Portable, portable, portable
 Apr 7th, 2003
Advantages:
VERY small, light, takes good pictures
Disadvantages:
Limited flash, only a 16MB SD card included
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
Picture Quality
Range & Quality of Features
Ease of Use
Durability
Overall Look & Design
Value for Money
more
  guano
About me:
Member since:26.09.2002
Reviews:12
Members who trust:5
Review rated by 19 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
This review received a counterstatement by a party concerned
Read Comment
If you're looking for a small, good-looking and high-performing digicam, you can't go wrong with the Xi. It's so small that you can fit it into a shirt pocket and so light that you won't know it's there. With the Xi, there is no excuse for not having a camera to hand. The Xi succeeds the earlier 2-megapixel Dimage X, which was a triumph of engineering with its non-protruding zoom lens. I won't bore you with the details of how this works, but if you're interested, visit Minolta's website and you can read up on this particular feat of engineering (www.minolta.co.uk).
The benefit of this non-protruding zoom lens is, of course, that the camera body is a LOT slimmer than others on the market.
I got my Xi on the Internet for a little under £300. Minolta are set to introduce a new version of the Xi, the Minolta Xt, which is also a 3-megapixel camera, but comes with a few more nuts and bolts. Look out for it! Here's what you get in the box when you buy the Xi:
The 3.2 MP Dimage Xi camera
16MB Secure Digital card
NP-200 Li-ion battery (rechargeable)
with charger
Wrist strap
USB cable
A/V cable
95 page camera manual + software manual (both printed)
Dimage Viewer Utility + Dimage Software CDs Overall, a good package, but you do miss a dedicated carrying case for the Xi. You can buy a Minolta-brand leather case for the Xi for around £10 on Ebay, which I would recommend. Also, getting another battery would be a good idea if you plan to take a lot of pictures in one sitting, since the battery life on the Xi is not fantastic.
The Xi's vital statistics (in millimetres) read as follows: 84.5 (W) x 72 (H) x 20 (D). It weighs in at a mere 190g WITH battery - truly a lightweight. The Xi has four selectable image sizes: 2048 x 1536, 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960 and 640 x 480. There are also four selectable image quality modes: Super Fine, Fine, Standard and Economy. Images are stored in TIFF format in Super Fine mode, and JPEG in other modes. Be warned that it does take the camera some time to write a Super Fine image in 2048 x 1536 mode to the memory card, so be prepared to wait for the highest quality images! Write times for JPEGs are a lot quicker and should not present a problem.
The Xi comes bundled with a 16MB Secure Digital (SD) memory card. Frankly, this is nowhere near big enough. Get yourself a bigger one - I bought a 256MB card on Ebay straight after getting the camera. If you decide to stick with a 16MB card, you'll be spending a lot more time downloading to your computer than I think you'd want to. By the way, I got my 256MB card for a mere £50, a saving of £40 on the RRP here in Blighty. I highly recommend looking around for a similar bargain! The Xi boasts a 3x optical zoom, giving it a 35 mm equivalent focal length of 37 - 111mm. Tasty. You have the option of a 4x digital zoom (giving 12x zoom overall), but I recommend against using digital zoom, since you will lose image quality when using it.
Ok, on to the real question - what do the images look like? Well, they're good. Not excellent, but good. They're not as sharp as I would like and need some tweaking in a photo-editing program, but this is the case with most digital images from cameras in this price bracket. Some people have complained that the colours captured by the Xi are somewhat washed out, but I've found them to be pretty accurate except under the most challenging circumstances, which would trouble most digicams. There is slight vignetting in wide-angled shots, but this is not really noticeable unless you're looking for it. Images are well exposed using the camera's auto-exposure mode and you can't really complain with the results. The 3-megapixel CCD gives you images that will happily print to 10 x 8 photos at 300dpi. The Xi has a movie capture mode alongside its still-capture mode and will take 35 seconds of movie at a time. Some reviews I've read are happy with this length, others not so. I personally think it's long enough and besides, it's not the primary purpose of the camera. What can you expect from the movie-mode? Decent quality for a camera in this price range and surprisingly good audio capture.
The included software is alright, but I prefer to use the browse feature of a photo-editing program to access and download my images, rather than the Minolta-brand software. This is just my opinion, so feel free to disagree! Plus points that I haven't already mentioned:
Easy delete command - press two buttons to delete an unwanted image. Much quicker than on the original Dimage X where you had to go through the menus, pressing lots of buttons. Easily accessed menus on a bright LCD screen. I found the menus clear and the text crisp, though this is quite a subjective thing. On to the start-up time. A lot of digicams take a long time to 'warm up', so you could miss that 'once in a lifetime' shot, but the Xi takes only 1.2 seconds to warm up from the time it is turned on. Then, it's ready to use. Nice.
There is a continuous advance feature on the Xi, allowing you to take approximately 1.6 frames per second, but it will conk out after eight or so frames, since the camera has to write data to the memory card. However, the continuous advance is good for a camera in this price range. Self-timer facility so you can get yourself in the picture. The time-lag is around 10 seconds, and there is a flashig red LED that lets you know when the picture is about to be taken.
You can also manually select the ISO on the Xi, which you could not do on the Dimage X. This is very useful and I'm glad that Minolta included it. The included instruction manual is pretty comprehensive and you get a card with hotline number to call if you have any digital imaging questions for Minolta. Useful.
Little niggles: The Xi lacks a dedicated macro mode for close-up photography, but you can get as close as 25cm away from your subject and the autofocus will lock on. You get an optical viewfinder, unlike some digicams on the market, but it doesn't give you the full picture. You will capture a little more in the final image than you see through the viewfinder, but it is nice that it is there.
Another niggle is the position of the lens. It is placed in the top left of the camera body as you hold it. It is very easy to accidentally put your finger in front of the lens and take a picture of that instead of your subject. However, with a little time behind the lens, you develop a technique for holding the camera so that your finger doesn't feature in the final image. There are several flash modes to choose from: Automatic, Automatic with red-eye reduction, fill-in flash, flash cancel and night-time portrait, though the on-camera flash is not all that powerful. However, you can't really complain on a camera this size!
Also, there are several white-balance options. This is necessary on digital cameras since the image sensor that records the images will see 'white' differently under different lighting conditions. The default setting is Automatic, meaning that the camera will choose the appropriate white-balance setting as it sees fit, though you can manually select the mode (Daylight, Fluorescent, Tungsten and Cloudy), if you so wish. The niggle that I have with the white-balance is the inability to tweak it WITHIN the modes, which is present on other digital cameras. I hope that Minolta will address this on future models. Final niggle is the zoom operation. You have to use a rocker-switch which takes some getting used to, but again, it comes with practice. The zoom response is a little slow, but you get used to it.
How does the Xi compare to other digicams? Very favourably. Some other 3-megapixel cameras take slightly sharper images and give a few more functions than the Xi, but the Xi is the last word in portability. For the money, the looks and the performance, the Xi is hard to beat, in my opinion. However, I suggest that you look out for the Minolta Xt, the successor of the Xi that I mentioned earlier. It looks good from the pictures I've seen and it will be an improvement on an already great camera. Despite a few little niggles, the Xi is a good camera and I recommend it heartily. All the best with your photos!
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by (89%):
by (11%):
12.09.2004 14:07
Excellent review of what seems to be a fine camera.
21.08.2003 03:27
Sounds good! Hmm, I will considering! :)
18.05.2003 02:03
Sounds a good camera, but an awful lot of niggles for nearly 300 quid! Chris x