Company Name:
Konica Minolta Photo Imaging U.S.A Inc., www.konicaminolta.com
Price:
$450 street

Spec Data:
4.0 megapixels; 10X optical, 4X digital zoom

Pros:
Unique. Easy to shoot. Easy navigation.
Cons:
Slower telephoto. Average visual resolution and pixel transition.
Bottom Line:
The Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 comes with many features, but has exposure problems in daylight and produces images of only average sharpness.

Review
The Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 has a unique look and is easy to shoot. A decent performer in terms of speed, with many features... Click here to read the .

Konica Minolta DiMage Z2

The Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 has a unique look and is easy to shoot. A decent performer in terms of speed, with many features, it had exposure problems in daylight and flash shots and produced images of only average sharpness.

The Z2 stands out because of its design, but it felt toylike to us. The body is barrel-shaped, with a smooth, wedgelike grip. Its well-placed rear-panel buttons are large and arranged in an arc; icons and labels are clearly marked.

Thanks to clever design, the Z2's 113,000-pixel LCD screen seems larger than its 1.5 inches, and it's bright. The Z2 has only one display screen, but its Switch Finder system uses mirrors to move the LCD image between the rear panel and the viewfinder. This makes the image identical no matter how you choose to view the subject. The system feels clunky, however.

You can control the 10X zoom (f/2.8 to f/3.7; 35-mm equivalent: 38 to 380 mm) with your thumb on the back grip for one-handed shooting, but it's a stretch; the camera is better suited to two-handed operation. At the telephoto end, it's slightly slower than some others in this roundup.

Handy features include a real-time histogram, an intelligent hot shoe for an external flash, and an optional converter lens (wide-angle, 28-mm equivalent). You get five scene options, four flash modes, EV compensation, white-balance options, ISO choices, bracketing and metering settings, two auto-focus modes (passive and active, or lamp-assisted) and manual mode.

Menus are easy to read and navigate. Resolutions range from 640-by-480 to 2,272-by-1,704, and there are three levels of JPEG compression, but the Z2 doesn't support RAW or TIFF formats. It takes 640-by-480 QuickTime video at 30 fps, with duration limited by the SD card's capacity. SVGA video (800-by-600) is only at 15 fps.

Konica Minolta claims its Rapid AF will focus in as little as 0.2 seconds, but we did not find the camera any speedier than its competitors in shooting. Our tests showed the Z2 to have quick boot (4.4 seconds) and recycle (2.2 seconds) times—in both cases the second-best here. Visual resolution and pixel transition results were average. The camera suffered in studio still-life tests: Auto settings resulted in a dark and noisy daylight shot, while the whites were oversaturated in flash images.