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| Konica Q-M200 |
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Hardware Reviews December 1999 • Vol.2 Issue 12 |
Konica Q-M200 | ||
 Just as you shouldn't buy a car based solely on how it looks, you shouldn't buy a digital camera based solely on the resolution it uses to capture images. For instance, the Q-M200 from Konica offers up an impressive two-megapixel image resolution, but we'd rate the images it produced for us way behind cameras that cost less and have lower resolutions. That doesn't mean the news concerning the Q-M200 is completely bad. The camera is easy to operate, which is an important buying factor for many digital camera users. Still, the buttons used to control the camera's menu settings aren't labeled especially clearly and could be much more intuitive. That problem is only amplified by the documentation shipped with the camera, which is on the light side and didn't include a quick start guide or printed instructions for the included software. In addition, we found the actual camera buttons to be physically difficult to push, forcing us to constantly check if the settings we were trying to enable were actually being set. We also were disappointed by the closeness of the shutter and power buttons and mode dial to one another, which caused us to push the wrong button on more than one occasion. If you can move around these obstacles, the camera does include several shooting modes for a variety of conditions. Those modes include settings to take macro, black and white, sports (for capturing four frames at once) and infinity (panoramic shots) shots. The camera captures images at 1,600 x 1,200 pixels, 1,152 x 872 pixels, and 640 x 480 pixels in four quality settings. The camera's 38mm-to-76mm Hexanon lens only has 2x digital zoom capabilities, but users can adjust white balance and exposure settings and use either an optical viewfinder or the 1.8-inch LCD (liquid-crystal display) to frame shots. The camera ships with an 8MB (megabyte) CompactFlash card that stores 11 to 80 images and HotShots software. In general, we expected much more from the Q-M200's images, considering its 2-million pixel resolution. However, nearly all of our indoor and outdoor shots lacked focus. In addition, our shots were pixilated and grainy; although, the camera did render a fine range of colors. Overall, the Q-M200 falls far behind cameras with a similar price and resolution. by Blaine Flamig
$550 Konica (800) 285-6422 (201) 574-4000 http://www.konica.com
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