New
New does not mean its better than the old. Collectors of classic cars will yell that point at you in your face. But in terms of technology and in the name of progress, newer is more often than not, synonymous with better. More so when it come to photo capturing tools, such as DSLRs. There are some, however, which stood out from the rest, some DSLRs that bring you back to the better older days, when you first experience the thrill of shooting without film. One of those DSLRs is the Konica Minolta 7D.
First appeared in 2005, it was one of the first Digital A-Mount camera. I jumped at it when I first heard the news that Minolta has produced a Digital Body. Of all places, I bought it at a camera fair. I bought the vertical grip and the 5600HSS flash together with it. It costs me a cool $4000 dollars and then some. I thought about not getting it. I even left the venue thinking I will come to my senses and not buy it, but I only managed to go two steps beyond the door and I was back shoving my credit card to the Salesperson, whose name is Susan. It was a fantastic day then!
A review of the camera can be found here, at Dpreview. But that review was done in 2005. It has been 9 years. So, if there was ever a user report for a particular camera for this particular length of time, this has got to be one of the few.
How it feels
This handsome fella, feels as sturdy as before. It has the heft, and its has the ergonomics of a camera that is worth the $4000 that I spent on. It is said, that that same amount of money could get me a FF camera.
New does not mean its better than the old. Collectors of classic cars will yell that point at you in your face. But in terms of technology and in the name of progress, newer is more often than not, synonymous with better. More so when it come to photo capturing tools, such as DSLRs. There are some, however, which stood out from the rest, some DSLRs that bring you back to the better older days, when you first experience the thrill of shooting without film. One of those DSLRs is the Konica Minolta 7D.
First appeared in 2005, it was one of the first Digital A-Mount camera. I jumped at it when I first heard the news that Minolta has produced a Digital Body. Of all places, I bought it at a camera fair. I bought the vertical grip and the 5600HSS flash together with it. It costs me a cool $4000 dollars and then some. I thought about not getting it. I even left the venue thinking I will come to my senses and not buy it, but I only managed to go two steps beyond the door and I was back shoving my credit card to the Salesperson, whose name is Susan. It was a fantastic day then!
A review of the camera can be found here, at Dpreview. But that review was done in 2005. It has been 9 years. So, if there was ever a user report for a particular camera for this particular length of time, this has got to be one of the few.
How it feels
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| Top View. Taken by EP3 and Oly 17mm 1.8 |
This handsome fella, feels as sturdy as before. It has the heft, and its has the ergonomics of a camera that is worth the $4000 that I spent on. It is said, that that same amount of money could get me a FF camera.
Functions
The same cannot be said about its functionality. As the years goes by, buttons started to lose its sensitivity and the knurled knobs, well, they seem to have a life of their own. For example, if you set to Aperture priority, and set the value to 5.6, by the time you have the camera up to your eye, the setting would have changed. To counter this new characteristic, I often set it to Program mode and let it takes care of the settings itself. I then fool around with the exposure compensation knobs.
When it decides...
When it decides to shoot, I would say that it still does it job really well. The reason that it can decides when to shoot is that this model suffers from 1st frame blackness syndrome. The first frame usually will cause the camera to hang and stop operating. When this happens, you have no choice but to switch it off and on again.
Pictures taken using this camera would have vibrant colours, its autofocus is still amazingly adequate. The fact that it can mount newer Sony A mount lens is a boon in itself. The pictures taken here are taken using the Sony 30mm 2.8 Macro Lens.
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| EP3 top view. SOOC from the KM 7D |
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| Idris. |
Yes, ladies and gentlemen, after nine years, this 6MP camera can still shoot. And not just shoot, it can produce. However slow it may be. Yes, although the AF is adequately fast, other aspects of the camera, speed wise, are slowish. Formatting of the CF cards require some patience, especially when one is used to newer camera speeds. Write speeds are also slowish. It can fire 8 frames of RAW+Jpeg at one burst. After which, time almost go to a standstill. In general shooting, this should not be a problems, if like me, your shooting goes like something like "click, click, recompose, wait, click, click, recompose, walk, breathe". Not suitable for the likes of the Nikon D4 type of speed. Or for such usage scenarios.
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| Gun, Rear End |
ISO wise, I do not dare to shoot it beyond ISO 400, but yes, I have done it once, maybe twice. But I am an old schooler, ISO 400 is perhaps the highest I would go, Same goes when I was shooting with my NEX 7 and my EPL2 and now my EP3. The anti shake function still works well.
I have just sold my Sony A65. Perhaps I will never be able to sell my KM 7D. I think that that is fine. One should not forget one's first love. Even if one tried.
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| With Vertical Grip |
Slim
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