Konica Minolta Maxxum 5D (Dynax 5D) review
Bought the 5D after looking around at the direct competition (*ist, D50 & E-500); it seemed to have the best handling plus the wider standard zoom range and anti-shake.
My sister got hold of the camera on boxing day over at my brother's house and went to town with it - as it was quite dark indoors she was shooting at 3200 and using shutter speeds of as low as 1/20 with the standard zoom - amazingly good results, which show the anti shake really works. ISO 3200 is grainy, but much less so than ISO 200 on my little Nikon 3200. The 5D is very nice to use - I've tended to stick it on Auto ISO (unless it is really dark) and use the program shift to pick the exposure I want. I also picked up a 75-300 lens new (for under £95) and a secondhand 50mm 1.7. All the lenses seem very good and picure quality is excellent. This is a really good and nicely constructed camera.
Problems:
Only superficial stuff:
My preference is for continuous shooting (take lots of pictures and then choose the best!), but the camera seems to slip back to single frame on occasions (not often and it may be something I'm doing, but when it happens it is annoying).
Although the standard zoom is quite nice and has a good range, there is not much metal evident - even the bayonet seems to be made of plastic! Seems OK now but I don't know how durable it will be over time (otherwise I would have given a 5 for construction). The other lenses have metal bayonets and seem more robust.
The Dimage Master software (free offer with the UK 5D) is quite impressive, but a little memory hungry - my PC only has 256 of memory (I should get more) and Dimage Master struggles with directories containing over 300 images.