off.

Quality of the pictures

Although this camera is small it does offer a mighty punch, with its 3.2mp it can take pictures upto sizes of 2048 by 1536. So when viewed on a computer screen of 1024 by 768 you get very crisp images. When the pictures are at the maximum size the pictures look slightly grainy, I have read somewhere by an expert reviewer of cameras that this could be because of the built in optical zoom. But as I?m not a camera boffin I don?t know why and as this is my first digital camera it could be that the pictures it gives are of the same or even better quality than other cameras with the same specification. There are four different modes for the quality of the picture, they are economy, standard, fine and TIFF. I just use fine because I would be annoyed if I had the camera in economy mode and I took a picture of something very special but later found it to be ruined by being in economy mode, i?m not to sure what TIFF is other than one pictures takes 9mb so I don?t use that option. There are also 4 different sizes of shot you can take they are 640 by 480, 1280 by 960, 1600 by 1200 and 2048 by 1536. I have my settings as 2048 by 1536 in fine mode, so I can get the best s
hot possible, because once you?ve taken a shot you can always delete it if it?s not good but you can go back in time to retake a shot using the better options.

Zoom

It has a built in 3x optical zoom and 4x digital zoom. The built in optical zoom is very clever indeed but doesn?t look as good as the conventional camera. You can?t show off with zoom with the lens moving in and out as you zoom into objects. Overall it has 12x zoom but I don?t bother with the digital zoom as it just ruins the quality of the picture, I will just take the picture with 3x optical zoom and then play with the image In Adobe Photoshop.

Movie mode

The movie mode is average for this type of camera, it shoots videos at 320 by 240 at 15fps and works with 4x zoom. On the bad side it saves the movies in .MOV format which you will need Apple?s QuickTime to view them on your computer, I would much prefer to see them using Mpeg-4 as the file size would be much smaller and its more convenient to play on computers as they would work in Windows Media player.

Other features of the camera

Drive mode offers three different ways to take a picture either single shot, continuous mode or self-timer. The continuous mode works well when the flash is not needed, but otherwise it takes a while to take the second, third, fourth shot etc. white balance and sensitivity are set to auto mode as standard, but can be changed. The white balance can be changed to daylight, cloudy, tungsten and florescent. The sensitivity can be changed to ISO 50, ISO 100, ISO 200 and ISO 400. There are three different colour modes; they are colour, black and white and sepia. I usually just use colour other than when I?m playing with the camera. You can assign different sounds or record new sounds as the shutter effects.

There is also an automatic macro mode which I believe is 10cm but I may be wrong, I have a cool shot of a daisy taken from turkey while on my cruise. I will upl
oad it when I learn how.

Price

I brought this camera for £220 from Dixon?s and then about a month later Minolta released an updated model, the XG, where mine is an XT. It is effectively the same camera except it has a few more modes i.e. sports, landscape etc etc, which the XT doesn?t offer. They are offering my camera for £193.99 on Amazon.co.uk but the newer model the XG, is £159.99 in silver. So I would recommend the XG to potential buyers as it is a slightly updated camera but for less money.


Overall I would I recommend this camera to anyone who wants a small, feature-filled point-and-shoot camera mainly for outdoor use. I really like this camera as it slips into all of my pockets even into my jeans, which have notoriously small pockets. It also takes great shots which is a bonus. But don?t forget to look for the new updated Minolta Dimage XG, as I said effectively the same camera but for less of your pennies

Summary: