Here is my supremely humble attempt at a review of my digital camera. I had a minolta dimage x for about a year, and I just gave it to my dad and bought a minolta dimage xi. Aside from my new one, which arrived in the mail just today, being 3 megapixels compared to my old one being 2 megapixels, they seem to be mostly the same. So I'm going to combine my knowledge/experience of the two to create one general review of both.
As a basic guide to my writing this review, I'm using what Neema looks for in a camera:
- form factor
- resolution/color depth
- does it take movies and, if so, how long
- does it have an on-board speaker for playing movies
- optical zoom strength
- ease of use
I will also be expanding on whatever issues I deem important, etc etc quite liberally.
Also, before I really begin, it should be noted that my knowledge of cameras and photography is really quite limited, so I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Having said that, I have no idea what form factor is. So I'm going to take an educated guess that form factor has something to do with physical design. Physical design is a great place to start. The camera itself is very small. It's actually smaller than a 3.5" floppy diskin both length and width, and about 3/4" thick. Very sleek I get compliments all the time as to how cool it looks. All the lens zooming stuff is on the inside, so when one zooms in, no lens protrudes out. That way, the camera continues to look slick. The front has the flash, the viewfinder thingy, and the lens. The cool part about the lens is that it's got a james bondish style cover that opens and closes when you turn the camera on and off. The drawback of the lens is that it's placed where people tend to naturally put their fingers, so until you get used to holding the camera "the right way", you'll probably end up with a lot of shots with your fingertips in them.
On one side of the camera is the port where one plugs in the USB cable. They also include a cable that you can hook up to your tv via the USB outlet if you ever feel like hooking up your camera to your tv. I, personally, have never felt like doing that, so I have no idea of how well that works.
On the other side of the camera is a plug for the [optional] a/c adaptor and the housing for the battery and memory card. The camera uses SD (Secure Digital) cards, and I think it also uses multimediacards, which I hear are slower than SD.
On the bottom of the camera is a little hole type thingymabobber for mounting the thing on a tripod. On top, there's a little microphone for when you record videos or when you want audio notes, the power button, and the shutter release.
And then there's the back-side, where all the action takes place. You have your viewfinder, the zoom lever along with some arrow buttons, a selector switch, the LCD (~1.5"), some menu buttons, and a speaker for when you're playing back movies and/or audio.
So that's that for form factor for now. I may discuss things later which I'd forgotten to until up to this point. In all, a very sleek looking camera. Fits very easily in one's pocket.
Included with the camera are (I'm taking this from the manual):
-rechargeable lithium-ion battery
-battery charger (pretty quick 80 minute-ish charge)
-hand strap (very useful, believe it or not. I can't tell you how many
times it's saved my camera when I've been too drunk to hold on to it, etc)
-small SD memory card (useless. If you don't have one, you're going to
have to buy a nice big one, which can get pricey)
-AV cable (discussed earlier, for hooking up to TV)
-USB cable
-cd-roms, manuals, warranty card, etc etc
Figuring out how to use the camera itself is pretty easy and straightforward. One thing to note is that with the X model, it takes something like 6 button clicks to delete a picture. They fixed that problem with the Xi, where a picture can be deleted with 2 much easier clicks (one for delete and one to confirm). I guess while I'm at it, I'll discuss the other few differences between the 2 models that I know of so far. The Xi has a less reflective LCD, which makes it easier to view in the daytime. Also, the Xi also lets you choose, between 50 and 400, what ISO level you want. And being that the Xi is 3 megapixels versus the X's 2, the Xi also lets you choose higher resolution photos.
To figure out some of the camera's features, occasionally I found myself referring to the manual. But once I became familiar with the layout, it's all pretty intuitive, straight-forward, and easy to use. To be honest, some of the features, like audio captions, I've never used. But my dad borrowed the camera when traveling to France and he has used those other features, all of which he figured out on his own. So I can't really imagine it being difficult to use at all.
I think I've spent enough time on this, so I'm going to start summing up. Cool camera. Chicks dig it. Takes video (30 seconds at a time), has on board speaker, 3x optical zoom, along with the Xi have some digital zoom capability. Very easy to use, although there have been a couple times when I've been drinking a bit and then I confuse the EV arrow buttons with the Zoom button. I always use the LCD, so I'm not really sure how accurate the viewfinder is, although I can't imagine it being too bad. But LCD use really eats away at the battery.
Before I finish this, a word on their customer service. At a party last august, I accidentally dropped the camera. The lens cover stopped working and the battery/memory card cover got cracked. So what I did was I called customer service and I said to them, "ummm... I'm not sure why, but the lens cover on my camera doesn't work anymore." So they got my email address and emailed me a form to fill out and send back with my camera. Despite the blatant evidence (the crack) that I had dropped it, and the camera wasn't working because I was being stupid with it, they fixed the lens cover and even replaced the part of the camera that was cracked, free of charge. The only thing I had to pay for was to ship the camera there. They were very friendly and knowledgeable. Two thumbs up to their customer service.
I have pictures that I've taken with the camera all over my webpage.
additional (real) reviews:
CNET
Steve's
Digicams
I would have liked to have gone more in depth into this, but I've already spent more time than I would have liked writing this. I may add more later, but to be honest, I doubt it. If you really want to know what the camera's like, if you're reading me, then you probably know me, so just ask me to borrow it.