Minolta Dimage S414 4MP Digital Camera w/ 4x Optical Zoom

Rating:
Summary: A professional's review, in a nutshell.
Review: I won't repeat what dozens of other reviewers have said. I'm a professional photographer of fifteen years, and I look at things as they are..not as what people thought they should be.

1. This is a point and shoot. You will not get professional results from a point and shoot, whether it's 1 megapixel or 10 megapixels. The CCD sensor does not make the photo, the LENS makes the photo.

2. Autofucus on a point and shoot digital will always be substandard to an SLR. Smaller lens, less light, more "hunt and peck" for focusing. You can always cheat and use "landscape" mode.

3. Battery life is great; just get a set of 2500mAh rechargeables, and you are good for days!

4. 8x10's from this camera are decent; good enough to please your grandma, anyway. If you want fabulous 8x10's, you need to either stick with film, or get a digital SLR.

5. Of course there are deviations in color cast and noise at higher resolutions. If you want to see even MORE of this, get a 6 or 8 megapixel point and shoot camera!

6. Finally, if you are a consumer who wants a great little digital camera to take family photos on vacations, picnics, and visits to relatives, you can't go wrong with this camera. If you want professional results, why are you looking at a point and shoot, anyway?

Think about it. ;)

Rating:
Summary: Depends on what you want to use it for
Review: I had this camera for about a year before I decided to sell it. It's fairly simple to use but even after figuring it out there just seems to be too many submenus to go through just to change one setting. So if you need to change the setting to capture the picture you want at the right moment, you better have fast hands/fingers. Battery life is pretty typical.. not very good. For me, the camera is pretty large for being considered a point-and-shoot (I believe it is, but not sure) and not an SLR, but it really depends on what you consider small/large. It comes with a neck strap that connects to both ends of the camera, so that may say something about the size. It's not very portable and it can feel quite heavy after it's been hanging from your neck for awhile. Also, having a pop-off/-on lens cover can cause you to become a bit clumsy when you're in a rush to take a picture or to re-cover it. Again, it depends on what you plan to use the camera for. In my case, it wasn't quite what I wanted in the end. However, I can't say that I had any complaints about the quality of the pictures.

Rating:
Summary: I would not buy this camera again.
Review: I have had this camera for over 2 years now. My sense it that there are a lot of other digital cameras out there that are a better value.

Things I do not like:
--The dial that you turn to turn the camera on and off and select the different functions turns too easy, and is too exposed. When you carry this camera it is constantly turning on and off every time you bump it, or it brushes against your clothes.
--It is slow to focus which makes it difficult to get any spontaneous or action pictures.
--Its abilities are only the equavalent of 400 speed film. It is difficult to take any photos in low light situations. I have seen other digital cameras that are much better at this.
--It takes 4 AA bateries, and goes through them very fast. I have the rechargeable ones that are recommended and even with those, I can only use the camera for about 4 to 6 hours before I have to change them. I have learned to always carry extras with me, but it is still a pain to have to always change them, especially when I am trying to get a good shot of my kids or something that is spontaneous.
--It is fairly big and clunky compared to a lot of other cameras that are out there today

Rating:
Summary: BATTERY HOG AND MORE
Review: Unless you own a rechargeable battery factory, you must have a supply of freshly-charged batteries on hand to use this camera. If you charged the batteries last week, have not used them, the charge may have decayed enough for the camera to not work. I have tried several brands of premium batteries with the same results. Many times I have switched the camera ON only to receive the "low battery" warning and watch the camera switch itself OFF. As a result, I have missed several photo opportunities.

In addition, the display is slow to respond if the camera is moved to better frame a subject.

Rating:
Summary: Informed review of S414
Review: This camera is extremely well-built and takes excellent photos. People who post otherwise aren't using the camera with optimal settings. The only flaw in the camera is that it very occasionally has an out of focus shot. Here are tips to use this camera correctly.

1) Turn off all sounds on the custom1 menu of the setup mode and while your at it set the LCDbrightness setting to 3 under the basic menu. A set of 2300mAh rechargable batteries will last approx. 200 shots (say 100 with flash) if all sounds (shutter, warning etc.) are turned off. Otherwise you'll only get 50 or so.

2) Only use manual mode. Automatic mode tries to guess what object you are focusing on and sometimes guesses wrong. I use spot metering. In manual mode you set the focus to be the object in the center of the frame, lock the focus by holding the button down half-way, move the camera to frame the shot as you wish and then press the button down the remaining bit to take a shot --- just like every other camera I've used in the last 20 years. It's unlikely that you would ever want auto mode anyway. Manual mode uses reasonable default settings and you can change them if you wish, unlike auto mode.

