The Z series is one of the few ranges of digital cameras that look absolutely nothing like any film camera because of the unique futuristic design. The casing is plastic over a metal chassis, and the build quality is excellent: light and delicatebut in the same time it feels very strong and solid. Aside from a 5MP sensor and a couple of minor specification changes, the DiMAGE Z5 is almost identical to the Z3. The buttons are also extremely well placed, something that you can’t see on some other manufacturers. A 2 inch LCD monitor, a huge 12x optical zoom lens and Konica Minolta’s innovative image stabilization system are good reasons for anyone to buy it.
In terms of performance, it starts up in just under 2 seconds, and shot-to-shot time is approximately 2.5 seconds, which is not exceptional but from slow. Continuous shooting record the last 20 pictures at 10 frames per second. The movie mode is decent, you can operate the zoom lens during recording silently, so no motor noise is recorded on the soundtrack.
Focusing, exposure and color rendition are excellent, so I can say it provides nifty performance and generally good picture quality, as long as the ISO setting is kept low, and, the image stabilization makes it one of the few super-zoom cameras that can fully exploit its impressive 420mm focal length. It’s one of the best cameras I’ve reviewed recently.
Konica Minolta DiMAGE Z5 Specifications
Tags: Konica minolta, Konica minolta digital camera, digital camera, dimage camera, Minolta dimage camera, konica minolta dimage
