Rating: 
Summary: Can't get any better than this.
Review: After almost a year of waiting, I finally bought it. I have been doing an intensive research about the Minolta Dimage 7 regarding its performance and how user friendly the camera is. And I keep coming to the conclusion that this camera is well made. The picture quality is superb, very high quality. Its color saturation is excellent and the picture detail is true to life. The camera was designed to look and feel like a 35mm single reflex camera. It has a 7X optical zoom, which make a big difference if you are comparing zoom quality. As always, to me optical zoom is far better than digital zoom. Another nice feature to the camera is its manual zoom mechanism. This gives you a better control when zooming. The lens also has an adapter thread ring so you can add a whole lot of filters and lens effects. The option to add a hot shoe mount for the flash is another nice option that the Minolta people added to this camera. One of the biggest complains to the Dimage 7 is that it consume batteries like a child eats candies. Its not the end of the world. Think positive. There are battery packs and rechargeable you can buy if you are not happy. But the best thing about the battery situation is it uses AA batteries and if you ran out, you can always go to a corner store and buy some. Or better yet, you can always take away that batteries you gave your kid for their hand held video games.
Rating: 
Summary: Very Good
Review: As a freelance photographer I have really put this camera through the ropes. It offers outstanding features and lets you see "real time" the effect you're having on the exposure as you change the settings. It has a really convenient quick-view mode, which allows you to quickly flick through pictures without putting the camera on "view" mode. These are the camera's strong points: - Great built in filters
- A wealth of top-shelf features
- Amazing zoom range, and
- Very intuitive traditional controls But alas nothing in life is perfect. Most reviewers here have faulted battery life - trivial compared to these issues: TIFF and RAW - Completely useless. Don't ever bother with them if you want to shoot multiple shots. TIFF and RAW files take an outrageous amount of time to save to the compact flash card rendering them useless. Don't use, unless you have an unchanging subject and all day to shoot it. Auto ISO - It will always pick a ISO setting that is too high and generate an unacceptable amount of noise in your images, especially in low light. If you notice noisy pictures, just set the ISO manually and counter balance it with your exposure biasing. To sum up, a great camera with only two flaws. That's the least I've ever experienced with any camera. Go for it!
Rating:
Summary: Very Good
Review: As a freelance photographer I have really put this camera through the ropes. It offers outstanding features and lets you see "real time" the effect you're having on the exposure as you change the settings. It has a really convenient quick-view mode, which allows you to quickly flick through pictures without putting the camera on "view" mode. These are the camera's strong points: - Great built in filters
- A wealth of top-shelf features
- Amazing zoom range, and
- Very intuitive traditional controls But alas nothing in life is perfect. Most reviewers here have faulted battery life - trivial compared to these issues: TIFF and RAW - Completely useless. Don't ever bother with them if you want to shoot multiple shots. TIFF and RAW files take an outrageous amount of time to save to the compact flash card rendering them useless. Don't use, unless you have an unchanging subject and all day to shoot it. Auto ISO - It will always pick a ISO setting that is too high and generate an unacceptable amount of noise in your images, especially in low light. If you notice noisy pictures, just set the ISO manually and counter balance it with your exposure biasing. To sum up, a great camera with only two flaws. That's the least I've ever experienced with any camera. Go for it!
Rating:
Summary: Perfect!! Easy to use!! No more photo disappointments!!
Review: Bought it for a Disney World vacation, received it 2 days before vacation started, read the manual on the road trip, took beautiful unforgettable pictures the following day. Perfect!! No more photo disappointments!! Snap a shot if it's not how you want it, simply delete it and try again.
We are currently living in Germany where every day is a photo oppurtunity, this camera gives us the oppurtunity to take the photo and come home and share exactly what we saw with our loved ones back home immediately through easy internet and printing options. Designed to make amateurs feel like pros.
Rating:
Summary: About Time
Review: Finally, a digital camera similar to that of an SLR. I've purchased serveral digital cameras in the past only to return them because I was not completely satified with their results. The Minolta Dimage 7i is awesome in many ways! First, the size of the lense (APO) is great for taking wide angle shots. Most digital cameras have only a small lense. This camera is great for anyone wanting a SLR type camera. I was overwhelmed with the amount of features, but once I read the manual several times, I was able to use all of it's features. The camera design speaks for it's self. Great Pictures! I've compared the Nikon 5700 and Olympus E20 and no comparison. Secondly, the mere fact that the camare accepts rechargeable AAA rather than your typical Lithium-ion Battery is a plus. I've learned that after owning a Lithium-ion battery for several years, it tends to fayed out; thus, cause a new purchase. The Minolta Dimage is a great camera and one that I will certainly keep.
