Konica Minolta DiMage Z2: A Review of Features and Working

Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 is an easy to operate camera with a unique design and decent speed. Although some of its features don’t work exactly as the claims of its manufacturers, overall it is still a good product to choose.

Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 is an easy to operate camera with a unique look. It has a decent speed and possesses many features, but it also suffers from exposure problems while shooting in daylight or in the flash, giving images with not a very high degree of sharpness.
A unique design is the first thing that strikes you about Konica Minolta DiMage Z2, however it also makes it look like a toy. It has a barrel-shaped body with a smooth but firm, wedge like grip. The buttons on the rear panel are large and well placed. They are arranged in a semi-circle with icons and labels clearly marked.

Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 has a 113,000 pixel LCD screen which looks larger for its size of 1.5 inches, thanks to clever designing. It has only one display screen, however its Switch Finder, using mirrors, can move the LCD image anywhere from the rear panel to the viewfinder. Due to this feature, the images are always identical no matter from which angle you view your subject. However, the system does feel a little clunky.

Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 boasts of an f/2.8-f/3.7 lens with an equivalent focal range of 38-380mm on a 35 mm camera.

With a back grip, you can use your thumb to control the zoom for one handed operation, although with difficulty. The camera is more suitable for two handed operation. You may also find it a little slower at the telephoto end than some of its competitors.

Among other features of this feature rich camera are an intelligently working hot shoe for the external flash, a converter lens with a wide angle (optional), and a real-time histogram. There are two auto-focus modes, four flash modes and five scene options. There are also EV compensation, ISO choices, white-balance options, bracketing and metering settings and of course, the manual mode.

Further, Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 has a resolution range of 640 by 480 to 2.272 by 1,704, with three JPEG compression levels, but it supports neither RAW nor TIFF format. It shoots a 640 by 480 quick time video at 30 frames per second, the duration depending upon the capacity of your SD card. However, SVGA video (800 by 600) is shot at 15 frames per second only.

The manufacturers of Konica Minolta DiMage Z2 claim that its Rapid AF takes only 0.2 seconds to focus. However, we didn’t find it any faster than its competitors. Our tests found the quick boot time and recycle time to be 4.4 seconds and 2.2 seconds respectively – and both can only be called second-best. Pixel transition and visual resolution also gave average results. It didn’t fare well in a studio still-life tests; the auto settings gave a dark, noisy daylight shot and over saturated whites in flash images.