Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3 Digital Camera

Unless you're going to spend about $3,000 for a digital camera, just get ready to put up with something that's just almost as good as a quality film camera. That's just how it is, sadly, and the Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z3 digital camera produces pictures that are fairly common of competing cameras that cost around $400. The Konica Minolta does at least one thing very, very well, and I'll talk about that feature of the camera first.

Let me explain how I use this camera. I have the great fortune of putting out a monthly magazine for the trade association for which I work. I handle public relations for an association with about 8,700 members, so we manage to find plenty of things to write about every month. In addition to being fortunate enough to control every last aspect of the magazine, I'm also saddled with the burden of having to take just about all of the photographs for the publication, too. To make matters worse, I asked for a Pentax K1000 (ah, I loved my old Pentax -- you can't beat film) and was given one of these damned digital things, instead.

The Konica Minolta, as I mentioned, does one thing extremely well -- it takes macro photos that will absolutely knock your socks off. For those unfamiliar with macro photography, it basically involves focusing in a small object and capturing it in amazingly clear detail. It's rather like looking at something under a microscope -- macro photography involves capturing a small object and reproducing it at two or more times it's normal size. It's not easy for a camera to do that, but the Konica Minolta is set up to handle that task very well. In fact, the May issue of our magazine features a pin that's about the size of a quarter on a sports jacket -- the pin is amazingly clear and the weave of the sports jacket is very detailed. The Konica Minolta has both "regular" and "super" macro settings. I always wind up using the super macro setting, and it's easy to get a shot that looks great out of the camera.

The ease of macro photography has as much to do with the very good lens on the camera as it does with the anti-shake feature. One problem I always had with film cameras and macro photography is that you can blur your image to pieces if you move the camera just the slightest bit (i.e., be careful when hitting that shutter button, ace!) This camera is very good at keeping images stable, and that's great for both macro and regular photography.

Outside of the very good macro abilities of this camera, there's just not much else to write home about. There are times when I absolutely hate this unit, and times when it captures photos that are acceptable. Rarely great, but typically acceptable. You get one lens with this thing, so you'd better love the hell out of it because you're not going to swap it out with anything else. This camera packs a 12X optical zoom that looks great outside, but is iffy for indoor photography. That's because the flash built into the unit is tiny and (according to Konica Minolta) good up to about 17 feet (I honestly doubt that claim -- photos come out dark and grainy unless you are right up on your subject when you trigger that little flash). It has a hot shoe for an external flash, so plan on getting one of those. Things go better with a large, external flash, but it is difficult to sync right with the camera. No matter what I do, those indoor photos often come out a bit too dark and often more grainy than I'd like.

Fortunately, this unit uses standard SD cards for storage, so you can take a lot of photos. And, I wind up having to take quite a few so I can be sure to bring some back that are useful. That brings me to the LCD display -- it's just about worthless for telling you if the photos you have taken are any good or not. The display is rather small and I've taken more than a few photos that look great on the display but turn out to be horrible when I download them to my computer so I can crop them and such in Photoshop. One problem with the camera is that the auto focus seems easily confused -- photos that seem fine when I set them up might come out blurry after I capture them. Taking a few photos of the same subject, then, is essential with this camera as I never know when everything is going to jump out of focus at the last moment. Similarly, indoor shots that seem great at the moment I take them might have freaky lighting effects marring them after I take them. It's all very odd.

The resolution isn't exactly great on this camera, either. Yes, 4.2 megapixels might have seemed like a big deal once upon a time, but it's not anymore. One particularly obnoxious thing about this camera is that I've cranked up the photo resolution to the highest setting, and some things still look digitized. You won't get a "perfect circle" out of this camera no matter how hard you try. This is particularly noticeable when using the macro setting -- that pin I mentioned features gorgeous detail, but the edges of the pin still look a big jagged. That's a sure sign of a lower end digital camera, I'm afraid.

One thing very odd about this camera is that the designers seemed to try to offer the convenience of a "point and click" camera with the flexibility of a manual one. You've got some settings here, such as one for profile photos, another for outdoor scenes, action scenes and etc., but they are of limited use. The manual settings let you do everything from focusing the camera on your own to setting up depth of field and shutter speeds, but those are a royal pain to set up properly. Yes, you can fool with the camera and that anti-shake feature comes in handy when you're going for slower shutter speeds, but you're probably better off setting up the automatics, throwing the dice, taking a lot of photos and hoping a few of them come out well.

That brings me to the capture speed. It stinks. Taking several photos with this camera, like I've said, is essential. But that one-second lag between shots can be frustrating. The lag gets worse as your memory card fills, so be aware of that, too.

On a positive note, the menu system is very easy to use. There are quite a few features to the camera, and the menus are laid out in a very logical way -- you can find what you want in a hurry. The documentation is also excellent and you'll need that manual to figure out the tricks of this camera. The unit is also durable -- we've beaten the hell out of it for almost two years and it's held up very well. The battery life is acceptable, too. It takes 4 AA batteries and we can get about 200 photos out of a set of batteries if the external flash is in use (i.e., about all the time since the built in flash isn't worth a damn). Also, the body is easy to grip and the camera is light enough to be careful when I have to sling it around my neck and carry it for long periods of time.

All in all, this is a serviceable camera with a a great macro lens, a decent zoom lens and great durability. You could do better than this camera, but you could also do a lot worse. I may be biased because I could get that old Pentax to sing and I have trouble getting this camera to even carry a decent tune. Still, this camera seems lacking in a lot of ways.