Pros: 4 Mega Pixels, Excellent Value, Fast Response
Cons: Yellow Tint Indoors, Few Physical Design Flaws
The Bottom Line: For around 300 dollars, A 4 mega pixel camera can be yours with excellent picture quality and features found on more expensive cameras.
andykupe's Full Review: Konica Minolta DiMAGE S414 Digital Camera
How I Bought This Camera
What attracted me to the Minolta S414 camera was the price (bought it from $315) and the amount of mega pixels it had (4 mega pixels). At first, I overlooked it because usually high mega pixel cameras for a low price mean bad picture quality or lack of features (cough, cough, SiPix cameras). But after reading reviews online from http://www.dpreview.com/ and http://www.steves-digicams.com, I started to really get interested in this camera and what it had to offer. Please visit those review sites as they go over features which I will not go over since they do a great job of doing it, I might as well not try and duplicate the same material. So I bought the camera from http://www.digitalfotoclub.com for about $315 dollars online + about $15.00 S&H. I received it in a timely manner by UPS Ground.
After I have had this camera for about 3 months, I decided to write this review.
Getting Up & Running
I purchased 4 NiMH 2100mah batteries and a charger from www.greenbattery.com which were the highest capacity batteries available at that time. Later I learned the battery life on the camera is decent, but by all means, not great. I got an average of say 125 pictures or more some with flash. It is imperative that you do buy rechargeable batteries because alkaline batteries will go so quick it’s like throwing away money. Also, I recommend picking up a 128MB or 256MB compact flash card because taking pictures at 4 mega pixels fills up a memory card very fast. A good, cheap, reliable place to buy compact flash cards is www.newegg.com
Taking pictures is quite easy! Turn the dial to “auto” and start taking pictures! Review the pictures you have taking by turning the dial to the “play” icon and you can see the pictures you have taken. A tip for taking good pictures is to first hold down the button half way so it beeps to show it is in focus. Then take your picture. The picture is taken almost instantaneous.
If you are the one who likes to take close up pictures, the camera has an excellent “macro mode”, which allows you to take pictures as close as 16cm. The pictures are razor sharp. The macro mode can be switched on by clicking the photo type selector button on the camera once, which is quite easy.
If you have Windows XP, you just plug the included USB cable to it and turn the dial to the USB logo and it will automatically identify the camera so you can take the pictures off it.
Picture Quality
Picture quality is absolutely excellent considering you have decent lighting. If you want to see a few sample shots of what I did with this camera, you can visit this link: http://www.photosig.com/go/users/userphotos?id=116331
Outdoor shots in “auto mode” turn out very well most of the time. Colors are generally accurate so post processing of shots is not required as much.
Indoor shots are where things get tricky. In indoor lighting, most shots in “auto mode” turn out with a yellow tint. This definitely does not look so great and I find it the biggest flaw. But yes! There is a way to go around it. Using manual mode, you can adjust the “white balance” and change it to “tungsten”. This will make indoor shots with accurate colors. Manual mode is extremely useful to learn as you can tweak your shots.
Pros
Awesome Picture Quality
Cheap Camera for 4 mega pixels
Best value for a camera around $300
Very Easy to Use
Solid –Aluminum Casing - (I dropped it on a rock, strong impact, still works!)
4x Zoom (Higher than the avg. 3x zoom)
Good macro mode
Quick Response
Cons
Yellow tint indoors (can be fixed using manual mode, see above)
Cheap Plastic Lens Cover
Tripod Mount on left edge of camera (unbalanced)
Bit Chunky
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 315 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
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