3) If lighting is a bit strange, use the manual white-balance feature. It works even if you are using flash.

I have taken several thousand pictures with this camera over the past year and am very impressed with the quality of the lens and the sensor. If you go to steves-digicams.com and imaging-resource.com and compare the photos taken by this camera with other 4mp cameras you'll see what I mean. It beats up on some 5mp and 6mp cameras as well.

Rating:
Summary: Photo quality excellent
Review: I have had this camera since the begining of this year.

Pros:
1) This camera is loaded with features; especially for the price.
2) The picture quality is excellent

Cons:
1) Agree it can eat regular AA batteries
2) Can be slow to focus
3) Can be slow to write to card; but can be helped with a faster
card; I use the Sandisk Ultra II
4) The mode dial on top; if not careful can turn on the camera.

This camera is heavier than the newer cameras.

The number of great pictures taken with this camera far out way the small number of bad. I will not give up this camera.
Yes, you have to be patient with this one but it will give you back great pictures.

Rating:
Summary: great
Review: I am using it for photos and for some video capturing instead of my camcorder. Great pictures.
I had a problem with ordinary batteries life. But I read the recommendation to use rechargeable batteries and since then I am using rechargeable batteries which last very long time.


Rating:
Summary: What an awefull junk
Review: I purchased this camera wishing to move with digital age. I am a film camera user for the last 5 years and this one is my first digital camera in last two years.
As usual Amazon did a great job in shipping my order in a timely manner, before the expeted delivery date. Thanks amazon.
The camera itself was the surprise. I bought it after spending hours reading and searching for the best value/performance data in several forums and decided to go for it. So I am going to tell you what I liked most,
Pros:- Good construction, made of alluminium. Picture quality is quite good (not that great as lot of reviewers mentioned here). My old Olympus C-211 2.1mpx took much better photos at ISO 100 than this one.
4x zoom with 4 megapixel sensor, video recording with sound, manual focussing and lots of controls (most of them are useless at the end, I will talk about them later) and use of cheap CF card makes it a very attractive camera for film converts. Additionally I purchased a nice leather (fake) case for the camera as a lot users reported that the camera gets "Turned On" by itself while seating inside a pocket. The camera is relatively big, so I feel much easier to handhold it, always good for film converts. I never expected some of the surprising features like spot metering, live histogram and tiff file shooting in such an inexpensive camera.
CONS:- Everything aside what I mentioned above. Picture quality, I don't know how good it is compared to others, but to me simply acceptable when comapre photos from my 3 year old C-211. Noise is much better controlled than my old camera though, but ISO 400 is equally unusable. I took most of my test shots at ISO 64 and 100.
the real drawback of this camera is focussing. Even in normal daylight it miss autofocus like a moron. You will have no clue as you shoot. It will beep indicating autotofocus, looking at the LCD is a pure pain...all blurred image. Remember I am not a newbie and I know how to handhold a camera and mionimize shaking.
Low light autofocus is even more pathetic....it's more like tossing a coin in the air.
there is an option of manual focussing, but hey..I better use a 10 year old film camera if I have to use manual focussing for 50% of my shots.
LCD screen is although quite big fo rthe price, is again not useful as it does not have any antiglare coating, so in outdoors you are pretty much stuck upon your luck.
Video quality is nothing great..choppy at the best. Sound quality is also at best choppy.
Another starange problem is heat build up. After 15 minutes of continuous use it becomes quite hot (not wram) around the battery compartment area. Should be good in midwest cold, huh!
S414 is quite slow when it comes to write tiff files to the CF card and a better (I used a 80X lexar pro card) wont improve this fact. So DO NOT waste money on a faster card if you ever buy this camera (hope you will not do that). At the end I must mention the poor quality of power consumption. My 1800MAh batteries last for two card ( 128x2MB) loads of photos and I believe this is not at par with most of the recent cameras in the market.
Supplied software is also just avarage..dont expect a lot out of it.
So my conclusion:- Stay away if you can. Buy it if you have to go digital and you absolutely need a 4 MPX camera with 4x optical zoom.

Rating:
Summary: Really an old camera
Review: I was misleaded by the 4x optical zoom and 4 MP. This camera has very bad properties. First of all it is very big. Second it eats the batteries and uses 4 batteries, third it uses Type I interface 1x CF cards, and finally it supports the slow USB 1 connection. It does not have streaming propery so you can not use it as a web cam. It can not record for more than 1 minute. It is difficult to use this camera, and if you don't know what is what and change the seetings manually each time, you would not get quality pictures each time. If you ask me, I would tell you to go and buy another camera, even a 2MP fuji will be better than this and I mean it.