An award for the Dimage7. What kind of crack are they on?
It's like giving a Ford Pinto a Car a of the year award...
Its the most anticipated but disappointing Digi to date...
I do not know if the award is based purely on camera specification
or on actual experience of camera use. I suspect that it is
largely the former since production DiMAGE 7s have only just
appeared for people to actually use. In which case, in my opinion,
the award is entirely justified -- in terms of its specification
the D7 is almost the perfect digital camera. In this respect it
beats hollow any other digital camera in its price range:
- Highest resolution.
- Most capable lens (very high quality optics with remarkably
little distortion and CA) with one of the widest zoom ranges;
excellent wide-angle, very good telephoto and good macro
capabilities.
- Lots of focusing and exposure options, with an excellent aperture
range and shutter speed range.
- Lots of in-camera control - colour saturation, sharpening,
contrast, etc.
- Good ergonomics - lots of external controls without resorting to
multi-level menus.
- Control of zoom and manual focussing via lens rings -- more
responsive and intuitive than stupid fiddly little buttons.
- Best EVF in any digital camera (better colours, faster, higher
resolution than any other, also tiltable).
- Lots of other design pluses, such as proper lens thread, metal
tripod mount, CompactFlash/MicroDrive, etc etc.
On paper the D7 is an absolute winner and whoever put together its
specification deserves an award. Unfortunately Minolta seem to
have screwed up on the actual implementation of the specification
-- poor (or, to be more generous, whacky) aesthetics, not the best
build quality, high power consumption and (presumably related) heat
generation, and auto-focus problems.
I am not familiar with the Ford Pinto (I guess here in the UK it
goes under a different name), but I would imagine that the
difference between the Ford Pinto and the D7 is that the former is
crap both in terms of its specification and its actual usage,
whereas the D7 has an unbeatable specification (in its price range)
but in actual usage ... well, it appears to have some significant
shortcomings.
Terry.
(Buying intentions in the next ten days: Minolta DiMAGE 7 - 35%
chance; Olympus E-10 - 35% chance; Canon EOS D30 - 15% chance; no
purchase & stick with my current Oly C2100 for longer - 15%
chance!!!!)
