Enthusiast camera at the cost of point-and-shoot

Author's Rating:

Pros: Nearly all SLR features in a cheap package.

Cons: Space-age style.

The Bottom Line: 
True, this is not the best digital camera out there, but it's certainly one of the best for the price.

Author's Review
Purpose: To give my opinion about the things that stand out about this camera. If you need a detail review of every single function, search for "Dimage Z1 review" on google or yahoo. This review is for those people thinking of switching from film to digital, and for the novices who would like to improve in photography skills.

FILM VS DIGITAL

I used to own a film-based SLR camera (Minolta Maxxum 5). Now I finally put it to rest. Here's the comparison between the Dimage Z1 vs the Maxxum 5

1. Print quality - I tried printing the Z1 images from 3 different places (Walmart, Target, Savon), and found that the print quality is just as good as the developed film pictures, although slightly less glossy. One printer at Walmart (just that one) gave a slight pink tint on the image. All others look good.

2. Web picture quality - I have a very good scanner, yet the scanned images can never match the quality of the pictures from the Z1. The problem is that when scanning at high resolution, small dust particles will show up no matter how many times scanner surface is cleaned. One thing to watch out for is that if you want to take images only for the web page, don't take them at the highest resolution. This is because when reducing the size, the image quality will degrade.

3. Performance - Most digital cameras have a longer start up time and a longer delay between shots than film ones. The Z1 is amazingly quick, making these delays almost nonexistent.

4. Cost - If you take lots of pictures, the Z1 will cost you much less. Do buy rechargeable NimH batteries and a charger. 4 NimhH = $10, and charger = $10-$40. I usually print out only 20% of all the pictures I take with the Z1, whereas the film camera requires development of all pictures. The price of a 4x6 print is around 29 cents. I took about 500 pictures in the last 2 months and found that only 100 of them are worth printing. That's $29. Developing 500 films would have cost me $6/roll multiplied 20 rolls = $120 (film and development.)

5. The half roll problem - I really hate it when I go to a birthday party, take half a roll, then tell my friends to wait for Christmas before they can see the pictures because I don’t want to waste the remaining half. With digital, this problem doesn't exist. Now I can just bring the Z1 Secure Digital memory card (or burn them to a CDRW) to Walmart and I can print the pictures no matter if the card has 2 or 200 pictures.

THE LEARNING NOVICE

I'm sure many of you guys out there are like me who mostly take photos of people and have had major disappointment with some pictures. I don't really need to be a professional photographer, but I would like to make my loved ones look prettier, and want the moments captured to be sweeter. I have bought a few books in photography and could not apply the knowledge until I purchased the Z1.

The advantage of the digital camera is that I can preview my picture immediately after I take the picture, then discard it and retake a new one if it doesn't look good. The screen on the back of the Z1, although small, has a very high resolution. I can see good image details, and zoom into important areas, like the faces. There's no more moment of disappointment when the film development doesn't come out the way I wanted. The screen is almost impossible to see in bright snow though. In snowy scenes, I had to press the button half way down for anything to show up on the screen.

Unlike the average point-and-shoot cameras, the Z1 provides me enough control to tweak the image if the one from the Auto mode doesn't look good. In fact, there's not a single feature on my old manual filmed based Maxxum 5 camera that is not available. The flash hot shoe allows me to reuse my old Minolta 3600HS flash, which is great on sunny days to fill in the hard shadows on the people's face.

One feature on the Z1 that I absolutely love is the ability to increase/decrease the flash exposure. This is great for taking pictures of people. When shooting outdoor under sunny sky or in bright snow, I had to increase the flash exposure to make the person's face brighter, and to decrease the harsh shadows on people’s faces. Without this option, the picture would come out looking like a silhouette, and people’s faces look unattractive. When taking pictures indoors or in dimly lit areas, I decrease the flash exposure and increase shutter duration, thus letting the background to show. I do have a $250 dedicated flash, but I found that the built-in flash on this camera is good enough for most cases. Its guide number, i.e. how far the flash can reach, is double that of the average in this class.

