Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z2

...7Hi). It looks like Konica have stamped their position on the lower end cameras, i.e. this one and its predecessors: Z1, Z10 blah, blah. The workings have definitely the stamp of Minolta, I just hope that the Konica haven’t compromised with the quality of the materials that Minolta would have used. I have had the Minolta SLR cameras Dynax 7000i, 8000i, and I have got the 9 now. All of which have never failed, they have a very high value for money ...
...very high regard of them. Any Minolta bosses listening “that will be £20 for saying so”, but there we go. We are a far world apart for the ideal merges that occur because companies can longer fight on their own. I just hope they keep their eye on the quality on the upper end market because there are an awful lot of press photographers out there using Minolta cameras that cannot compromise on their livelihood.

The case and layout of ... more

I bought a Minolta Z2 about 6 months ago.

I have been an avid amateur photographer for years, done the photographic clubs etc, got bored with the expense of processing etc and I have always had Minolta cameras. But then the digital cameras came along and changed all that. There aint nothing wrong with Minolta’s reliability, but there’s certainly an air of cheapness of the finish when it comes to Konica, but times are hard, they’re squeezing more and more out of nothing and that costs nothing. But it seems to me that as Minolta are still in control of the upper markets (e.g. 7Hi). It looks like Konica have stamped their position on the lower end cameras, i.e. this one and its predecessors: Z1, Z10 blah, blah. The workings have definitely the stamp of Minolta, I just hope that the Konica haven’t compromised with the quality of the materials that Minolta would have used. I have had the Minolta SLR cameras Dynax 7000i, 8000i, and I have got the 9 now. All of which have never failed, they have a very high value for money in terms of Spec and reliability and I have a very high regard of them. Any Minolta bosses listening “that will be £20 for saying so”, but there we go. We are a far world apart for the ideal merges that occur because companies can longer fight on their own. I just hope they keep their eye on the quality on the upper end market because there are an awful lot of press photographers out there using Minolta cameras that cannot compromise on their livelihood.

The case and layout of the camera.
Anyway back to the issue. The Z2, the case is plastic the quality of the plastic is bloody awful, it will look cheap and nasty after the length of time that I anticipate owning for. Its silver, with a dull grey under the silver, I know cause I can see it, something you get out of a luxury Christmas cracker. I does however fit in your hand rather snugly with that big grasp on the right hand side, I cant comment on how well left hand people get on with it, but I supposed they would have to, as most cameras adopt the position of the shutter in a very similar location, but not with the emphasis that this camera does. The location of the card slot is in a fiddly place, together with the connector to use the USB port. I generally take out the card and put the card into a reader rather than reading from the camera and wasting my time charging up the batteries, or plugging the mains adaptor into the camera itself. But that’s pure convenience, but hence the card slot needs to be a bit more clever than its current layout. Adopting the lines of the card slot that was on the Dynax would prove to be a far superior way of dealing with this issue. They’ve had the answer to a problem all along.

Because of the odd shape that it is, I opted for the case that goes with it. I have got one thing to say about this, “It must have been designed by Konica, “No strap”, What am I suppose to do with a camera case when I use the camera, put it in my mouth, put in my pocket, come on guys, lets have a bit of thought, they use the strap of the camera once its in its case for the holding on to it when its full. All other designs of cases with “no strap”, you can use the camera whilst its in its case, this one, you cant.

All of the buttons are ion the right place to hand and logical, there is no fumbling around, apart from the menu’s they’ve tried to be clever on the menu front but instinctively changing them in correspondence your mode ‘playback or shooting’, what happens, you forget which mode you’re in and look for an item on the menu, that is plainly isn’t there. The flash is stupidly on top of the camera, and I know you’re thinking why is that stupid, and it is stupid, because Minolta have a flash mounting all of its own and for those people that have a flashgun from Minolta from years back, cause a flash is a flash if it fits on top, but no, its obviously not, because it doesn’t work, because the built in flash interferes with the mounted flash and you cant turn on flash without the flash upright. There, that’s stupid!! But everything else is laid out perfectly, honest!

