Konica Minolta DiMage G600

Konica Minolta DiMage G600

Konica Minolta enters the 6-megapixel point-and-shoot battle with the DiMage G600. It offers 3X optical zoom and generally good image quality, as well as a range of controls that experienced users will appreciate. Its dearth of analog controls and presets, however, may intimidate novices, and its flash shots leave something to be desired.

At about half a pound, the cigarette pack-shaped G600 is a bit hefty—but we like that in a compact camera, as it cuts down on camera shake. The sliding-panel lens cover that retracts the lens into the body also turns the camera on and off, a design we've never liked. But we do love the G600's dual bay for Memory Stick and SD/MMC media.

Two buttons give smooth control of the 3X zoom lens, a GT Hexanon f/2.8 to f/4.9, 8mm to 24mm (35mm equivalent: 39 to 117mm). The G600 has a 1.5 inch, 118,000 pixel LCD panel, with three dedicated buttons above it for review mode, LCD/viewfinder toggle, and image deletion. A four-way button controls flash settings, timer, macro mode, and the lone preset (Landscape), but all other settings are available only through menus. Thankfully, the menus are well laid out and the documentation is excellent. You can assign functions to the four-way button, but at the cost of its normal functions. All else considered, we'd prefer to have more dedicated controls.

Along with user-selectable ISO speeds, metering options, manual and auto white balance, shutter speed, and aperture range, the G600 offers five levels of contrast compensation, color compensation, color balance (for each RGB channel), and sharpness—impressive for a compact camera. JPEG size tops out at 2,816-by-2,112, and there's no RAW or TIFF support. Video capabilities are limited to 320-by-240 at 15 frames per second with monaural audio.We didn't like what Konica Minolta calls the camera's burst mode. Basically, if you hold down the shutter button, the camera will keep taking pictures, displaying the most recent one between shots. At top resolution, this "burst mode" can only perform at 0.7 fps. The company claims its new signal processor cuts start-up times to 1.3 seconds, but in our testing it took the G600 3.3 seconds to boot, focus, and fire off a shot—respectable, if not impressive. The camera's recycle time was the same 3.3 seconds, a less desirable result. Resolution test results averaged 1,175 lines, low for a 6MP sensor, though the transition pixel results were good, at 2.3 percent.

Our studio shots were crisp and revealed considerable detail. Simulated daylight colors were good and images were well exposed. We weren't impressed with our flash shots, however. They had a slight green cast, and shadowy areas were muddy and blurry. You might want to tweak the EV compensation for better exposure.

That said, this camera is at least $100 cheaper than any other 6MP camera we've looked at (and $250 cheaper than our current Editors' Choice in the compact class, the Casio Exilim Pro EX-P600). If money is key, we'd choose this camera over the Olympus C-60, which produces sharper pictures but is painfully slow. We wouldn't pick it over the Kodak DX7630, which is simpler to use and has more (and more accessible) features.