Zap, zap, zap, in a flash you have taken it out of your pocket, taken a number of pictures and you hardly read the manual to figure out the features. Better than my Nikon, and Sony in all ways. A very smart camera. The finish is OK, but could be even better.

I now have Sony F717, Sony P8, and this Dimage X50. Overall speaking, it is superior to Sony P8 in terms of image sharpness, design, weight and LCD size. However, I found that the LCD display is not as good as that of sony's. Sometimes the display of LCD will simply blur and you cannot see what is going on there esp. when you zoom in or zoom out. Another problem with it is that the LCD is sort of fragile and tends to be easily broken (I wish that is only my guess). Since nothing is perfect, you have to ask yourself what is the most significant factor that you are looking for in any kinda Digital Cameras. For me, of course, it is the image quality and portability. Hence, the Ultra compact minolta X50 is a must keep for me. I have done a lot of research before I made this purchase, all the candidates I once looked at were Sony T-1, Canon SD300, Casio ex-x55. After a elaborate comparison and field test, I prefer this x50 for its best performance in image capture and also for its elegant design. Hope this is helpful for you.

I put some time into finding a good digital camera. Many people I meet at parties and social events pay a lot for bad quality name brand cameras that boast portability and style (ie, sony, canon's sd series), and I checked out most of these ultracompact cameras suggested to me. Most of them to be honest (maybe with the exception of the canon sd300) just didn't do it for me. I finally came across the dimage x50. This camera is UNDERRATED; the image quality is excellent, it has the flexibility to become a point-and-shoot camera or a manually adjustable camera, the color saturation is the best I've seen from cameras this small, and you can also have the option of recording captions to remind yourself why you took the picture or what it's about.

I was looking at the canon sd300 and sony t1, very small cameras with power and many features, and I guess the deciding factor for me in going with the Dimage was that 1) its lens is non-protruding, unlike the Canon series. I've worked in electronic stores, and trust me--cameras frequently come in because the zoom lens won't function. 2) I think the overall quality is the best, not just due to higher MP, but just because the camera distinguishes colors a lot better than most other cameras and the final product (sans red-eye, blur--unlike the sony) is perfect.

Finally, this camera has a cheaper price compared to other cameras in its class.
Hope this review is helpful.

Bought this camera during my trip to St Thomas in the Virgin Islands after my old Panasonic DMC-LC43 got washed down by a wave at the ocean. The main reason I bought it was the design and the super micro mode which lets me take extreme close ups (see my pic of a bee in the images section). Since almost all of my pictures are taken outdoors, the noise in dark pictures is not a factor; when I do take dark shots, I set the ISO to 50 and that gets rid of nearly all noise.

Pros:
-Sleek and small design
-Great for close-ups
-Customizable sounds (menu clicks, shutter, focus)
-Slideshow function
-WEBCAM function with decent quality video
-Good quality video recording for the full card capacity
-Good battery life
-Lots of modes (sunset, landscape, portrait, etc)
-Very quick start-up time
...more

Cons:
-Slight noise in dark pictures at auto ISO
-The internal zoom lens is a little loud and sometimes gets stuck for a split second in the middle of the 'zooming' (while the button is pressed). This started about a week after I bought it. Works but sounds as if it's about to break every time it reaches the max/min zoom point.
-Battery door is a lil wobbly.

Got it for $300 at the duty-free store + an extra battery and case at a discount, so I consider it a great cam for the money. Overall 9/10.

I purchased this camera barely a month ago. It is easy to use and takes great pictures. But, it was accidently dropped the other day and the LCD screen broke. I realize cameras aren't meant to be dropped but it happens. I am disappointed in how easily the screen's crystal broke. I am wondering if this not a defect due to the compact size.

I purchased the X50 and have been happy with it for the most part save its video mode which is sub par. However, I dropped the camera and even though there was no visible damage to the body the LCD screen was damaged internally with an odd shaped section of about half the pixels blank.

