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Not since the Nikon 950 was
first rumored has the digital photography world been so excited
about a new camera. Six months of hype from a few photos and a
press release prepared us for the Minolta Dimage 7, the SLR that
would be king of prosumer cameras.
At long last, the Dimage 7 is
a reality. Its images are incredible, as they should be from a
5.2mp CCD and its features are abundant. In short, the Dimage is
a great image capture device but a slightly flawed camera.
Specifically, I found the
electronic viewfinder, a mini LCD like those found in
camcorders, annoying at best and impossible at worst. The image
was coarse, contrasty and tended to jitter. In dark light, it
converted to a light boosting grayscale. Also, the camera tended
to hunt for focus in anything less than perfect light and
displayed serious shutter lag.
Other than these criticisms,
the Dimage 7 is a great camera.
Other reviewers have chided
Minolta for seemingly shoddy construction in pre-production
models. I found the Dimage solid and well put-together, studded
with control knobs and buttons. Bless Minolta for incorporating
its P (Panic) button to restore all default settings.
The large LCD on the camera's
back displayed an excellent image and I found myself using our
test camera with that as the viewfinder. It too went to
grayscale in darker lighting, however.
Not as bulky as an Olympus
E10, the Dimage features true manual zooming and a very smooth
manual focusing ring controlled by a nearby button. CCD
sensitivity is Auto and from 100 to 800 ISO. I found the Auto
sneaking to higher ISO ratings in low light with increasing
noise. Setting the sensitivity to ISO 100 solved that.
In use, the camera tended to
get warm under my hand in the area where the CompactFlash card
resides but this did not result in image noise.
ownloading times from camera
buffer to CF card were sort of long: 12 seconds for highest JPG
compression; up to 50 seconds for all the data in an
uncompressed TIFF file.
By switching from Single to
Continuous shooting mode, I was able to avoid the "being shut
out" feeling when a file was downloading.
Will 11 external controls
covering more than 21 functions, the Dimage 7 is a complicated
camera to learn. Some controls, such as +/- EV, seem difficult
to reach but are easily cancelled by hitting the P button.
The Dimage has no provision
for external flash other than the Minolta hot shoe which handles
a number of proprietary strobes. The camera's built in strobe is
very admirable, being of the manual pop-up variety and having
only three modes: red-eye pre-flash; constant fill flash; and
shutter delay flash.
A 29-200 f:2.8-f:3.5 aspheric
zoom is controlled by a large rubberized ring. A continuous
half-twist of the wrist zooms from wide to tele leaving a hand
obscuring the flash head. I would have to learn to zoom with
several smaller twists but this is not a big deal. Macro focus
is to 5.5 inches in a special macro control found at the 200mm
end of the zoom.
For me, the Dimage 7 is
plagued by questions of confidence and comfort.
The single lens reflex design
is renowned for letting the photographer see exactly through the
lens. This camera's eye level finder doesn't do that. |