Minolta Dimage S414 Review
The Minolta DiMAGE S414 is a full feature 4 megapixel camera
at $399. It replaces the highly popular DiMAGE S404. The camera has a
solid metal body with a 4.1 megapixel CCD, a 4X Minolta GT APO zoom lens,
and a 12-bit A/D conversion, with complete manual controls for exposure,
color, contrast, saturation, white balance, camera sensitivity, and focus.
The S414 also records 60 second video clips.
What's included:
Minolta DiMAGE S414 digital camera
4 AA alkaline batteries
Lens Cap
16mb compact flash card
AV cable
USB cable
DiMAGE Viewer Software
DiMAGE Viewer instruction manual
Camera manual (111 pages)
Warrenty Card
Features:
High-Performance 8.8X Zoom
(4X Optical, 2.2X Digital)
The DiMAGE S414 is equipped with a Minolta GT apochromatic zoom lens.
This sophisticated 4X lens provides focal range of 7.15mm to 28.6mm --
equivalent to a 35 - 140mm zoom lens on a 35mm camera.
The lens focuses down to 4 inches for extreme close-ups. Two double-sided
aspheric lens elements and AD (anomalous dispersion) glass ensure sharp
images at all focal lengths.
Wide-Area Autofocusing with Focus Area Selection
Wide-area AF makes accurate focusing simple. Within the large focus area
are three AF sensors left to right. The camera automatically locates the
subject within the focus area and confirms the point of focus by briefly
displaying the active AF sensor. You can also easily switch by holding
down the controller button until the 5-point array spot focus areas appear
and then select the spot focus area.
Processing Power
With the same processor as Minolta's top-of-the-line DiMAGE 7Hi, an internal
memory capacity of 32MB, the DiMAGE S414 is a fast performer.
Manual Focus
In addition to the autofocus system, the camera can be focused manually
while monitoring image sharpness on the monitor. Thru the Basic Menu,
set the focus mode to MF and then the center button on the zoom controller
toggles the zoom switch between focusing and zooming the lens.
Metering modes
The DiMAGE S414 uses 270 metering segments to calculate the exposure based
on subject and background brightness, also available is spot metering.
6 Program modes available
In addition to a fully automatic point & shoot Program mode, Digital
Subject Programs can be selected, which optimizes the camera's exposure,
white-balance, and image-processing controls for specific scenes and subjects.
Six subject programs are available:
Macro: Ensures maximum depth-of-field for sharp details in close-up pictures.
Portrait: Reproduces warm, soft skin tones and creates slightly defocused
backgrounds.
Landscape: Ensures sharp images of expansive scenes.
Night Portrait: Balances the flash illumination on the subject with the
background ambient light. This setting can also be used to capture the
romantic ambience of illuminated night scenes such as city skylines.
Text: For crisp reproductions of black text or line art on a white background.
Text & Macro: Accurately reproduces small text or line art.
Manual controls
The DiMAGE S414 has ISO levels of: 64, 100, 200, or 400.
And to ensure the best exposure possible, an automatic three-frame bracket
can be made in 0.3, 0.5, or 1.0Ev steps.
Bulb exposure up to 15 seconds.
Minolta's CxProcess helps create realistic images while minimizing noise.
12-bit A/D conversion
The DiMAGE S414's real-time histogram shows the luminance distribution
of the image before the image is captured allowing you to get the perfect
exposure.
Display modes:
Standard display
Focus Frame only
Real-time Histogram
Grid
Scale - a ruler type crosshatch is displayed horizontally and vertically
Live image only
Image-Processing Tools
The S414 includes sharpness, contrast, and filter controls.
The filter control makes an image warmer or cooler.
Quick View Mode
Captured images can be easily accessed in the recording mode. Simply press
the Quick View button to display the recorded images. Toggle the controller
up to view the histogram and exposure information. Push the zoom button
to zoom into the image, up to 3.5x zoom is available with smooth scrolling.
The S414 is immediately available to take a picture from quick view mode.
Touching the shutter button puts the camera back into shooting mode.
Fast Action
Using the big 32meg buffer allows the DiMAGE S414 to continuously record
still images at a rate of approximately 8 frames in 5 seconds (1.6 fps).
Movie and Audio Functions
To catch extended action as it unfolds, 60-seconds of digital video with
audio can be recorded. Additionally, thoughts and comments can be recorded
alone or with a still image. Voice Memo allows an audio track up to 15
seconds to be attached to an image when the image is captured. Movie clips
and audio tracks can be played back in the camera.
Only play, pause, and continue controls are available on movie playback,
single-step, and reverse are highly missed!
Color Mode
The color mode has five options:
Natural Color
Vivid Color
Black & White
Sepia
Solarization
White Balance Control
Four preset white balance settings: daylight, cloudy, tungsten, and fluorescent,
can be selected and for critical control over color, the custom setting
allows the camera to be calibrated to the lighting conditions at the scene
which is quite useful when a mixture of lighting types are illuminating
the scene.
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