Konica Minolta Dimage Z5 5MP Digital Camera with 12x Anti-Shake Zoom

I bought it from : Perky Sourpuss LLC . Amazing. It was a playful bet on my side. I have had one, which I had bought some 9 years ago, and loved it a lot and made many lovely pics with it. Some 5 years ago it was stolen. So I was looking to make amends with the past trauma (-;. When I ordered it I thought I would receive some shabby replacement, after all, it's a very out of date piece of antiquity... But I said: never mind let me try. I ordered it on March 1st, arrival was promised on the 16th, but it arrived on the 12th. In the original box! In perfect shape. With all accessories, the original user manuals, disc, all papers, 2 gigabyte card included (The original wouldnt take more than 1 gb. So it must have been technically updated), Also 4 new batteries. I could hardly believe it. Chapeau for Perky Sourpuss's commitment to excellence!

As I took this out of the box and powered it up I immediately saw that it suffered from faulty programming. It was locked into the viewfinder mode and would not allow me to see anything through the LCD. Konica Minolta was of no help and simply said I should send it to them for repair - about a four week process for something that I had never used. Intuition told me that there should be some way to reboot the thing - but it was not to be. I bought this despite similar complaints that I had read on the web (one correspondent told of a vacation to Mexico being ruined by the inability to take pictures when this camera locked up). Well, they were right and I was wrong, so I returned it to Amazon.com without any problems and bought a Panasonic LZ2 which seems to be a good compromise between enhanced zoom and size. I will be taking that to Europe soon along with my old Fuji 2 megapixel as backup.

Wonderful easy to use camera, takes great pictures point-and-shoot, many options. Viewing option are bright LCD display or eyepiece viewer (saves battery). CONS: battery door must be closed carefully, door latch breaks easily, cannot be easily replaced. Door must be firmly closed before sliding I have one working, another for which I am jury-rigging a kluge to hold the door closed. Lens cap MUST be remove before turning on as lens pops out, otherwise it jams and stalls motor draining battery. I have other cameras I use regularly, but this camera packs such great performance in a small easy to use package I love it (handling with CARE)

I've had several digitals before and this one is not as user friendly as i'd hoped. The manual makes assumptions that you understand their technical jargon without explanations. I have not encountered this with my other cameras.

Outstanding features, but CCD sensor has a pit in it that could only come from the factory. The only way to know is dis-assembly, which discards any warranty.

Good camera.

great camera and great service and price

I've gone with every version of the Sony Mavica for my digital pics over the years but with my son turning one I needed a camera that would get clear shots when he was moving fast.The hardest thing to find was something that had a powerful optical zoom (Sony spoiled me with 16x), and tho I have two fine camcorders it is nice to have video recording that does zooms and stabilization during vid recording (again, Sony has always done zoom/stabilization in it's video capture but most cameras don't).After much research and coming very close to buying the Panasonic Lumix (very nice camera but terrible viewscreen) and the Kodak (no stabilization and required to use that silly dock) I noticed the Z5 had a bigger viewscreen than the older Z3.Looking closer and seeing the 12x optical and the video recording that not only does zoom and stabilization but also 640x480 at 30fps (Mavica does only 15 second 320x240) and the deal was done. I bought a 1GB SanDisk Ultra2 (60x) sd card which allows up to 350 highest res pictures (and/or up to 28 minutes of wonderful stutter-free video) and now I am taking shots of my little moving target with no more blurring results.My wife isn't into tweaking any camera and the controls are great, a little more complicated than the Mavica but not by much. Really it's point & shoot ease with only having to know four other buttons (one to switch between playback and "record", the toggle to go back and forth between stored images, a dedicated delete button to get rid of ones you don't like and the shutter button. If you are into doing more then there's a lot more on the camera from macros to in-camera video editing and on and on.I know that most people don't buy a still camera for video and so I have to stress that the stills are blowing me away ... but also mention that if you do care about the video option then consider that the reason I only gave the unit a 4 is that the videos are Quicktimes. If you're a Windows person then you'll have to pay Apple (the real monopolist of PCs) $30 for a copy of QuickTime Pro to convert them to AVI and then use Microsoft's free Media Encoder or the consumer-grade freebie "Windows Movie Maker" to convert the AVIs to WMV format for best viewing in Media Player or use the AVIs in Pinnacle Studio 9 to make DVDs (why the heck don't cameras just record to WMV? This Quicktime default is so old fashioned). The quality of the videos IS good enough for your DVDs.Aside from the video conversion pain, as a still camera This is the one.