I sent the camera in to Minolta warranty repair and it seems that to repair it they had to order a new LCD screen component from Japan. I've now been waiting 5 weeks (not including shipping time) for my camera. I find it totally unacceptable that the repair turn around is so slow. This is a current model with probably hundreds of thousands being shipped so why can't they have spare parts on hand in the US. Bottom line likely is that warranty repair is not profitable and therefor low priority.

My brother and I both bought this camera (X50). I had only owned one camera before this, a Canon S110, so comparisions will be relative to the S110.

It is very small and light (slightly smaller and lighter than the S110) and it starts up very quickly (much faster than the S110). Daytime picture quality is very good (comparable to the S110 except with higher resolution). Night/dark area pictures are terrible due to the noise (the S110 does better). I expected better since the S110 is a much older camera model.

Like B. Hart's review on May 13, 2005, I also had problems with the LCD screen. Unlike Hart, I did not drop my camera. It just stopped working at one point. After taking a picture outside a castle in Japan, I went into the castle to take more pictures. 5 minutes later in the castle, I slided the lens cover open and the LCD displayed all white. The LCD had become stuck at ultra high brightness. I couldn't see a thing with the LCD (no viewing pictures already taken, etc) and it drained the batteries real fast.

It has been 2 months since I sent it in for repairs as covered by warranty. They said they'll replace the LCD. I also find the repair turn around unacceptable.

Some notes: My S110 has a "Made in Japan" label, whereas my X50 has a "Made in Malaysia" label. My brother's X50, which he bought in Japan, has a "Made in Korea" label. His camera has no problems whatsoever. I had originally assumed my X50 was also made in Japan until it broke. I was looking for the SN and noticed the Malaysia label. I'd definately be more careful next time in checking the made in labels before I buy.

I LOVE THIS CAMERA IT HAS 5 MILLION PIXS HAS A 2 INCH SCREEN THATS BIG SMALL AND THE GREATEST CAM EVER! I WANT YOU TO BUY THIS AND ITS ON SALE!;}

hi its me agin i got this camera because i got great grade i had a b in math c in pe [im fat] a in science a in english a in world cultures and an a in filipino that rounds up to a 3.5 gpa back to my camera it broke the next day i cried i used it only one day but it dose have great pictures my friends said that it was cool and when i told then that it broke they were sad so thats why im getting thr sony cyber-shot t7 for my b day!! but im still mad i do not like konica minolta!:{:<

I bought this camerra by mistake, actually i was looked for a Canon AS95, i spent nearly a month to search Net to find out the best one...BUt u know, when i went to market, i was really confused and finally i bought this Dimage X50.the pictures taken are quite great if u use the suitableMode ( like for flowers, it works well, for taking pics in dark it also works well...)However, sometimes the colors are not presented truly, and pics are so noisy..that u may feel so regret buying it...it starts fast and the focus is set quickly, however, at big digital zoom, it realy works slowly and noisily...especialy fot text...u'll never be satisfied with the quality when u take pictures of text, so bad and noisy, blur also...one more thing, batteries: the worse thing here,u have to recharge usually as it works so badly, my work requires me to go and take pics frequently and i'm now so tired with charging the batteries everyday..
Thus, i am not satisfied of it..hope i could return it but now impossible, feel so sad and dissapointed, hope i was bright to choose the Canon one...

great pics, easy to use, overall great camera but...as other reviewers wrote, my LCD broke. I put it in the case which is designed for the camera and placed the camera with the LCD side facing out (never thought about it) this puts the snap right on the LCD screen. placed the camera in my handbag and leaned back. the snap pressed on the LCD and broke the camera. I can still take pics but can't see if they look good and can't see what setting the camera is on. wrote to Minolta and have not gotten a response. would I buy another one? probably cause the price was reasonable and pics good but mad at minolta.

A while back, my mom bought this for herself, and, being the photography obsessed teenager I am, slowly took possession of it. Since she bought the x60 while I was with my Dad, I now have complete custody of this gorgeous camera. Sure, it's gotten a LITTLE scratched, but that is my fault. This is my first camera, and probably my only one for a while.
This camera takes very nice pictures, but if you have something bright and something dark (as in, light sources and such) next to each other, it gets noisy (speckly). Not much else to say except for this: It is a sweet little camera and I definately reccomend it.

