Home > Consumer Reviews > Minolta Dimage Xi 3.2MP Digital Camera w/ 3x Optical Zoom

I bought the camera a few days ago, I am not new to digital photography,but this little camera, its in a class by itself, diminutive, powerful, it can produce prints that any lab anywhere cannot equal, fast handling, focusing is about the best I,ve seen on any digital camera, it does it with no light assist.
Even the battery does well, recharges quickly.
I print on an Epson 825, which can print at 5750, thats great, but the camera cant do that, yet, the print quality it just magnificent, its small, its quick, even the flash seems to be more powerful than other digitals twice its size, menus are very easy to navigate, instruction manual is excellent
It really is difficult to fault this little digital camera that fits in your pocket and works so well,lots of applause to Minolta, great job, if your want to buy a digital camera, look at this one, I love the thing.

No, this camera doesn't have the most pixels or the biggest zoom. However, you will use it the most for two reasons. It is small enough to take in a shirt pocket or purse. The main feature is "audio notation" which records 15 seconds of audio after each picture. When, you return from a trip, you don't have to try to remember what city or landmark you visited. In a few mouse clicks, you can create a slide show with your own voice describing the sites. Very few cameras have this feature, and some who have it don't know how to use it, but it is a great general purpose camera. Most people who see it in use ask what it is and how to get it.

If you're looking for an EXTREMELY portable digital camera with reasonable resolution, you should seriously consider the DiMAGE Xi. About 2+ years ago, I purchased a Sony DSC-F505V (which is a nice digital camera - read the reviews here on Amazon). The problem is that it is a rather bulky camera and my wife refused to use it because it was too difficult to carry while trying to keep up with our two young children. She resorted to going back to her old film based point-and-shoot camera because of its smaller, more portable size. The DiMAGE Xi has now completely coverted her over to digital photography. We have found that the DiMAGE Xi is definitely a take anywhere camera. What is most impressive is that the DiMAGE packs nearly the same, key everyday user features as my Sony F505V but in the form factor that is only a bit larger than a tin of Altoids!

Recommend getting a backup battery and upgrade the SD memory to at least 256Mb - expect this to add around $... to the overall price.

Pros: Extremely small form factor, 3x optical zoom for such a small form factor and no protruding lenses, fairly intuitive menu (particularly if you are already somewhat familiar with digital cameras), has both a viewfinder AND LCD display.

Cons: Flash is a bit limited, body of camera does tend to get a bit warm (dissipates a bit of power) when LCD display is being used, only comes with 16Mb SD memory card

I am confident I made the best choice but I nearly lost six weeks' work on a trip --700 photos-- when a 128 MB Sandisk SD disk crashed. (I was ultimately, inexplicably able to recover the photos when I got home after failed attempts abroad.) The troublesome disk was the same brand and model as the 8 MB disk that comes with the camera, only larger capacity. After that I found places to periodically save photos on CD for backup; Internet cafes with this capability are increasingly common, and it's cheap to do. The disk was at fault, not the camera. As the manual says (and which I failed to do), format the disk with the camera before use.

0) You will definitely need a spare battery! Buy only the SD (Secure Digital) type cards because they are faster than the so-called "Multimedia" cards.

1) This camera is so tiny that I found a fabric Tamrac case for it about the size of a fat wallet that also held my spare battery and disks. I was able to wear on my belt and had it with me nearly all the time, which has been great on trips because I could snap a photo any time.

2) There is not enough flash to reach beyond six feet or so, and no hot shoe to connect a bigger flash. If the notion of a hot shoe seems ridiculous for such a tiny camera, I assure you that it would not be inconsistent with the high level of features this camera provides. The different flash modes allow one to command whether the flash goes off or not, or one can leave it up to the computer. But one cannot choose *how much power* to use for the flash.

3) The lens is in a corner of the camera and it takes a long time (mark my words) before one learns to keep fingers and nose out of the way. It is also a problem when asking strangers to snap a photo of you, because they usually touch the lens and smudge it. (There isn't always a satisfactory place to set the camera down to make a self-portrait with the timer.) Once I was trying to explain to someone who didn't speak English to not touch the lens, and she thought I was saying to press the lens to take a picture and that's what she did! 8-[]

4) The viewfinder is nice when there's too much sunlight to see the display on the back of the camera. The view changes as one zooms in and out, as on an SLR camera, but be aware that the actual image includes a slightly more than one sees through the viewfinder. That's better than the opposite, so at least it errs toward caution. What you see on the LCD display is what you get.

5) It comes with a USB cable to connect to a computer, and another to connect to the TV so you can view images there.

6) You needn't take any software with you to e-mail photos while on a trip! The camera just shows up as a removable disk on Windows 2000, Me, or XP. If the Internet cafe you pick has only Windows 98 (now rare), you must get a driver from somewhere. Most cafes will be more willing to let you connect to one of their computers if you can convey that you are not going to install any software. The Image Viewer Utility software that comes with the camera is for rotating images and touching them up (lightening, hue, color correction, etc.) and I thought it was reasonably easy to use. It's handy for both viewing and touching up a lot of photos fast, and has very few annoyances.

7) I found the controls easy to learn, the manual good, and I am very happy with the quality of the photographs. My friends have been impressed; two comments I've gotten were that they look like National Geographic photos (blush, blush) and "Did you take that with your little camera?!" --but note that I've studied photography since I was a teenager.

8) It takes seven (7) clicks to delete a photo! That's a lot if you're throwing out several photos.

9) It makes movies with sound that one can watch on a computer, or on TV with the TV cable.

Great camera. Easy to use, easy to retrieve pictures (no software needed! just drag and drop), and very compact.

So compact that I left it in my pocket and it went through the washer and dryer... doesn't work anymore (though I suspect its only the battery).

oh, btw: Battery life is lacking.