Excellent picture quality. Compact size. Beautiful Design. Well built. Easy to use

Author's Rating:

Pros: Beautiful pictures, 6MP, Movie with sound, MS/SD, Solid built

Cons: Small LCD screen, case not included, sliding lens cover to view pictures & transfer files

The Bottom Line: 
I love this camera, it makes great pictures, very compact, well built, easy to use. A great choice for everyone from beginner to enthusiasts.

Author's Review
This is my first digital camera, I was a user of Pentax 35mm 105R. Although Pentax 105R is a fairly compact, I did not use this 35mm camera all that much because of its size. So I decided to get a much smaller camera and I wanted to get 5MP or greater. I looked at few digital cameras, finally focusing on Minolta, Canon, Olympus and Pentax. I did not particular care for Minolta's reputation or picture quality as compare to the manufacturers mentioned above as, from what I've seen, they are all delivering great pictures and they are all outstanding companies. I chose Minolta mainly because of the all steel built, beautiful design and its size. The weight is not a significant factor for me, but this camera, by no mean of imagination is heavy. On opposite, I find it’s weight substantial and reassuring of the quality and technology that went into this camera.

My first experience with the camera is that I started to take many more pictures. The camera is so compact and the nature of the digital media is such that you do take it with you everywhere and do not have a second thought before snapping a picture. Most of the pictures are great and compare very well to the pictures I've taken on my 35mm. In fact I like these digital pictures much better. G600 also performs very well inside with enough ambient light or outside at night.
I’ve seen few complaints on Epinions that G400/G500 and other digital compacts do not perform all that well inside. In my experience, I do not really see this camera in any way inferior to the performance of my old 35mm compacts, which is a high end Pentax 35mm compact. In fact, I find that the night shots and inside shots are much better looking than on my old customer. As far as red eye issue is concerned, I only observed a consistent problem when photographing my dog at night. But this is typical for photographing animals as their pupils much bigger than human’s. As far as humans, the pictures taken at night or inside come out without the red eye. G600 also comes with the printed user manual and software on CD. This camera is very easy to use – you can use it immediately without reading the user manual, which, by the way, is very easy to follow.

The only minor complaint I have is that I can not operate this camera without sliding the cover open. Why do I need to slide the cover and extend the lens just to view the pictures or to transfer files to my computer? I would also think that Minolta should have included a leather protective case alongside with the camera.

The bottom line is that, either at night or day, inside or outside, the pictures come out very vivid, clear and bright.