Minolta Vectis 3000

...APS, and settled for the Minolta Vectis 3000, mainly because of its size and zoom capabilities. When I found it for sale on-line at the high-street price of the 2000, I jumped at the opportunity.

It claims to be the "World's Smallest Fully 3X Zoom Advanced Photo System Lens Shutter Camera". I can only confirm that it is small and convenient, it fits into your trouser pocket (which my Olympus did, but that had no flash), the ...
...no longer work together properly. Minolta call this Smart Close-Framing Guide or advanced parallax adjustment guide. It avoids situations where the photo you took does not match what you saw in the viewfinder. I do a lot of close-up snaps and it's been a lifesaver.

The flash is reliable, and not overwhelming even in close-up situations, and has good reach even outdoors (depending on film). You have the option to turn it off completely, ... more

I recently bought this APS camera to replace my ageing, but reliable Olympus XA compact camera (all manual, 15+ years old). After lengthy searches and scouring the reviews I decided to go for APS, and settled for the Minolta Vectis 3000, mainly because of its size and zoom capabilities. When I found it for sale on-line at the high-street price of the 2000, I jumped at the opportunity.

It claims to be the "World's Smallest Fully 3X Zoom Advanced Photo System Lens Shutter Camera". I can only confirm that it is small and convenient, it fits into your trouser pocket (which my Olympus did, but that had no flash), the all in one casing protects it well, and looks quite sleek and stylish - if you like to choose your camera by its looks.

The Vectis 3000 boosts a 3X zoom, and allows you to take great detailed shots of features at a distance. Previously I would always tell myself 'ok so now this is a wide-angle camera hence these people will only be specs in the distance'. Well, now with the zoom you can bring them much closer.

This is my first foray into APS, and yes, beware, developing *is* more expensive than normal 35mmm film. But I love the drop-in film loading, although normal loading never was a problem for me. But it's less fiddly and quicker. The camera will not release the film unless completely rewound. A great safety feature - I have ruined films like that in the past.

The Triple Format selection, a normal feature with APS is fun, it provides three kinds of printing formats to suit your preference; classic C print, wider H print, and panorama P print. You see the selected format's outline by the LCD in the viewfinder. The type of format can later be changed when ordering reprints. In cases of extreme close-ups (40cm) the viewfinder window will display shading to compensate for the fact that the lens and viewfinder are in parallel and no longer work together properly. Minolta call this Smart Close-Framing Guide or advanced parallax adjustment guide. It avoids situations where the photo you took does not match what you saw in the viewfinder. I do a lot of close-up snaps and it's been a lifesaver.

The flash is reliable, and not overwhelming even in close-up situations, and has good reach even outdoors (depending on film). You have the option to turn it off completely, use red-eye reduction (only really suitable for staged shots due to the delay between pressing the shutter and the photo being taken). What I don't like is that when you switch the camera off (close the lens/case), it reverts back to auto-flash mode. Which is a bit inconvenient when I use it in landscape mode (no flash, infinity focus) and it reverts back every time.
Available modes: Autoflash (in low light, back-light), autoflash with red-eye reduction (in low light, back-light), fill-flash, flash cancel, Night Portrait (with red-eye reduction), Landscape/Night View

The controls (buttons) are at the back of the body, and a bit fiddly to operate as they're close together. If you don't intend to change your settings much this is not a problem. The current settings are always displayed on a LCD window at the top of the camera.

There are other features such as Print Quality Improvement (PQI), but really I can't comment on those except that 'it takes nice sharp well lit pictures'. The Date/Time Imprinting is convenient - now I have a timestamp on the back of each photo, which tells me exactly when the picture was taken. You can also have these on the front of your picture, but I have not yet tried that, as I don't like the intrusive effect it has on a picture in general.

 

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