Minolta mount DSLR confirmed but you will have to wait
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The Konica Minolta DSLR prototype revealed
Image courtesy of www.letsgodigital.org
The recently merged Konica Minolta company announced at the PMA show, here in Las Vegas, that their long hoped-for digital SLR actually does actually exist. Indeed, there is one in a cabinet on the Konica Minolta show booth. This report was written before I, personally, had the opportunity to visit the booth and, sorry, no pictures of the new DSLR were supplied with the press release handed out at this morning's press launch event.
If you are raring to get your hands on the new Dynax 7 Digital (Maxxum 7 Digital in the US), you will have to be patient – it won't ship until the autumn and there is no indication of expected price.
Of the little information made available about the new camera, we do know it will take current A mount Minolta AF lenses and it will incorporate an adaptation of the interesting 'moving image sensor' image stabilisation system debuted in the Dimage A1 and the brand new 8 megapixel A2, also launched here today.
Konica Minolta representatives were being tight-lipped about the specification of their new baby, preferring to refer to A1/A2 image stabilisation system would be featured and the sensor it will stabilise will be a conventional 6 megapixel APS-C sensor size, just like Nikon, Pentax and Fujifilm DSLRs.
That novel anti-shake system, as Konica Minolta prefers to call it, should come into its own on the Dynax 7 Digital as it will be effective with any lens mounted to the camera, rather than a limited selection of specially-developed (and expensive) image stabilised lenses.
One aspect of the camera that does look odd is the rather crowded front face of the pentaprism housing – in the limited space available it has to accommodate 'Konica Minolta' in rather smaller letters. It should be noted that when the Konica Minolta merger took place last year that the name 'Konica' was not going to crowd the Minolta style on cameras like the Dynax 7, but it looks like that the corporate newly-weds have had a change of heart on that one.
Lots of sensible questions were put to a high-ranking panel of Konica Minolta management, like how much would the new DSLR be, would a range of lenses designed specifically for the digital requirements of the camera be introduced, etc., but no useful answers were forthcoming.
In fact there was a sense of déjà vu – a year previously, Olympus announced the E-1 DSLR formally at PMA, promised a summer launch and wouldn't say a lot else about the camera itself.
Are you a Minolta SLR user dying to get your hands on the Dynax 7 Digital? Click
here to let us know what your hopes are for the new Konica Minolta DSLR.
To see the comments we have already received, click
here.
