Drop, charge, and lose the cords
- Average user rating: 4.0 stars out of 16 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
Full user review
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15 out of 15 people found this review helpful
4.5 stars
"Not perfect, but, still a good camera"
Pros: fast focus (stills), high speed still capture, 12x optical zoom, image stabilization
Cons: slow focus (movie), some noise evident in movie mode, aperature size ranges from 2.8 - 4.5 (zoom out to zoom in)
Summary: Movie mode:
a) 640x480 30fps in fine mode will function with a Sandisk 1GB SD card. I've recorded 3 minutes of video at that resolution with no signs that the card was too slow. Therefore, no need to purchase a Sandisk Ultra.
b) Though the zoom in/out is fairly quiet in movie mode, due to the reduced motor speed, if I listen carefully using headphones to movies that I've taken, I can hear a whining noise coming from the motor. Also, at times, I can also hear some other mechanical noise when the camera is not being zoomed. I think that it might be coming from the anti-shake mechanics. But, the noise is minor and doesn't detract one from using the movie mode.
c) The other issue is that when zooming in, I find that the autofocus isn't fast. It takes about 3-5 seconds for the camera to figure out to focus the image. What strikes me about this is that you would think that the Minolta engineers would continuously adjust the focus when zooming in/out by using the assumption that the camera is still focused on the same object. I mean how often does one zoom in/out while moving the camera when in movie mode??? So in movie mode, zooming out and getting a quick focus isn't a problem, it's only when zooming in.
Digital camera mode:
a) Fast focus, long reaching flash capability, UHS mode, image stabilization works great, little chromatic and spherical distortion at 12x zoom.
b) Can't focus well in low light. Best to use manual focus at that time.
c) Focus indicator is on the bottom right of the EVF or LCD display and is indicated by a white dot. The engineers should have had the focus bars turn white when in focus and have it turn red when not in focus.
d) Photo review. Information displayed is comprehensive, but, doesn't indicate the focal length used to capture the image.
Minolta software comment. The 640x480 movies are recorded from about 1 - 1.5MB/sec. It would be nice if the Minolta software could support concatenating movies and also to recompress the movies using a different codec. Especially since DIVX/XVID codecs are quite 'viewable' when 1 hour of video is on a 700MB file. Storing 1 hour worth of video using the default .mov file would require ~4-6GB of disk space!!
Overall not a perfect camera, but, a good camera nonetheless. I don't regret my purchasing decision.
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