Long term readers of this blog will wince as they recall the industrial strength faffing that accompanied the purchase of my last digital camera purchase – every stat and specification was carefully poured over, decisions were made and then unmade while I fannied about for months on end before finally settling on the Minolta A2.
Once in my clammy hands, I’d given it a good test drive in St Ives (photos coming very soon) and it produced some fine resuts (albeit with more out of focus shots than I’m used to) but the real test of its mettle came when I was documenting Saturday’s Jayday Festival.
And I’m afraid it failed the test. Miserably.
Several aggrieved posters on the DPreview Minolta forums had long complained about bizarre camera shutdowns and focus problems and on Saturday I was treated to the full suite.
The A2 powered down several times for no reason and completely pissed me off by steadfastly refusing to even get close to correctly focusing during a prime photo opportunity. It was blur-tastic mess!
Even switching to manual focus wouldn’t fix the problem and it was only after two reboots that the camera started working properly again – and by that time my award winning shot (OK I exaggerate a tad) had long since vanished. Arse.
(Even worse was the fact that some very unscientific comparisons of photos taken on the A2 and F717 from my window came down very heavily in favour of the cheaper F717!)
Some emails fired off to Minolta didn’t exactly inspire confidence, so today I took the A2 back to Jessops who exchanged the camera for a credit note (in lieu of the currently out of stock Nikon D70 dSLR)
Big respect to Jessops for the no-quibble exchange as the A2 was, by now, 10 weeks old.
Such is the demand for the Nikon D70 that it may be weeks, if not months, before I get my hands on one, but it’ll be worth the weight.
While there’s no denying that it’s a whole load bigger than both the A2 and the Sony F717, all the reviews have been absolutely frothing about the camera. “It’s a gem”, they say!
Naturally, I’ll be on hand to bore you with the details just as soon as it arrives!