The Dimage x50 looked to be everything I wanted in a digital camera; compact-fit in my pocket, quick-snappy startup, nice picture quality-5 mega pixels, etc. I WAS very pleased with my purchase - until I dropped the camera.

I simply fumbled it while sliding it in my front pants pocket. The camera fell no more than couple feet. But, that was the end of it. The screen went completely white and never recovered. I sent it to Minolta for warranty repair. They wanted to charge me $140 for "impact damage". I explained to them that I felt that a $300 camera should be able to handle a short drop without total system failure. They didn't agree.

I would NOT recommend this camera. It design is too fragile.

After about 9 months of delicate use, the battery cover wouldn't stay on and the camera had to be returned. Fortunately I bought it from Costco, otherwise I would have had to deal with the manufacturers warranty. If you've never gone through that, then you're lucky, and you would be better off just buying a new camera.

As far as the picture quality goes, it was ok for that size camera. It's only expected. However, for a 5.1mp camera, it really fell short, especially in low light situations. Not to mention when using the flash. You better be ready to blind the subjects you're taking a picture of, because you have to be pretty darn close or you'll lose the shot to fuzz, blurr, or whatever else.

Anyway, I'm thinking of buying the X60 model since it looks like you get more for less. My only concern, Costco no longer carries any of the Konica Minolta line. Neither does BestBuy. So if I buy it from Amazon.com, I'm probably on my own if it has a problem.

If the picture quality was better and the battery cover didn't clunk out, then I'd give it 4 stars.

As a loyal customer of Minolta, I purchased the x50 with confidence. While the camera has some of the high-quality expectations and features of a Minolta, as previous customers have noted, the casing and the battery cover are extremely flimsy and not the expected Minolta quality. After using the camera only 6 months, the LCD screen displayed a red line and then days later multiple colored lines, rendering the screen useless. After not receiving contact from the repair center for over a month, I contacted them. Their response was the infamous "impact damage" which was not covered by the warranty and the repair cost was their infamous $148. I talked with numerous customer (dis)service representatives and managers in an effort to determine how impact damage can happen during just normal usage. They said that "if you carry your camera in your pocket and get even a slight bump that can cause impact damage". Seems like a flimsy excuse for a flimsy camera!

taking pictures of the hairs on my hand and the spaces in between bread was pretty fun, but the fun ended when i put the camera into a bag and then took it out, turned it on, and found that the screen consisted of nothing but colored vertical lines.

Also, the camera is extremely sensitive to shaking, although this can be remedied if the environment requires a flash. If a flash is unnecessary and will compromise the picture, good luck trying to capture a still photo.

Also, it uses one of those lithium ion batteries, so if you aren't going to be near a electrical outlet with your charger handy, you will be camera-less when the battery runs out, if you don't have a spare one, that is.

If you want good pictures, will take care of this camera better than your own baby, and you can hold yourself still like a statue, then get this camera. Otherwise this camera will let you down. I usually don't write reviews for products unless they are extremely good or extremely bad, and this product, i feel, is more than extremely bad considering the cost of the item.

I bought this camera because of the size, the "decent" zoom and mostly the 5.0 megaPix, but I was very disappointed in to time. The reason I say unpredictable, because when it comes to taking pictures with the zoom and or the flash feature, you never know what you will get. I'm a modest with digital cameras and photography but still, when I use the zoom, 8 out of 10 pics come out so extremely fuzzy I end up deleting them. This goes for the so call "macro" feature as well, which was the main reason I needed the camera in the first place. The flash is so unreliable even in the proper background. I waste to much precious time trying to fiddle and view the pic in the display, praying its ok, due to the lousy focus lens. This brings me to say, I also think the response time is to slow when trying to get a good shots. You would think for all the features the camera offers the response would be a little faster. I think partly because it has such a poor focus lens that it takes precious time trying to focus, by the time it "clicks" it's too late and yet it still comes out fuzzy.

The worse part, I bought the camera exactly a year ago and in Jan/2006 I had to send it away while it was still under warranty because the display just went on me without warning for no reason. I take very good care of all my electronics, so I'm perplexed here.

