Konica Minolta DiMage A200

I bought this fifteen months ago to try digital photography. Most of my serious work I enlarge to 20x30 in. i previously had used Nikon N80 and Maxxum 7 film cameras for my work.I was amazes at the quality of the lens on the Konica Minolta. The definition was superior to anything I have ever gotten on film! The anti-shake is great; the only complaint is the viewfinder. If you have light coming from over your shoulder it's very hard to see into the finder.
I shoot at JPEG Fine and see no need for my work to even use raw.
I recently got the Nikon D200 and a few weeks ago got the highly touted 18-200 mm. zoom with their anti-shake. It's great camera and has a great lens, but honestly the pictures are not better than the Konica Minolta's. And the Nikon with that lens must weigh three or four times as much!
One thing you must not do with the Konica Minolta is to shoot at more than 100 ISO.
But with anti-shake and a f:2.5-3.5 lens you really don't have that biga problem.Great

Great lens....f:2.5-3.5 is fast...light weight

View finder is poor

Nikon N-80 SLR
Maxxum 7 SLR
Nikon D-200

Never needed

I've found everything I need in this little camera, It takes excellent photos from any range, and in any lighting condition. It's small size makes it easy to take anywhere. I've had this camera for several months now, and I am still discovereing new things I can do with it's settings and options... It's truly Packed with possibilities! I'd recommend this camera to almost anyone.. even with all it's options, and settings.. and many buttons and features, it's Very simple to use

Vari-Angle LCD Monitor Anti-Shake (a must have!!) 8MP 2 different Macro settings Great Zoom Manual Focus Ring The EVF is great (even if i don't use it often) Shape and size Many Many options, and settings Versitile Functions Remote control Weight Ability to save certain shot settings, to use later, with the touch of a button

The magnifier during manual focus can be irritating (i'm impatient) I wish it had a nicer, thicker, neck strap

Minolta diMage 7

I haven't needed it

This is the ideal camera for me, it takes great pictures and high quality video up to 800X600. (15FPS for 800X600, all other settings are 30fps.) The A200 has a short learning curve, after which it's how good you are, not the other way around.

Excellent picture quality, manual zoom, high quality movide mode, LCD display swivels 270 degrees for shooting over crowds. Minolta makes an adapter (purchased separately) so it can let the camera use compact flash or SD cards. Manual settings make night pictures and other difficult shots a breeze.

Small proprietary battery doesn't last long, the movie mode is limited to 15 minutes per clip and they are in quicktime format. This isn't much of a problem for me as I use it as camera first, but some people have complained about it. My particular camera has a hot pixel on the LCD. High ISO (800) is very noisy.

Hewlett Packard Photosmart 945, C912.

Haven't tried them.

Very good camera with almost all manual controls you may want from a bridge camera, and even from a SLR camera. It has excellent lens (although a bit soft) with a fast manual zoom ring and a smooth focus ring. The colors are highly realistic, the optical distortions and vignetting are very low. The orientabale LCD monitor is very useful in macro mode (compared, for example, to DimageA2). The ergonomics is excellent and its is very easy to operate. The great advantage of A200 is its AntiShake (AS) system that works extremely well and allows to shoot in bad light conditions, in tele/macro mode or in movie mode. I had experience with several digital cameras and with many 35 mm SLRs. My last one was 5MP DSC-717. I decided to try Dimage A200 because the DSC717 is a bit slow (it was fast for its time) and I also wanted a higher numerical resolution. I first hesitated between DSC828, KM Dimage A200 and Canon PS Pro1. I have finally chosen A200 for its anti-shake, low weight and low chromatic aberrations (I also wanted to buy Dimage A2 but it was difficult to find on the market). If you compare a 8MP CCD bridge camera with 5MP counterparts, the main negative feature would be a higher noise level. For A200, the noise is higher than for my DSC717, so that ISO 100 is comparable to ISO 200 for DSC717. However, it looks like A200 has a lower noise level than many 8MP cameras based on Sony's CCD sensor including their own DSC828. Thanks to AntiShake one can use ISO50 or 100 in most situations, which partly solves the problem. At ISO50 the noise level is very low, and this allows one to get rich detailed images. The autofocus has some kind of a little bug in the algorithm so it is slow and lacks precision in case of low contrast or bad light conditions. This is not really crucial this problem can be corrected using the DMF (direct manual focus) mode. Finally, A200 can produce high quality movies in high resolution (800x600) mode (thaks to AntiShake as well)

Excellent optics with low distortions and no visible chromatic abberations, really good mechanical AntiShake, fast mechanical zoom ring, realistic (yet a bit cold) colors, low weight, orientable LCD , remote control, ISO50, low noise with ISO50 and 100, manual flash pop-up (prevents you from undesired flashing), high resolution movies with anti-shake

Bug in the auto-focus algorithm (often slow and sometimes unprecise), a bit too soft images, sometimes (yet rarely) faulty exposition, noise higher than for 5Mp cameras, zoom ring could be smoother (you feel that in movie mode), LCD screen has some hot pixels + too much plastics (= cheap feel) , battery life could be longer, no power-on lcd, electronic viewfinder could have better resolution, the built-in flash is a bit week, autofocus is often unprecise in movie mode (this is annoying !)

Sony DSC717, Dimage A2(just tried), Canon PShot Pro1 compact cameras: Sony DSCW1

not needed yet

Picture quality is outstanding. Excellent optics for a compact camera. The lens it fast and offers a good background blur when used with large apertures. Expect very little barrel distortion or vignetting. Auto focus is very fast and accurate, even in dark environments. Three different autofocus modes are available, one of them even allowing you to pinpoint any spot on the screen/viewfinder to focus on. Anti Shake works like a charm. Almost no noise at ISO 50-200, ISO 400 is a tad noisy but the pictures are still very useable. Auto white balance does a good job in everything but tungsten lighting; use the Tungsten preset instead. Built in flash is ok but thankfully this camera has a hot shoe. This camera can capture Raw files, JPEG files, or a combination Raw + JPEG. Build and feel of the camera is excellent. I recommend this camera to anyone who can afford it, even beginners, as the Auto program does a great job yet the advanced user can take complete control of all aspects of the picture-taking experience.

Great glass Accurate colour Auto focus Anti Shake Controls well laid out and intuitive Build and feel Most importantly, wonderful pictures

Manual focus a bit tricky with the electronic viewfinder and the LCD Lots of plastic Lens cap has no provisions for a strap Included camera strap is kinda cheesy A little pricey

The only other compact I've had as much experience with is a Canon Powershot S50.

Have no experience with them.