- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 4 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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1 out of 1 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Decent camera for the price"
Pros: Great vivid color, zoom lens and advanced features for a good price
Cons: No image stabilization, problematic in low light, tiny LCD
Summary: I bought this camera in January of this year to begin learning photography. It has all the features you need to learn the basics but, as I soon discovered, it's limitations are extremely constraining if you want to do more than typical snapshots.
To be fair, I'll start with the good news. In medium to bright light the camera works great, takes bright, vivid and sharp color pics. It has a decent set of programmed presets for exposure and white balance and starts up pretty fast. The battery life is very good too. The internal memory is decent feature too and has come in handy a few times when I've run out of external memory.
But now the bad news:
First, the LCD is tiny, only 1" x 1.5", making it difficult to judge whether you really have a good result or not. I've taken shots that looked great when I previewed them only to get them home and find regretable flaws in them that I've have noticed on a bigger LCD.
Second, in low light the autofocus almost useless. I've missed too many great shots because I just couldn't get focused in time if at all. Because the LCD is so small the manual focus is just guesswork so I don't even bother with that, which leaves me dependent on autofocus and nearly helpless in low light situation.
Third, at the highest ISO setting, which is only 320 to begin with, the images get extremely, unacceptably noisy. You're left with the choice of either settling for a noisy picture or shooting with an extremely slow shutter speed, which introduces other problems. Simply put, there are just some shots that aren't even worth trying with this camera.
Overall, I'd recommend this camera for an advanced consumer who wants decent control and flexibility but not for anyone wanting to go beyond souped up point-n-clicking. For my purposes, to practice and learn serious photography, this purchase was a mistake. I knew I would outgrow this camera when I got it but I didn't anticipate it becoming a problem so soon (within just a couple of months of taking classes). What can I say, when you don't you just don't know. If I had it to do over I would go ahead and splurge for an entry-level SLR.
Where to buy
Konica Minolta Dimage Z20:
$199.99
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Amazon.com Marketplace
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