Rating: 
Summary: S304 - Problems with Focus and Large Memory Cards
Review: I've had the s304 for about 3 weeks and so far it's been quite disapointing. It has problems focusing in low-light conditions, leading to blurred pictures. I also purchased a no-name 256 meg flash card that the camera refuses to recognize. Though the other 3 or 4 camera's I've tried the card in, all recognize it just fine. Even using the supplied memory card often take 2 or 3 attempts turning the camera on and off before it recognizes it.This wasn't one of my better purchases.
Rating: 
Summary: Feature-packed and very stylish. Superb photo quality!
Review: I've had this camera for about 10 days now and I love it. I have owned high-end 35mm cameras and the picture quality of the S304 is much better. My only gripe is that the date imprint is too large. I have turned it off and will use the Arcsoft Photoimpression software that came with the camera to date the photos in Arial 8 point. You can select the color of the text to contrast with the background. The NiCad batteries that came with the camera were only good for the initial 30 minutes of exploration (playing)! The NiMh rechargeables have been going strong since then...Best 3.3 MP for the money. Lots of features: voice memo, remote controllable, fully auto or fully manual for the creative photographer. Great zoom range (equal to 35-140mm in a 35mm camera). 60 seconds of movie recording and the list goes on and on.
Rating:
Summary: Feature-packed and very stylish. Superb photo quality!
Review: I've had this camera for about 10 days now and I love it. I have owned high-end 35mm cameras and the picture quality of the S304 is much better. My only gripe is that the date imprint is too large. I have turned it off and will use the Arcsoft Photoimpression software that came with the camera to date the photos in Arial 8 point. You can select the color of the text to contrast with the background. The NiCad batteries that came with the camera were only good for the initial 30 minutes of exploration (playing)! The NiMh rechargeables have been going strong since then...Best 3.3 MP for the money. Lots of features: voice memo, remote controllable, fully auto or fully manual for the creative photographer. Great zoom range (equal to 35-140mm in a 35mm camera). 60 seconds of movie recording and the list goes on and on.
Rating: 
Summary: Good camera with a few minor problems
Review: I've had this camera for almost 2 weeks. Overall, I am very satisfied with its performance. The pictures are better than my 35mm film camera (Minolta freedom zoom) This could be because of the obvious advantage of digital cameras - the ability to delete bad pictures right away. With a good printer and paper, I can't tell the difference between developed film, and my digital printouts. I love the 4x optical zoom, and I was surprised to see the the lense hardly sticks out more for 4x zoom than for no zoom. By the way, for amazingly detailed reviews of digital cameras, I highly recommend dpreview dot com. I can be kind of picky, so don't let this list of cons scare you too much. Cons:
- Sometimes pictures are too bright when flash is used. This happens more often when white or light colors are in the picture. As another reviewer mentioned, sometimes you can't make out the details, or the color, if the object is a very light color. This can be corrected sometimes with the software once the picture is on the computer.
- Sometimes the pictures are a bit out of focus. From what I have heard, almost all cameras have this problem in low light, but sometimes in good light, I will get a slightly blurry picture.
- I dont know how fast other cameras eat batteries, so I can't compare. I do agree with other posts that they seem to die quickly. I guess the capacity of batteries is rated in milli-Amp hours. The camera recommends batteries with at least 1500 mah. Most good battery brands have a 1600 mah battery, I found one brand, Monster, with an 1800 mah AA battery. I bought 2 sets and a charger. (was only able to find them at Circuit city) Seems to work OK, but does eat them up, especially if you look at the pictures a lot on the LCD.
- Film time limited to 60 seconds, no matter how much memory you have. Film requires very bright light to turn out good. Its not a problem in the day, you can just open your window blinds. At night though, I needed to put on every light in the room. Our living room(11x15, with medium colored wall) has 2 60 watt lamps, and that was not enough light, I has to bring in our halogen light. Our kitchen has brighter walls, and 5 60 watt bulbs. That was enough. I guess this makes sense though, since you can't use flash for a film. The sound is OK, but there is some background noise.
