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Very satisfied with my purchase.
Verified purchase: Yes | Condition: Pre-owned
I am not sure why Ebay has asked me to consider writing a review for this Second-hand Camera. Minolta or to give them their full title Konica Minolta, ceased trading some time ago, and whilst traders may advertise their Minolta Cameras as new, you should be wary about purchasing such a Camera without first checking that you will receive a full year warrantee. Check the small print and you might well find a few weeks is the most you will get. Sony UK have purchased some of the Minolta Company, but to what extent they will honour any guarantees, again you will have to check carefully for yourself. As for the Camera itself, there are many reviews available on-line from Professional Camera reviewers and they should always be read before considering views from non-professional with no qualifications, ie. persons who have no such specialized skills. Personal opinions are all well and good, however unless you know their qualifications are trustworthy, you would be well advised to ignore them. e.g. The Camera does not take good pictures in low light, might simply mean the amateur photographer did not use the correct settings, and instead the Camera may have excellent facility in Low Light. Such mistakes are hardly likely to come from the pen of the professional. My personal opinion is that the Xt and the others in the range are excellent little Cameras, however; little is the key word. If your hands are on the larger size you may want to choose a larger camera. It is too easy to find your finger has masked some of the picture you are taking. I found it very adequate for normal use and there is no doubt it is capable of taking photographs that can rank up there with the best of them, also the more you learn about the camera from the well written User Manual (available on-line) and make use of the various settings that you can modify to get the absolute best performance, then the more chance you will have to take pictures that others will envy. The fact you can hide it away in a pocket or bag until you need it is a plus. That you should now be able to purchase it well below the original manufacturers retail price leaves you no excuse but to grab a bargain whilst the going is good. As for repairs, repairing any modern electronic device is expensive and it is a good reason for you to take great care of your investment. They are not built for throwing around and on that note I have met one case where a non working showed very little damage except for a small bruise to the top right hand corner of the case. The Camera Lens cover was permanently open leading me to effect a very simple repair. On internal inspection the shutter mechanism had received a violent blow sufficient to displace the mechanism, ten minutes work saved the camera for the owner because I was able to affect an unusually cheap repair. Not all repairs are that simple or cheap. You will usually have to pay an Estimate fee which discourages most people and the Camera ends up being sold as faulty and way way below its original value. Either that or thrown away (and that must hurt the pocket). BTW Be mindful of shops who sell cameras and repair them, because almost always they will advise the camera would be too expensive to repair and instead offer you the latest eye-catching model at a bargain price!. If you are getting an estimate insist on an itemized one, this will prevent the repairer from making a standard charge but without doing any inspection work. Good LuckRead full review
I've taken a shine to these "folded-path" Digicams originally from Minolta then Konica Minolta & finally everybody when KM got out of the Digicam buisiness in 2006 & sold the division to Sony, who adopted KM's Digital SLR as the Sony Alpha model range. The ":folded-Path optics refers to the ingenious design concept of mounting the 3 x Zoom lens vertically in the slim 3/4-inch thick camera body. the light enters the lens through a 90-degree prism at the lens apature - which is disclosed by a sliding lens door at the upper corner of the camera body. the light travels down through the zppm-lense groups until it reaches the CCD at the bottom of the camera, this unique arrangement (as of 2003 to 2005) means that none of the lens has to protrude outside the camera body - all movement of the lens groups is within the camera body - so the normally laborious process of extending the lens at start-up is negated so the startup process is near-instantainious, plus no battery power is used for this start-up/shutdown process. So these pack-of-card sized cameras can be pulled from the shirt pocket and can have taken their first shot whilst convention digicams are still moving their lens into the initial taking position! A resolution of some 3 Megapixels (although the X Series cameras started off at a more modest 2-Megapixels) provides ample quality for 1-hour photo-lab prints of up to 7 x 5 inches. The main advantage that these 5-year-old digicams have over their more modern counterparts is the provision of an optical viewfinder that zooms with the camera lens, so holidays in more sun-drenched locations aren't a battle of trying to shade the LCD screen from the intense sunlight - the LCD screen only needs to be used during picture playback, so you're much more likely to spot that sunbathing crocodile on the edge of the Nile - or that poisionious Viper slithering across the forecourt of an Egyptian Temple. Odd Minolta never promoted cheaper