X marks the spot for new Minolta baby

9th January - 2002
By Ian Burley

Miinolta has launched its innovative new Dimage X ultra compact digicam today. Minolta’s interesting new baby might have been christened XYZ as this camera is all about those three dimensions, or lack of in this case.

Resembling some of Fujifilm’s ultra compacts with its slimline square, Mini-disc style, features, the Dimage X’s slightly unassuming exterior disguises very clever innards. Instead of mounting its 3X zoom lens facing the direction of the subject being viewed, it’s mounted sideways. A prism is sited in front of the lens so the camera actually sees the right way, periscope fashion.

Why would Minolta want to do this? It’s all about those dimensions. At just 3/4 inch thick, the Dimage X is the samllest and slimmest 3x zoom digicam by far - even when zooming. Unlike its rivals, the lens never protrudes from the body. Minolta says its frontal dimensions are smaller than a 3.5 inch floppy disk.

The rest of the camera is reasonably conventional - with a 2.1 megapixel sensor plus SD/MMC memory card compatibility - again chosen because of the need for compact dimensions.

Minolta worked to make the start up and image processing as faster than usual with a new high performance RISC CPU. Claimed power up time is approximately 2 seconds. The speedy Canon Ixus 300, for example, takes 3 seconds.

The UK price of the Dimage X is set at £399.99 inc.VAT - which we suspect will make it the most expensive sub-3MP compact digicam available when it starts to ship at the end of February.

Phil Askey at Digital Photography Review (click here) already has a test report of the Dimage X.

Also announced yesterday at the Las Vegas CES show is an updated Minolta S304, the S404, featuring a 4 megapixel CCD.

www.minolta.co.uk
 

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