- The optical viewfinder does not show what the picture will be like. The image catptured will go further to the left, right, and down, than what you see in the viewfinder. Now that I know, I just keep that in mind.
- To save batteries, I really with there was an option to make the LCD not turn on when you turn on the camera. You always have to hit a button twice to turn it off. No big deal, just annoying.
Rating: 
Summary: a mediocre product for such a price. excellent if cheap.
Review: The Minolta s304 is a fine camera if you can get it for significantly less than it's current retail price. The 3.3 megapixel resolution makes for some excellent daylight shots, and the 60 second movie recorder renders superb quality avi files. However, the camera suffers excessively from camera shake in low-light conditions. In addition, the manual setting for taking shots is difficult to manipulate...even for the intermediate level photographer. Night-time shots suffer from imbalance in color levels Rechargeable Ni-MH batteries are an absolute must for this camera. My unit came with 4 AA alkaline batteries which expired after roughly 45 minutes of usage. I've owned my current set of 1850 mAH Kodak Photolifes for roughly a year now and they've consistently given the camera an operational battery life 2-3 days with regular on/off usage. While the s304 has a workable zoom it fails to give adequate focus (in both automatic and manual modess), rendering blurred images - especially to subjects taken with the digital zoom. I won't recommend this camera to a first-time buyer.
Rating:
Summary: A totally incredible camera!! !!
Review: This camera is awesome, what makes it even more spectacular is the price. I could not be happier with it. First, it has great zoom capabilities. Second it is 3.3 megapixels for under $.... What more could you ask for?! Well, you may not be able to ask for a lot more, but you sure get it. Before I bought this camera I did a lot of research. I even visited some of the local camera shops and electronics stores to get a feel for the different cameras before I ordered one on the net. Boy, it sure paid off. There were some that had a body made of plastic. I don't intend to spend $... on something that is made of plastic. Others were very small and were uncomfortable to hold. The Minolta is the perfect size and weight. When I hooked it up to my system for the first time, I was able to upload pictures in minutes. Another nice feature is that you can take up to 60 Seconds worth of video, very nice. The video even loads up to the system easily. In addition it uses a Compactflash card. These are pretty reasonably priced. A 16 MB card came with the camera. Most of the pictures I have taken so far are about 500K, so you can store quite a few pictures. I also purchased a 128 MB card at a good price here on ..., so I have plenty of space to store pictures before committing them to CD via my system. I only have one warning. You need to buy Ni-MH batteries. Then charge them for at least 24 hours, the first time. If you don't the camera will keep coming back and telling you that your batteries are dead. When I called support they kept telling me that I had to buy a special brand of batteries. This wasn't the case, you just need to fully charge the batteries. From what I have seen this is one of the best buys you are going to get on a camera.
Rating:
Summary: Very nice camera!!!!
Review: This camera is one of the best I have used, the pictures are sharp and its easy to manage. I recomend it to anyone who loves to take quality picture and want to get and affordable camera
Rating:
Summary: easy, simple and great features
Review: This is my second digital camera. My first being Sony Maciva. This camera is great and very easy to use. I was at first worried about battery life but I am very please with performance of batteries. I would recommend a charger and only high quality batteries. I also bought a 64 & 128 memory card. I never run out of space.
Highly recommend.
Rating:
Summary: Dimage S304
Review: Ths is a great camera. I have waited for many years to get a quality digital camera with 3 Meg Pixels for under $500.00. The only disappointment is that Minolta lists that you can use alkaline batteries, which is not correct. They recommend Ni-MH, which is the only batteries I have found to work properly. Using alkaline batteries result in a low battery indication after only a few shots. Getting the Ni-MH and charger are worth the extra money. I only wish that Amazon carried the batteries and charger. On standard photo setting the supplied 16Meg memory will only store 20 pictures. I recommend getting a 64Meg memory and the USB memory reader attachment for the PC. Download to a PC is easy directly from the camera. A 6V DC adapter is also available for powering the camera, but I haven't found that this is necessary.
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