Rating:
Summary: The Minolta Dimage 7
Review: First: The Photographic Quality is first rate.
Fine controls to get the right photo that you want when you need it.
Rating:
Summary: bells and whistles
Review: I bought this camera after extensive comparison new for [money]; there is many offers in that range online. The primary reason for my choice was the reputedly good 7x optics - however, it's in terms of fine mechanics and accuracy a toy and far from professional - the objective wobbles and wiggles >1mm. Autofocus is slow indeed, probably much better with the 7Hi. Don't try to take pictures of flying birds... Battery consumption is high, but not a big problem. The camera comes with 4 very good rechargeable batteries and charger - buy a second set and take them with you on a trip. Overall, Minolta put much more effort into bells and whistles of the possibilities of computational image manipulation when making pictures or movies than quality signs that are less measureable online. In summary, the 7i is a good toy, takes nice pictures, yet is slow with unprofessional optics and lies in you hand more like a plastic toy from toys'r'us than a camera. My primary adive before buying online: go to a camera shop and try the cameras before ordering because of online presentable data and pictures.
Rating:
Summary: Excellant Camera
Review: I bought this camera right before a vacation that featured the Reno Air Races, Lake Tahoe, San Francisco, and Yosemite. To go with it I picked up a second set of rechargeable AA's and a 1gb Microdrive. I am beyond pleased with the results. At the Races...
I was able to stop props on planes flying near 500 mph and got several very nicely framed shots. The biggest drawback was that I was able to take only one picture per 20-25 seconds on the highest resolution (the write to the card after each picture forces this), so I had to lower the resolution to get a burst of pictures or risk missing a shot either in framing or in the delay. When I hit right I loved the action photos, but this was my biggest disappointment. I had to leave the autofocus off on several of the shots of the fastest planes or the delay would cause lose the picture, but the manual focus was fine for this. In Tahoe and Yosemite...
Excellent shots with rich vibrant color. Playing with the options on the camera helped find bring out the colors in the sunsets and forest scenes. I did not bring any filters and I really needed a graded filter for some of the low-light situations as I was forced to choose exposures for the Ground or the sky, but that was my fault. Occasionally I had a different goal than the automatic settings, but this camera is a dream manually. In San Francisco...
Incredible night scenes. The camera performed beautifully. I was able to get great pictures of Muir Woods and the Golden Gate. Overall...
I wish - just a little - that the 7hi had been out before I went. Per the Minolta website it's able to take three picture bursts at the highest resolution before writing to disk and I think the black will wear better. The battery life didn't hurt me as long as I had the second set, but I did have to change and charge every day and once had to switch to an emergency set of Alkalines (which it ate and spat out so quickly I thought it must have been an error)
But I took a few of the best pictures of my life and I ended with 7 gig of pictures to stroll through at my leisure and the 8 X 10's I have printed have been amazing. I am very happy with my purchase and give it five stars because it does everything it says it does very well. But with the 7hi the bar goes a little higher yet.
Rating:
Summary: What a bit of kit!
Review: I have a great deal of experience in photography, I have a degree in Audio/Visual Production, I used to teach Photography and I am an Associate of the Royal Photographic Society. I am at present working on an exhibition about poverty in Albania. The Dimage 7i is my first digital camera after a very long and very costly line of Canon EOS cameras and lenses.
Minolta Corporation is a traditional camera manufacturer of long experience, and excellent lens quality who made a slow but calculated entry into the digital marketplace as did I. Like its popular line of 35mm slrs, Minolta's Dimage Digital Cameras are developing a reputation for innovative technology in light metering, exposure control, and autofocus systems. Their lenses in particular are worth high praise for their optical quality. Minolta shook up the high end of the semi-pro market, by beating everyone else to the punch with the first five megapixel semi-pro digital camera. - And it wasn't just "any" five megapixel model either, but the Dimage 7, an electronic SLR design with a remarkably high quality 7x optical zoom lens, a host of advanced image-control functions, and an all-new electronic viewfinder using ferroelectric LCD technology for impressive low light performance. Now, just over a year later, Minolta has upped the ante again, with the Dimage 7i, a substantial upgrade to the original Dimage 7. The list of added features and improvements is long and impressive, but the most salient are a dramatic improvement in autofocus speed and shutter delay, the addition of high-speed sequence and movie modes, and a significant change in the camera's native color space. Many of the 7i's improvements are impressive enough in themselves, but viewed collectively the effect is that of an almost entirely new camera. Perhaps more to the point the upgrades aren't just changes for the sake of change itself, but the obvious result of listening carefully to the Dimage 7's existing community of users. Overall, an impressive upgrade to what was already an excellent camera. Read on for all the details! Highlights
True 4.95-megapixel CCD delivering resolutions as high as 2,560 x 1,920 pixels. 12-Bit A/D conversion.
