Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z6 review

This camera is curently going at very low prices because it is discontinued. It is a superb, simple to use camera which delivers excelllent results - in my opinion, a bargain at current prices.

Most people are used to having very vivid colour pictures from their cheap digital cameras. But they are often surprised when buying the expensive ones (like digital SLRs) that the colours are more muted - a small amount of computer photo processing is expected prior to printing (so says my Nikon manual).

In Auto mode, the Z6 delivers the exact same muted colours as does my Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D and my Nikon Coolpix 4500. If you want the Z6 to deliver the same sort of ready to print pictures as do the less sophisticated cameras, you have to put it in P mode and set the Color to "Vivid" and the Contrast and Sharpness to "High".

I've just done a comparison shoot to test the Z6's chromatic abberation. I compared it to a 300mm Sigma f4 APO lens and 400mm Sigma f5.6 telephoto lens in my 7D. I took pictures of power lines and air conditioning fixtures against a bright background, then zoomed in on them on my computer to see how much blue showed up in the harshest photos.

My 400mm lens (acting as a 600mm lens in the digital SLR) showed some blue chromatic aberration on some objects with a bright background. It had cost me as much second hand as the Z6 did new.

My 300mm APO lens (acting as a 450mm lens in the digital SLR) had zero chromatic aberration. Iit had cost me twice as much second hand as the Z6 did new.

At it's 420mm effective focal length, the Z6's results were the same as that of the 300mm APO lens, namely zero.

I can't ask for much better performance than that.
Renato

Problems:

None