Unlike most professional SLR camera, the lens can't be switched. But the extreme 10x optical zoom (equivalent to 38-380) means that I don't need to switch to another one anyway. Glass quality on Minolta cameras has always been top-notched. I do wish for a wider lens though, maybe 28. In fact, I'm considering the purchase of this optional lens attachment. I found myself often backing away from a scene to get the whole view into my picture. I’m surprised some people made the decision of buying this camera because of the 10x zoom feature. I found that a wide-angle zoom lens is much more useful most of the time. Using the long zoom requires a tripod, or else the picture will not be sharp. It also requires a huge external flash because the built-in can’t reach that far. I found that the extreme zoom is only good for when I needed to fuzz out the background, i.e. decreasing the depth of field.

This is a great camera for novice to learn about photography. Since you don't have to develop the films, you feel free to take more pictures with different options and thus get more experience. Trust me, you will shoot more.

QUALITY & BATTERY LIFE

Some web reviewers say that the lens rattle and the battery door is flimsy. That's all true, but the lens rattling doesn't affect the picture quality, and the battery door will hold on unless you drop the camera. And don't worry about the questionable mechanical view-finder/LCD switch, because the LCD alone is good enough for most cases. The rest of the camera is very solid and well polished. No I don't like the space-age design, because it makes an otherwise serious camera look like a toy.

A set of 4 alkaline batteries is good for 100 pictures. Alkaline sucks for digital camera. Period. I just came back from a Europe trip and got 150 pictures out of my 4 2100mAH NIMH batteries. This is good considering that I used increased flash exposure on pretty much all pictures, and owned a very cheap charger that charges only about 50% of the full capacity. There are more expensive chargers having a "trickle mode" that can charge them closer to 100%.

BEHOLD THE Z2

With the success of the Z1, Minolta just released the Z2. The difference is that the resolution is increased to 4 megapixel and there’s a new lens system. 4 megapixel is great if you want to enlarge the pictures. The new lens system is supposed to reduce the color and optic aberrations, which never really existed on the Z1 anyway. I know some people have experienced the purple fringing problem with the Z1, but I never got one in any of my shots. With a street price of about $120 more than the Z1, I think I would still want to buy the Z1 if I have to make that decision now, but as the price of the Z2 goes down in the future, it would definitely be my favorite.

CONCLUSION

I would strongly recommend the purchase of the Dimage Z1. It’s the package that makes the most sense for the money. I have done much research before buying the camera, and yet it still surprised me of the convenience and picture quality that I can achieve. What’s good about this camera is that it makes novices like the rest of us better photographers. That’s the difference I can see. If you care about the absolute correct color reproduction, or how little optical aberration you can get, then you’re looking at the wrong class of camera. On the other hand, if you have trouble saving a number to your cellular phone list then it might be cheaper for you to buy one of those little point-and-shoots.

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If you're discouraged about tedsmom1's review on this camera with the tittle "What's all the Excitement About??!", let me clarify. I agree that if I were to use the Z1, put it on auto mode, and shoot in a gym, I would get a dark fuzzy picture too. What she doesn't know is that the same thing would happen to all cameras, even those costing a few times more. The gym is an extremely harsh condition for the photo shooting. The reason why the photos appear dark is because the fast actions require fast shutter, allowing less light to enter the camera. If she used the zoom feature, the picture would be even darker, since a smaller region emits less light than a larger region. 10X zoom is a double edge sword, it can be great, or it can hurt you. For most of us armatures, it will hurt more than help. Theoretically the built-in flash has a range of 0.8-20 feet, although realistically the subject needs to be in the range of 3-10 feet for the flash to affect the image at all. Believe it or not, this is a bout double as powerful as the rest of the built-in flashes. If tedsmom1 used the flash high up on the gym bleacher, changes are the flash did not reach the subject.

What she needed to do is to increase flash compensation to +2EV and sit closer to the action for the flash to be effective. Better yet, buy an external flash. My Minolta 3600HS flash has a range of up to 85 feet. Sitting closer to the action also discourages the use of the extra long zoom lens, thus allowing more light to enter the camera. If the picture is still dark, or if a closer seat is not possible, try increasing the exposure compensation.

By the way, for extreme conditions such as this, a professional camera might be necessary to take professional quality photos. What these ridiculously priced cameras offer is an extended range of shutter speed and aperture opening, allowing both more light into the camera and fast action capture at the same time. But if you're not publishing the gym photos to a magazine, I'd say the Z1 is good enough.