Minolta Dimage 5

Despite having been back for servicing once - and the latest quote of £158 will not persuade me to throw any more money at Minolta - the camera has always failed to perform to my expectations.

The battery life is poor, it doesn't support large flash cards and worst of all its focussing on distant objects (more than a few feet!) is terrible. The only good photographs I have achieved with this camera are macro shots in good sunshine. Reds are bad in nearly all photographs. I get better results with my point and shoot Kodak DC340!

In raw mode all images have a green cast leading me to suspect something is wrong with the CCD or software.

The after sales support is atrocious - the only option available is to send the camera back for a £158 standard fee (which could increase depending on what they find).

I will never buy another Minolta camera and would not recommend this camera to my worst enemy!

The Minolta Dimage 5 is a very good camera if you look for flexibility if you are kind of a pro-wanna-be in photography this is the one for you if you want a fancy camera to get the pictures with your friends in a party or vacations forget about it. The great variety of options and the quality of the picture is very, very good.

Under no circumstances will I buy another and the frustrations are simply not worth the occasional good (but not exceptional) picture. The after sales support is bad and unhelpful (I suspect they just pressed the reset button and sent it back to me and thereafter they have been completely disinterested - I presume because everyone has the same problem and they can't get it right!)

DON'T GET ONE - it will drive you demented!

Over all I love this camera but I wouldn't recomend it for a novice. The freatures are great for a serious photographer but would prove daunting for a beginner.

The creative control that can be achieved with the Dimage 5 is suprising. The white balance can be used to get some astounding effects by using different colored cards, some of which match what the results of using filters with a SLR.

Along with its many other features (including a nifty timed exposure setting) Minolta has put a pro level package within reach of the amatuer's pocket book.

This camera, coupled with a good editing software, gives one the digital darkroom that we photographers could only dream about a mere five years ago.

I have had this Minolta Dimage 5 digital camera about six months and I really like the way that the camera functions and the quality of pictures that I get. I appreciate the ease with which I can download the pictures and the software that comes with the camera is great for basic manipulating of the photos.

Well... I am on my second Minolta Dimage 5 digital camera. I purchased the first one from a high street store, tried it for a few days and found the quality to be very good, but lost of out of focus shots. Found camera to be over 20% cheaper on the net, so returned unit and bought from the net. The second camera seems to be much better-almost no out of focus shots! (I am guessing that this might be a firmware issue, but I am unaware how to check the firmware!)

About the batteries on the Minolta Dimage 5 digital camera: with the newest firmware (056) the camera seems to last more than 200 shots with my GP 1800 mAh batteries, so that's actually not a problem. I always carry two sets of batteries, and so far this has been all I needed.

I find the Dimage 5 to be the ultimate 3 Mpixel camera for a photo enthusiast on budget. After using the 7x zoom, there's no way I'm ever going back to a camera with a shorter zoom.

I have tried very hard to get a redeye shot with this Minolta dimage 5 digital camera and, to date, have failed. This gives me confidence when taking any shots using flash. I love taking nature shots, birds, bees, butterflies, all on the wing etc.,and use a tripod. But the lack of a remote is annoying. Dimage 7 and 5 do not have that facility. It means basically that I have to be hovering behind the camera to take the picture and that rules out 90% of shots. Why is it that Minolta is so mean with memory? When I bought my first digital 2 years ago, memory was very expensive and 16 mb was all I could afford. It is now at its cheapest yet Minolta along with other manufacturers supply only 16mb. Surely they could buy in bulk at a fraction of the price we can and supply with something approaching 48 or least 32mb.?

Without doubt the finest camera I have owned in 30 years of fairly dedicated SLR usage. Enough manual control to keep even a dyed-in-the-wool fiddler like me happy, and capabilities in auto mode that make manual control (almost) redundant.

Minolta have clearly thought VERY hard about this design and the results show it. Flash control is excellent, autofocus is seldom fooled, exposure is high reliable.

In the 3 weeks since buying I have used it indoors, outdoors in the UK and outdoors in the desert. The results are nearly always flawless.