Full Review of K-M Maxxum 7D posted...

[John_Reed]

...at dpreview (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/konicaminolta7d/) - the camera earned a "highly recommended" rating. There's also a positive review in the latest issue of Popular Photography magazine.

[George Riehm]

...at dpreview (http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/konicaminolta7d/) - the camera earned a "highly recommended" rating. There's also a positive review in the latest issue of Popular Photography magazine.

John, You might want to move this over to the Konica Minolta dSLR forum. ;)

For $1600 let's hope it got a good write-up. When you take 3 years, and bet the farm, to develope a camera, it should be really good.

[John_Reed]

John, You might want to move this over to the Konica Minolta dSLR forum. ;)

For $1600 let's hope it got a good write-up. When you take 3 years, and bet the farm, to develope a camera, it should be really good....Although, it sort of depends on how much you need to spend on the lenses to get the whole capability. If you take a Canon EOS 20D for ~$1500, and add the cost of an IS telephoto zoom on top, and then take the price of the Maxxum 7D, add the cost of a non-IS telephoto zoom, I think the Minolta approach would be cheaper, wouldn't it? I don't have much experience at making lens selections in this category, but I just did a Google search, and K-M has a 100-300 f4.5-5.6 APO zoom selling at Amazon for ~$480. By the same technique, I see where a Canon EF70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM lens is selling for ~$1300. Pretty fair comparison, since both would give the user ~450mm zoom; the K-M package would price out at ~$720 cheaper (+ tax & shipping differences) than the Canon package, wouldn't it? One caveat: In the review I cited, the reviewer came away with the impression that the body-mounted stabilizer of the Maxxum, being inherently heavier and requiring more displacement to correct motion than a lens-axis mounted element, might have some difficulties doing its stabilization thing at long telephoto. Yet to be proven or disproven. Sorry I put this in the wrong thread!

[George Riehm]

...Although, it sort of depends on how much you need to spend on the lenses to get the whole capability. If you take a Canon EOS 20D for ~$1500, and add the cost of an IS telephoto zoom on top, and then take the price of the Maxxum 7D, add the cost of a non-IS telephoto zoom, I think the Minolta approach would be cheaper, wouldn't it? I don't have much experience at making lens selections in this category, but I just did a Google search, and K-M has a 100-300 f4.5-5.6 APO zoom selling at Amazon for ~$480. By the same technique, I see where a Canon EF70-300mm f/4.5-5.6 DO IS USM lens is selling for ~$1300. Pretty fair comparison, since both would give the user ~450mm zoom; the K-M package would price out at ~$720 cheaper (+ tax & shipping differences) than the Canon package, wouldn't it? One caveat: In the review I cited, the reviewer came away with the impression that the body-mounted stabilizer of the Maxxum, being inherently heavier and requiring more displacement to correct motion than a lens-axis mounted element, might have some difficulties doing its stabilization thing at long telephoto. Yet to be proven or disproven. Sorry I put this in the wrong thread!

Once again, overall, for $1600, it falls a little short when compared to the "others" as did the Oly E300 in it's price class (4/3 system and all).

It's obvious that there was some corner-cutting going on, as the processor is not exactly a ball of lightning, and the nice large 2.5" LCD is pulling dual duty to replace the, very important, and very low power, monochrome info display. With a 40%, or more, power consumption penalty, changing batteries will be a more frequent task as well.

As before. Bottom line? AS is this cameras only redeeming value. Minolta needs to knock $500 off the price and go back to the drawing board. It took Pentax 2 tries to get the *ist D (almost) right, now it's K-M's turn.

Honest, I was hoping for a 20D competitor, but it didn't happen.

[John_Reed]

Once again, overall, for $1600, it falls a little short when compared to the "others" as did the Oly E300 in it's price class (4/3 system and all).

It's obvious that there was some corner-cutting going on, as the processor is not exactly a ball of lightning, and the nice large 2.5" LCD is pulling dual duty to replace the, very important, and very low power, monochrome info display. With a 40%, or more, power consumption penalty, changing batteries will be a more frequent task as well.

As before. Bottom line? AS is this cameras only redeeming value. Minolta needs to knock $500 off the price and go back to the drawing board. It took Pentax 2 tries to get the *ist D (almost) right, now it's K-M's turn.

Honest, I was hoping for a 20D competitor, but it didn't happen.Why don't you address the question I asked, i.e., why aren't you considering the total package price (camera + long zoom lens; stabilizer in camera for 7D, in lens for 20D) when you say the 7D is too expensive? :mad: