This is one of those "bridge" cameras that looks like an SLR but really isn't. Perhaps I'm too hard on it, but after I sold this for a D50- I never looked it's weaknesses outweighed it's good aspects.
As with most older cameras, used within it's limits it can take good pictures, but those limits are abysmal compared to what modern cameras can do.
Strengths:
Lightweight, with a manual zoom that is so much easier to use than those cursed push button zooms.
Swiveling LCD so you take pictures around corners and over walls, useful if you're a private eye or a voyeur.
Lithium Ion battery but see below.
Compact flash memory card, a movie mode, and a 7X or so zoom range.
Weaknesses:
The battery is dinky and as far as I know there was never a battery grip for this camera. There was an external battery Minolta made that was very expensive and was hard to find even when new.
Minolta has quit the commercial camera business, so there's not much support and no updates.
Noise is showing pretty well even at ISO 800 in daylight.
The movie mode is has lots of noise/grain, and saves them in Quicktime format, which not all movie editors support. Further, the autofocus will run continuously so it's better to leave it in manual mode. But you can get a whole 15 minutes per clip! Joy!
Achingly slow autofocus, I lost many good action shots because the !#$@! thing was chattering away trying to lock.
Rating Reviewed by: Arnold Seckler(Unregistered User)
(Expert)
Review Date May 8, 2006
Overall Rating 5 of 5
Value Rating 5 of 5
Used product for More than 1 year
Visitors rate this review 5.00 of 5,
1 votes
Review 2 of 6
Price Paid:
$650.00
from Samy's, LA
Summary:
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
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
Strengths:
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
Weaknesses:
The magnifier during manual focus can be irritating (i'm impatient)
I wish it had a nicer, thicker, neck strap
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.
Strengths:
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.
Weaknesses:
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.
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)
Strengths:
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
Weaknesses:
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 !)
Similar Products Used:
Sony DSC717, Dimage A2(just tried), Canon PShot Pro1
compact cameras: Sony DSCW1
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