A very impressive camera

I grew up with an old Canon Tx (needle match, auto nothing, yay 1977). Loved that camera. It got dipped in salt water and died maybe five years ago... Went to a 35mm Canon Rebel (digital wasn't quite ready back then). About a year ago, my daughter got a Minolta Z-10. Of course, I played with it. A lot. I was amazed. At that point, my film Rebel was boring and obsolete. I got my Z-5 about 3 months later, based on playing with her Z-10 and on-line reviews of the Z-5.

I've shot 2700 pictures with it. It's worked like a champ. Image stabilization is incredible. 1/2 second hand held pictures that are GOOD. I shot about 1200 pictures of the high school band under "the lights" during football season this year. Lots of pictures were 1/10 second (or 1/5 second) exposures because of the low level of night lighting. All hand held. And I got a lot of very nice photos. Very pleasing colors. Nice exposures (tried the flash at the games but I wanted more than just the stuff within 15 feet). Yes, I see some noise sometimes. But I usually lock it down at ISO 100 to avoid surprises. The flash isn't the strongest. But flash pictures aren't generally pleasing to look at anyway. Available light is almost always the best choice (with any camera). Oh - as a fill-flash, it works very nicely, softening shadows in bright sunlight as it should. And, in the dark, as long as the subject is within about 8 or 10 feet, the flash is fine, exposure-wise.

The "super macro" setting is amazing... focus at 1 inch??? wow... I've seen no lockups and no real problems what-so-ever. The camera works as advetised. Battery life is great.

My complaints: in low-light, sometimes it'll have trouble focusing (a problem common to lots of cameras in this price range). But it can be annoying when you're trying to get a group picture inside your house at night and you sometimes have to say "hang on, it's trying to focus..."

Shutter delay... The time from when you push the button to when the picture gets taken. In general, the camera does very well here (especially if you pre-focus). But the Z-5 is not an SLR. I did some action shots at my daughter's soccer game. Got a couple of very nice pictures... but I found I had to anticipate maybe 1/3 of a second, even with the "sports - continuous focus" setting. And, in a similar vein, I did miss some shots that I wanted when, because of low ambient light, the camera just couldn't get focused "in time."

And, the noise at low light levels with anything but the lowest ISO settings does bother me. I wish I could shoot at ISO 800 or ISO 1600 and not have to use 1/10 second exposures at ISO 100.

Overall, though, this is a very impressive camera. I love the long lens and the image stabilization. The user interface is very good (way better than the Rebel, in my opinion).

I'll definitely be keeping this camera.

But, I'll admit this: I'm drooling over a Canon 20d SLR for its low-light performance and its more instantaneous focus and exposures. But that camera is about $1200 without a lens... And the lens I have my eye on is more expensive than the entire Z-5 camera. :-)

For the money, the Z-5 is one nice camera.