Minolta DiMAGE S304 > Reviews (1)

I bought my Minolta S304 for general use and also because I was involved in producing a web catalogue. For this I needed good colour balance, a reasonable zoom, macro capability and good manual control. I also wanted a camera which would produce at least 7x5 inch prints of the same quality as an ordinary camera for general use. Another thing I was looking for was a camera which took ordinary rechargeable batteries, preferably AAs. I did not want proprietary cells which would cost the earth to replace.

A secondary consideration was that I had acquired a 128MB Compact Flash card and I wanted a camera which could use that. I tried the card in an S304 in a shop and since they seemed to talk to each other, and the camera appeared to have the facilities and ranges I needed, I bought it.

I have now had the S304 for about 9 months, long enough to get to know it and its quirks. The one major problem, which if anything illustrates how little is wrong with it design-wise, is that the on-off switch (which also doubles as the function selector switch - although I have no problem with that) is placed at the back edge of the top of the case. In this position it is all too easy to switch the thing on without being aware of it, by swinging it against one's clothes, for example. This then runs the cells down, which was a serious consideration before I bought my NiMh cells, and even after that was more than a trivial irritation.

I solved this by purchasing an £8 slip-in case, which works a treat because sliding the camera into its case tends to turn the thing off. Apart from that I really have no complaints, and it has done all I have asked of it. The lens is second to none, and there are a large number of settings and useful adjustments, enabling one to use it as a simple point-and-shoot right through to full manual control. The case is metal, and feels very solid, and is easy to hold firmly. Being a reasonable weight helps in low light conditions, the longer exposures not being so badly compromised as happens with very light cameras.

A minor criticism is the lack of a hotshoe (to enable the fitting of an external flashgun), but this is unusual on digital cameras anyway. The flash is quite good, and the shots are as well-balanced as I have seen. On very rare occasions I have found the electronics messes things up, overexposing the pictures badly, but this has only happened about twice. The focusing is a little slow but there is a focus lock which compensates to some extent. There is a sensible range of quality and resolution options, and at maximum resolution and second-to-best quality I can get between 80 and 100 shots on my 128MB card, more than enough for most purposes. The best quality is TIFF bitmap, coming in at around 15MB a shot, the next best being JPEG at just over a meg each. It also has a 60 second video mode which works quite well and includes sound.

I have taken well over a thousand pictures with it and it has been utterly reliable. Would I buy another one if this one got dropped? Well, apart from the fact that they are now superceeded, yes, I think I would.