However, out of fairness I could say it can be a fairly decent camera if you have patients and no high expectations. I do like the video feature, it did come in handy a few times, but don't rely on the zoom in feature on that either, even just one notch in, you never know what you might get.

I spent almost 2 months searching the internet for a camera, when a friend recommened Konica Minolta. They had previously bought another model and loved it. I looked on the Minolta sight and saw this camera. However, I looked at the price range, and it was very far out of my budget. This seemed like the ideal camera for me, except for the price. It was small and very travel-friendly. I scanned ebay, and I found a great deal, for $100, new! I was delighted, and when it came, I tested it out, and it was perfect. I love this camera because of the size, the picture quality, and it's EXCELLET super macro mode. I had high expectations, and it met all of them. The only reason that I didn't give it a 5 star rating is because the internal optical zoom is a bit loud, and the battery life is questionable. But so far this has been a great camera for a beginner, like me, and I highly recommend it. If you are thinking of buying this camera, I would recommend you by a protective case for traveling and a screen protector.

I have read a few bad reviews for the X50, but most of them point out that they bought lemons. I think this has to do with the camera's size and intrinsic frailness if it is not assembled right. So, be sure you buy it someplace that will replace it or refund your money, so you will have recourse if you have this experience.

With that caveat, I have to say that I am impressed very much with this sporty little camera. And it IS sporty. I've taken it out and not missed those interesting city street scenes I've always wanted to capture, when before I had been really frustrated by my slow and bulky fully manual camera. It's not just a point and shoot. It's a really fun camera to take out on the town and catch action shots with. That's not to say it doesn't have features that go beyond point and shoot that a lot of people just don't want to learn about or practice getting right It's not fully manual, OK, but I already have one of those and it is too bulky to take into the city and take great and interesting pictures of street scenes. This is the intended purpose for the X50 IMO.

I had a Minolta G530, but I dropped it in some coffee and I've been without a small camera for a while. At first, I thought the G530 was better than the X50, but I am coming around to thinking the X50 will be just as good once I get better at quickly working some of the controls that are a layer or two down. The bright idea of Minolta, though, was to give you the ability to bring the function you think will be the most important for the current shooting situation to the first level of control. If you are in changing light with bright sun alternating with thick clouds, then bring the exposure compensation up to the first layer of control. You can do this with ISO sensitivity, quality settings (i.e., fine, normal, etc.) white balance, exposure compensation, metering mode, color mode, and the ability to change the 2" LCD's brightness. It takes excellent outdoors night shots, and I plan on taking it out with a tripod this weekend to see what it can really do with the 2.8 zoom. under city lights It seems like not much, but I think it will be able to use some of the digital zoom with the tripod. I will give my report afterwards. (I know, what's the point of a small camera if you are going to use a tripod? The thing is, I have a half size tripod that I can collapse and carry in a backpack, or even in my jacket pocket.) I will also take some shots without the tripod. I've already done this with great results.

As far as overall picture quality goes, it is quite good if you keep the ISO down. I have heard that if you make prints up to 8X10 they come out really well. On the computer screen, I have noticed a little noise, but it is almost not noticeable. There was no noise at all with the night shots.

It also has some presets, but the only one I have used so far is the macro.

I can only tell you my experience with the battery. I took it for a 4-hour walk yesterday and took about 100 shots on a 1-gig card. I had the power save on 1 min and the camera shut itself down dutifully and powered back up as soon as I touched the shutter button. I used the LCD for every shot and I still had some juice in the battery when I got home, although not much. Even so, I would recommend an extra battery, since you can't always be sure you will start out with a full charge on the one you have loaded into the camera. The battery charger is actually about the same size of the camera, so it would be no problem to carry it a jacket pocket if you were staying at a hotel, or visiting someone. It also has a changeable cable for the outlet, so when you travel to a foreign county, you can just pick up a local cord there.

The internal zoom is a good feature too. Makes it faster to get it up and running - remember, I said "sporty." There is another advantage to this, which is there is no external barrel to worry about. It also makes the camera that much sexier.