Digital Hyper Electronic viewfinder with 90-degree variable position.
1.8-inch TFT color LCD monitor.
7.2-50.8mm lens (equivalent to a 28-200mm lens on a 35mm camera) with a maximum aperture of f/2.8 to f/3.5, depending on the zoom setting.
2x digital zoom.
Auto and Manual focus.
Macro option at maximum telephoto or wide angle zoom settings.
Program AE, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority, Manual, and Subject Program shooting modes.
Shutter speeds from 1/2,000 to four seconds, with Bulb setting for longer exposures (up to 30 seconds), up to 1/4,000 under certain conditions.
300 segment Multi-Segment, Center-Weighted, and Spot metering options, with AE Lock function.
Adjustable ISO with five settings.
Built-in, pop-up flash with three operating modes, a dual-mode flash metering system, and manually adjustable intensity.
External flash hot-shoe for Minolta accessory flash units.
Built-in support for wireless TTL flash exposure with certain Minolta flashes. (Very slick!)
Continuous Shooting, Interval, and Movie shooting modes.
Digital Effects Control for Exposure, Color Saturation, Contrast Compensation, and Hue (color filter) control, with Bracketing
Adjustable White Balance with six modes.
Sharpness and Color control via menu options. Color modes include Standard, Vivid Color, Black & White, and Solarization.
RAW, uncompressed TIFF, and JPEG file formats.
Images saved to CompactFlash Type I or II memory cards (16MB card included), Microdrive compatible.
"Storage-Class" USB interface.
USB cable and interface software for connecting to a computer and downloading images.
NTSC or PAL selectable video output signal, with cable included.
Power supplied by four AA batteries or separate AC adapter (available as an accessory).
DPOF (Digital Print Order Format) compliant. Many of our readers are familiar with the original Dimage 7, so I put together the following feature comparison between the Dimage 7i and its predecessor. (There could be other differences as well, but these are the ones I'm aware of.) The sheer length of this list will give you some idea of the extent of the improvements Minolta has made in the Dimage 7's design: I purchased this camera for a photo-shoot in Albania, it truly gives my older Canon EOS 35mm system a run for its money. I was so impressed with this Minolta that I bought my wife the Minolta Dimage F100, also a great camera for stooting on the move. I usually shoot in Fine mode with an Image Size of 1600 x 1200, using the amazing IBM 1gb Microdrive this gives me about 825 images on a drive! My only regret is that Canon have nothing of this quality at this price point.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent photographers tool and easy enough for novice
Review: I have been an ameteur photographer for over 25 years and have been using digital cameras for about four of those. I have taken thousands of photos with my Nikon 990. I purchased the 7i mostly for the extended zoom capabilities. I have owned it now for over a month and find that it does everything I need it to do for nature, portrait, and sports (love the high speed 7fps feature) photography.
With all it's features and buttons, it is still easy enought for a novice to pick up and take some good snapshots. Yes, it does use up batteries. So does my Nikon. I seem to be able to make it several hours (with the camera going into sleep mode when unused for more than a couple of minutes) before changing them out. I don't see what the complaint is. I keep a spare set of 1800 mah NiMh AA batteries handy, and it never really becomes an issue. It takes less time to swap out batteries than it would to load a roll of film. Update: I have been using this camera for several months, and I appreciate it even more now. Minolta really did their homework with the ergonomics on this camera, as I think the comfort and feel of the grip has helped me take more steady shots. It went with me to Alaska where I took over 500 outdoor photos. The camera stands up to serious use and not a bad exposure or out of focus shot in the bunch. Great telephoto & action shots at my nephew's soccer game. Built-in flash is more than adequate for almost all shots but I have used the 7i with Minolta's 3600HS flash for some long shot (10-20 yards) night photography at the auto races.
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