Pros: Anti-shake. Exceptionally good handling, large LCD, unique design philosophy.
Cons: In-camera sharpening is not the best. Mediocre kit lens.
The Bottom Line: Antishake and handling are wonderful, but photos need sharpening to bring out maximum detail. Antishake falls short of advertised 2-3 stops (only 1.5 stops).
tcchou71's Full Review: Konica Minolta Maxxum 7D / Dynax 7D Digital Camera
This camera is uniquely innovative, but also has quirks that may turn off customers who aren't already loyal to Minolta. The analogy to the Apple Macintosh is very apt. Like the Apple Macintosh, the 7D paradoxically combines some of the industry's most innovative ideas and highest quality products with some some of the lowest market shares. Like the Macintosh, the 7D has a remarkable user interface that encourages spontaneity and creativity, but lags behind competitors in raw numerical horsepower. Like the Macintosh, the photographic world seems divided into people devoted to their Minoltas and those who ignore them altogether. Initially, the 7D was sold at a substantially higher price than competing DSLRs, also parallelling Apple's strategy of charging premium prices for premium usability.
I should note that the initial high price has dropped over two-fold since this camera was first introduced, and it is now as affordable as any other brand.
But enough of the analogies ...
Positive first impressions:
Anti-Shake is what first drew my attention to the 7D, but other thoughtful features abound. As many people have noted, the profusion of knobs and dials is extremely helpful for quickly changing common settings like exposure/flash compensation, autofocus mode, exposure mode, white balance, shooting modes, and self-timer. There is even a conveniently-placed button to disengage autofocus, allowing manual override on all lenses. Within a few hours of picking up the 7D, I found myself able to control it very quickly, as if it were an extension of my own body.
Plenty of sites can give you an exhaustive list of features, so I'll just mention the major things I noticed as I learned my way around the camera:
White balance:
White balance (WB), is one of my pet peeves with many digital cameras, but the 7D handles this better than most. Like most cameras, 7D photos are yellowish under tungsten light unless I manually select the WB. But it was easier to make this selection than on any camera I've seen - there is a lever on the top right that can switch to manual WB (or custom, or kelvin) with a single thumbflick. The camera remembers what preset you last used, so if you primarily use manual WB for a single purpose (like tungsten), you won't have to scroll through a list of WB options like with Canon or Nikon cameras. Every camera should be like this, but Minolta is the only one that's done it.
Beautiful LCD:
Aside from all the handy knobs and buttons, another immediate joy was the enormous, gorgeous LCD, which shows a huge amount of detail. Again, every camera should be like this, but most aren't.
Loud scratchy shutter:
Perhaps the first thing I didn't like was the loud shutter. The mirror slap is not only loud, it has a scratchy quality that I find hard to get used to.
The kit lens:
The 28-100mm kit lens is OK, but underwhelming. 28mm is not very wide after factoring in the crop factor, and Minolta really should have packaged this camera with the 18-70 kit lens instead. Wide open at 28mm, it has enough chromatic aberration to be distracting in 8"x10" prints.
One pleasant surprise about the kit lens was autofocus, which was fairly quick, even though the focus motor is in the body, and drives the lens via ancient technology: a screw in the lens mount. It was also surprisingly good in low light, which nicely complements the anti-shake, which also helps in low lighting situations.
Anti-shake does not give the advertised 2-3 stops advantage, though it's still useful.
Of course anti-shake is this camera's crown jewel. However, when I tested it systematically, I found that on average, AS was only letting me use shutter speeds about 1.5-2 stops slower than without it. This is significantly worse than the 2-3 stops claimed by Minolta's marketing. I should mention that when I tested a Canon IS lens in the same way, I indeed got a gain of 3 stops, just as Canon advertises. So it appears that Minolta's claim of 2-3 stops is overstated, and Minolta's AS system performs signicantly worse than the latest Canon IS lenses.
Despite my initial disappointment, the 7D's stabilization is still useful and respectable, and performs on par with the older generation of Canon IS lenses that only gave 2 stops benefit.
Phil Askey's review at dpreview.com speculates that shake-compensation should be harder at longer focal lengths, due to the faster CCD acceleration required. I got 1.5 stops gain at both ends of the kit lens range (28mm vs 100mm), so 100mm isn't pushing the upper limits of AS. In fact, there are plenty of reports of antishake working just fine with 500mm lenses.
Yet more shake-warning systems
There is a row of LEDs on the right edge of the viewfinder that measures how much the camera is currently shaking and warns you if it is too much to compensate. In addition to this, there is a symbol that blinks in the bottom of the viewfinder if the shutter speed becomes slower than the reciprocal of the focal length (in 35mm equivalent). Interestingly, the symbol comes on only ONE STOP slower with AS on than with it off. I.e. the camera's own electronics assume AS will only gain ONE stop of hand-holdability!!!!! This is consistent with my observation that AS provides less than the 2-3 stops of advertised gain.
Image quality, problems with sharpness:
The proof of the pudding is of course in the photos, which had excellent color, saturation, contrast, exposure, and noise. However, images straight out of the camera were noticeably soft, showing less fine detail than Canon and Nikon 6MP cameras. This problem has been widely discussed online, and is usually ascribed to the low default in-camera sharpening, which is seemingly easy to remedy by menu settings or post-processing.
However, I found that the problem was not quite that simple. Increasing the 7D's in-camera sharpening did a mediocre job of recovering fine details, and produced more artifacts than the Nikon D70 or Canon 300D. Photoshop did a better job of sharpening, and brought the quality very close to that of Canon and Nikon, but this requires much more work. The best results are obtained by shooting RAW, and converting with Adobe Camera Raw, which produces detail indistinguishable from Canon's JPEG files (I should note that Canon's JPEG files come unusually good to RAW quality, though of course without all the other benefits of RAW like highlight recovery). Because RAW files are 2-3 times larger than JPEG, I usually don't bother.
Even though Minolta's JPEGs have less initial detail than Canon's or Nikon's, the filesize is larger. A fine quality Minolta JPEG is often 4-5 MB, whereas the Canon rebel 300D's are usually 1-3MB, and rarely over 4MB.
Should you buy it?
When first introduced, the 7D body was priced around $1600, a hefty $600-$800 above other 6MP bodies like the Canon 300D or Nikon D70. The price gap has narrowed considerably: the 7D is now under $800, which is very competitive with offerings from Canon or Nikon. And when you consider the free image stabilization, this camera is quite a bargain.
However, Canon's latest generation of IS is much better than the 7D's, giving 3 stops instead of 1.5. If you're using focal lengths where Canon has recently introduced an IS lens, the Minolta will seem disappointing, though still better than nothing at all. If you're doing wildlife or sports photography, where cropping and enlarging are common, you'll run up against the 7D's shortcomings in its in-camera sharpening and JPEG processing. And if you often crop/enlarge, you will get a marginal benefit from the Canon's rebel XT's 8 megapixels, versus the Minolta's 6MP.
However, all this has to be balanced against the very high cost of IS lenses from Canon and Nikon. If you have lots of extra money to burn, Canon will give you better pictures straight out of the camera, with Nikon coming close behind. But if you want anti-shake without bankrupting yourself, the Minolta will do just as well, after some post-processing to improve sharpness.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 1600 This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts
Epinions.com periodically updates pricing and product information from third-party sources, so some information may be slightly out-of-date. You should confirm all information before relying on it.
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