travel insurance as one of the benefits of using these X-Series Camgeras. Thef t is also less likely as the camera sits securely in your shirt pocket, I attatch mine with a mobile-phone neck-strap bought frm ASDA, (£3.something for a card of two coloured straps), so it can only dangle at about waist height if it slips through your fingers. The Lithium-Ion battery delivers enough stamina for a session of about 130-150 pictures with about 120 minutes of picture playback via the LCD screen, the Xt is better than the predecessor Xi cameras in that it has charging contacts on a bottom corner, and just needs to be placed ints charging cradle to top up the battery. This feature was also carried over to the 2005 Konica Minolta X1 8-Megapixel camera which innovated on the folded-path optical design by wrapping the whole lens/CCD assembly in a cradle powered by micro-stepping motors, which could be moved in two planes (up/down- left/right) and hence image stabilization was added to the shirt-pocket camera line. The Minolta DiMAGE Xt BIZ had the additional feature of PC software that could annoted images with an additional caption - ideal for the business tasks of stock-control/picturing insurance claims & real estate images. All-in-all the Xt cameras were great for family/travel snapshots because - they were always in your pocket & ready for instant use - they were also very very robust I've seen eBay examples that look as though they've been taken to War - and still working with dents & gouges covering their aluminium skin!Read full review
The reason I bought two of these cameras is that I am setting a challenge for my American grandchildren during the summer holidays when they stay with me. Thus the criteria were, as cheap as possible combined with a good camera. I researched the reviews of various cameras on eBay that met my budget via usual search engines. I usually consulted more than one reviewer. This enabled me to obtain detailed reasons why one camera was better than another for my purpose. I required a camera with excellent picture quality. In fact this camera has TIFF uncompressed file saving which means that the pictures can be manipulated in the computer without loss of clarity, especially important as the camera is only 3 megapixels. The camera is also very compact, easy for small boys to carry around and the controls are suitable for small fingers. The 3 x optical magnification is provided by a lense system inside the camera, thus if dropped the camera is likely to survive the experience. The pictures I have taken so far have been very good and I am very pleased with the camera. There are two downsides - it is very easy to grasp the camera by the unprotected screen - it seems that screws drop out, at least one is missing from one camera and two from the other. This does not seem to effect the operation at all. If saving TIFF images, be sure to have a large SD card to save them on, at least 256 mb. Another advantage of this camera is that it has an AV lead which enables photos to be displayed on a TV screen, very useful on holiday.Read full review
I bought one of these brand new in 2004, and still use it regularly today (April 2009), although the original battery died long ago! I have a few digital cameras (not boasting!) - the others being more advanced, having longer and wider-range zooms, higher number of pixels, larger LCD screens, manual controls and so on, all great in their own way (and I conduct deep research into all purchases) but as good as they are, this is still my favourite. Even in 2009 I have looked around for a compact point and shoot camera to keep on me, just as a comparison with what is happening now, and though point and shoot compact cameras now have higher numbers of pixels, larger LCD screens, maybe being smaller and having more bells and whistles e.g. face mode etc, I can't find anything to replace it. True, it isn't brilliant in very low light without flash, and the relatively small screen size was par for the course in 2004 (you didn't miss what you didn't have) and the movie mode is quite primitive by todays standards (15fps), but in terms of rapid activation, easy to use menu, spot meter, optical viewfinder (for those rare days when the screen is washed out a bit by the big yellow thing in the sky!) no protruding lens (so it can be carried comfortably in a front jeans pocket) and superb quality prints (virtually no noise and excellent colours) I think it is virtually unbeatable 5 years on. It is a shame that Minolta ceased production of cameras as the internal vertical zoom lens was truly revolutionary, and as far as I'm aware, unique to Minolta (and I don't work for them). I intend to buy one or two more second-hand XTs just in case anything happens to my original. I don't think that you will be disappointed (unless you want a larger screen, more pixels, bells and whistles and so on!). I still have a camera review magazine from May 2004, and the XT had a score of 86% - it was one of the highest rated point and shoot cameras of the time, all those years ago, and can still show these snazzy whipper-snappers of 2009 a thing or two! Although I used 35mm film alongside digital until last Autumn, and now use digital all the time, I will always have a special spot for the XT. I have bought this most recent XT for my Mum, whose old rickety digital camera was unreliable - she is very pleased with it and was able to get to grips with it very quickly. I hope that this is of use and that you enjoyed reading my little tribute to this marvellous camera.Read full review