Konica Minolta Dynax 7D

The Dynax (Maxxum in the US) 7D is not Konica Minolta’s (KM) first foray in to the DSLR market, Minolta released the RD-175, 1.75 mega-pixel (MP) camera back in 1996, and the RD3000, 2.75MP APS system DSLR in 1998.

The 6.1MP 7D is however KM’s first (and some would say rather late) release into the DSLR world we know today.

Ergonomics and Handling

The body design of the 7D is based on Minolta’s successful Dynax 7 film SLR, and one of the things that you can’t help but notice on first seeing the camera is the vast array of knobs, dials and buttons that adorn its body, 28 different ones to be precise.

Daunting as this may seem, it does bring with it a refreshing sense of freedom that anyone who has moved from film to digital may feel has been lacking; namely, you do not have to go into a menu to change any standard setting on the camera.

Shooting mode, picture mode, white balance, metering type, focus mode, focus point, exposure compensation, flash compensation, and bracketing all have a body mounted controls.

The only “standard” control that requires you to look at a menu is the ISO setting, and even this is only a single button press (see ‘Features’ below for more details).

The 7D is not a light camera to use, weighing in at 760g without a battery or card (100g more than the Canon 20D). That said, in practice I find the camera very comfortable to use, it’s rubberised fingers and thumb pads and solid magnesium-alloy frame make the camera feel extremely secure in your hand and my average sized fingers easily reach all of the important controls, which seem to be intuitively laid out.

Performance

Ah, the important bit! I’ve had my 7D for just over three months now and taken hundreds and hundreds of pictures and I must honestly say that my success rate is the best of any camera I have used. Is this because I’m becoming a better photographer, possibly, but a lot of it has to do with the 7D.

I have found the AF to be fast and accurate, only really hunting when faced with very low contrast scenes. The metering is generally spot-on, like all DSLRs you need to expose for the highlights (as you would with slide film) rather than the shadows (as you would with negative film), and when the meter does miss it tends to under expose thereby avoiding blow highlights.

Colour rendition is superb, giving rich natural colours (it’s possible to use Adobe RGB for even greater depth) and I can honestly say I have never needed to tweak any colours later.

Out of the box the camera does delivery images that some may find soft (not lacking in detail in any way however), this is more a feature of KM cameras and lenses and anyone who has used KM film SLRs and lenses will recognise this, simply choosing +1 sharpness in the effects menu however soon delivers images that the masses expect.

The auto white balance (WB) is OK, delivering good results in natural light but falling down somewhat in artificial light, the pre-set WBs are much better, especially as each one can be fine tuned, the user set WB (take a picture of something white) is spot on.

The start-up time of the camera has nothing on the Canon 20D or 350D, being around 2 seconds, that said, from switching it on, it’s still faster than I can get it to my eye and work out what I’m looking at. Write times are good and the camera will happily take 17 continuous frames before slowing down (Lexar 80x card), I’ve never had to wait for it to finish writing before being able to take a picture.

Anti-Shake, ooh yeh!!! Anti-shake (AS) is now synonymous with KM camera, first introduced in the A1, it now even found in most KM mid-range digital cameras – but does it work? Too right it does

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F4.5, 1/45s, 75mm (AS on)          F4.5, 1/45s, 75mm (AS off)

The above pictures were taken within seconds of each other, both at 1/45 of a second and both hand held at 75mm (112mm equivalent). The one on the left however had AS switched on.

Now it could be argued that I shook more for the picture on the right (I don’t believe I did), so to show the usefulness of AS, the picture shown here was taken hand held at 110mm (165mm equiv) at a shutter speed of, wait for it, 1/10 of a second.

I really can’t understate the strength of the AS feature, and whilst I’m sure equivalent results can be achieved with Canon’s IS and Nikon’s VR lenses, the advantage for KM owners is that all of their A Mount AF lenses instantly become stabilized.

Conclusions

The question is; am I satisfied with Konica Minolta’s Dynax 7D, put simply YES. I would easily recommend this to every KM lens owner wishing to purchase a DSLR, in fact I would recommend it to anyone who is looking for a DSLR that provides convenient controls with excellent picture quality. I can find little to fault with this camera. There is however one caveat to this; the 7D is not an action camera, 3 fps is simply not fast enough for a lot of action work, however if that’s not a requirement then the 7D is a fine photographic tool.

Score: 8/10

 Features (for the techno geeks)

For those who really want to know, or need something to help them sleep I’ve tried to list some (but by no means all) of the main controls and features.

The 7D comes with the expected modes of fully auto (P), program mode (P), aperture priority (A), and shutter priority (S) (30s-1/4000s & Bulb), however a nice feature is the double set of finger wheels (front and back), which allow the aperture and shutter to be controlled separately in P and M modes. There are also three user programmable shooting modes.

There are three image sizes, three levels of jpeg compression plus RAW and RAW+jpeg capture. Sharpness, saturation, contrast and hue are all user settable, as are flash mode (fill, red eye, rear sync and wireless) and flash control (ADI, TTL, and manual).

Shooting modes include single and continuous bracketing, single shot, continuous (3fps), 2 second timer (this also activates the mirror lock-up) and 10 second timer.

Focusing can be set as single shot, continuous (predictive tracking), automatic, or manual, there is also a conveniently placed AF/MF button just above the thumb rest, or direct manual focussing (DMF) can be employed to automatically switch the camera into MF once the AF has locked on. Focusing is provided by a 9 point sensor with any on the 9 points independently selectable.

Metering is achieved via a 14 segment honeycomb sensor, which can be set to pattern, center-weighted or spot, there is also an exposure lock button.

White balance can be set as automatic, preset, user set, or user selectable Kelvin values.

Exposure compensation can be set either to +/- 2 EV in 0.3 steps or +/- 3 EV in 0.5 steps, and flash exposure can be set to +/- 2 EV in 0.5 steps.

Sensitivity can be set as automatic (ISO 100-400) ISO 100, 200, 300, 400, 800, and 1600 (3200 can be set via a menu, yes sometimes you do need to go to a menu!).

Finally (honest!) also on the body are the CF (type I, II and microdrive), USB, flash sync, remote control and power sockets.

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© Jason Canning 2007