Konica Minolta Dimage Z10

Posted by T3 Online on Fri 19 Oct 2007

Gordon's alive! It's a cheap zoomer "from the future"

They say the best comedians develop their humour at a young age, to avoid getting beaten up in the playground. But regardless of whether the Z10 was badly bullied as a prototype, there's no excuse for a grown-up camera carrying a design joke this far. Sci-fi death-ray styling went out of fashion while Arnie was still an actor, and we doubt it'll be back any time soon. Calm your sniggers, though, as this Konica Minolta has some surprises up its cheap plastic sleeve.

For starters, finding an 8x zoom lens on a £200 camera is unheard of. The zoom is fast and almost silent, focusing is quick and picture quality is as good as any 3.2-megapixel snapper can manage. An innovative folding mirror enables the average 1.5-inch LCD to double up as a fantastic, crystal-clear electronic viewfinder, although it does drain the four AA batteries at a remarkable pace. You also get a full range of manual exposure modes, plus sharpness and flash compensation. The colourful movie mode looks excellent, but is rendered nigh-on useless by not recording sound. The Z10 is also slow to recover between shots, especially when you're using the flash.

A three-megapixel camera is about as cutting-edge as a blunt spoon nowadays, but thanks to that long, long zoom and the low, low price tag, this model might be worth hunting out a paper bag for. Rip a hole for the lens and tell your mates you're testing a top-secret prototype they're not allowed to see. It could work.