I give it a 5,because I really like its smallness, which makes it quick with the ability to get those street scenes you would miss otherwise. If you want to use it for your kid's birthday party, then buy something else. You'll have to really work at overcoming the problems this camera has with contrasts with indoor scenes, like a boy or girl about to blow out the candles on the birthday cake in a low lit room. Size and sportiness might get you noticed by the other moms and dads there, but it's the pictures you really should care about - so buy a camera that is made for those situations. There are plenty of good ones to choose from.

That's my take on the X50. Maybe they should have called it the X-15.

I purchased a reconditioned X50 to replace a Minolta model Xt, which I also liked very much. The 3.2 megapixel Xt performed great for me for 2 years, so I chose the X50 because of my previous experience with Konica Minolta cameras. However, I have read that Konica Minolta has left the digital camera business, and this makes the X50 even more valuable to me.

The camera has a superfast startup which occurs by simply sliding the lens cover open. Honestly, the X50 is ready to shoot in less than 3 seconds. I currently have four digital cameras and have probably owned twelve digicams over the last seven years, and none of them start as fast as the X50.

Another plus is the compact size of the X50. I carry this camera with me whenever I drive, as it fits neatly in my carry bag with my cell phone, medicines, and other essentials. For me, this is a very important feature, because you can't take pictures if you don't have your camera, and you never know when you'll see something that might turn into a good picture. It also fits neatly into any available pocket, and the zoom lens is unique because it is non-protruding.

The X50 has most of the features digicam users have come to expect: large LCD, numerous special picture settings, 3X optical zoom. It also has a optical viewfinder, which can be useful in brightly lit outside situations. By the way, in my opinion the X50 also takes great pictures.

This camera has met and exceeded all my expectations for portability and quality. However after 2 years of use, the screen stopped working, and with Konica Minolta no longer in operation, locating repair service has been troublesome.

In case your autofocus stops working (which mine did after attempting to zoom). Power cycling, reseting to factory default, lens cleaning did not help, but after several zoom outs and ins, the autofocus came back. Apparently, the zoom mechanicism some how interfered with the autofocus. Typically, I do not use the zoom feature and will avoid it in the future. Otherwise, for 2+ years, this has been a very good camera.

The X50 is the ultra ultracompact! But mine had a very common problem. After weeks of normal use and NO DROPPING the LCD got stuck in the ultra high contrast mode! You can see "ghosts" on the screen when you turn it a certain way and you can read some of the menu items. I even used the included A/V cable to see the menus on my TV and adjust the contrast - no luck. So I did the online customer service request for a warranty repair and received the RMA. There was NO DAMAGE to the LCD, it just wouldn't display properly. My X50 still took wonderful pictures, I would just use the button to turn off the barely-functioning display. There were no other problems with my camera. Weeks later I was told by Sony/Konica/Minolta service that my camera (just a few weeks old) suffered from corruption and that they would CHARGE ME for the covered repair. I didn't pay, they sent it back totally BROKEN. No power, no pics, & no recourse for me. They refu$e to return it to the working condition it was in. THEY are CORRUPT!

I have found this camera to be one of the very best of its type. The operating system is ultra quick, fastest of any digital camera I have ever seen so you can grab that quick picture you might otherwise miss. The pictures are ultra sharp and can easily be enlarged to 11X14. The zoom feature is easy to use and there are more features then most people could ever use. The rechargeable battery lasts a very long time even when heavly using the flash. An added bonus is it has a real viewfinder that makes it easy to use in bright sun. It is easily pocketable, pants or shirt. Its one weakness is the viewscreen, which can be easily broken if the camera is accidently dropped on its edge. The camera is tough enough to keep working, but you'll have to wait to down load your SD card onto your computer to view your shots if you were unluckly enough to break the screen. In general, this is a tough little camera. Too bad Konica Minolta got out of the camera business and too bad Kodak or some other company didn't pick up this model or the X60 and continue manufacturing it. It would take a digital SLR to take better quality pictures.

I bought this camera and within 6 months the screen broke. I would not recommend buying this camera, the company does not have a warranty and there is nothing to do once it is broken.