We’ll start with the obvious on the working of the camera: The on/Off switch, good idea and very well and quality designed and set in an outer switch of the mode that you wish to be in “Playback, Viewfinder or LCD screen”
The LCD is a little on the small side compared to what is coming out at the moment and its made out of a very shiny plastic, not the best to view in harsh sunlight, but very easy to clean and seems to be very resistant to scratches, its clear, however the viewfinder is the LCD screen reflected up through the prism to the top viewfinder. You can see the pixels of the LCD in the viewfinder. This I think is a big mistake, the quality is very poor, it is very difficult to use I’ve found and it also doesn’t save on the batteries if you want to conserve your battery power when you just want it in ready to shoot mode, which you can opt for on cheaper models on the optical viewfinder.

The dials for selecting which mode of shooting you wish:
P Program mode selects the aperture and shutter speed. This is far from accurate and the lightmeter is very much a letdown on this camera as the pictures are coming out too dark, too light, colours then are washed out or not there at all.
S 15 seconds to 1/1000 s and bulb which they now called Timed, (annoying after they have called it bulb for the last 80 years) Sets the shutter speed, but still relies on the lightmeter to gets its settings ( see as above)
A Sets the Aperture from F8 to F2.8 The F8 is far too big to have a good depth of focus at longer focal lengths and shorter distances.

You have also a variety of other settings, Sport, Portrait, Scenery, and fill in flash, all of which I don’t use

The fill in flash works very well.

Most of the time I find myself using the ‘M’ manual so I select the settings myself to shoot how I want to shoot and can adopt this from the colour rendition from the LCD if the light is right and I can see it.

The flash
You have a variety of flash modes that you can adopt independent of the mode selected Full, Red eye, fill, so you can still adopt the manual stance even if you want the flash anyway.

The Lens
The lens although it says its APO ‘Apochromatic’ i.e. the colours of the spectrum have different speeds of reaching through the lens and hence are projected onto the CCD at different locations depending on the colour that is being transmitted through it, what generally happens, if the lens is not good and not been corrected, you tend to get an outline of a different colour than what is being photographed, because of the spectrum spread. This happens on this camera occasionally, but in very few circumstances. It has a wide focal length range and especially from the size of the camera (an equivalent to 38-380mm on a 35mm camera) Fantastic length, but I think that this APO has vast focal length to adjust to, is why its not doing the job in its entirety.

The Autofocus
This camera was supposed to have the fastest Auto focus time in its class, I don’t know what they were measuring this, but it is certainly not the most accurate or the most consistent auto focus that I’ve come across, in fact it is so bad that I most of the time put it in Manual focus, if not all of the time. I think its because it has a very wide focussing mechanism as opposed to cheaper units having stepped focus points maybe 3 or so, its very difficult to get it wrong, whereas this seems to get it wrong most of the time if left to its own devices.

The CCD.
It’s a 4 million ogeewatsits who cares! Its pixel sizes are very small compared to the size of the picture taken and I’ve printed to A3 size, and it works, and I have no quibble with regard to the quantity of pixels, the colour rendition of the purples are dreadful, but every other colour, it is very accurate and true to life.

What is it like to live with
This camera has sophisticated operations to perform.
You can select a wide aperture setting and wide shutter settings, an almost infinite balancing act, its let down by its metering.
The same with the focusing, a wide focusing mechanism with infinite adjustments with the autofocus measuring that just isn’t up the job
The long range Lens where the APO colouring upsets the image.

This is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, it’s the outfit that doesn’t suit, all in all this is a camera that has the flexibility of a manual digital camera, but needs a proper photographer to get the best from it or the results will seem p’ss poor. But a very good camera as it’s the in between the SLR and the compact range, a very good buy for a photographer that wants a compact, not the case for the occasional snapper, there are far more to choose from that suits the application a great deal better.

The features of this camera the very good lens, variety of shutter speeds and aparture settings are all let down by the measuring devices that are just not up to the job of the features.
 

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