megapixels

The Minolta E223 is my first digital camera. I like it. A few caveats:

The delay between pictures is a long time--especially if you're using flash--between 5 and 10 seconds. It's difficult to take candid photos of toddlers with this much delay.

The construction is cheaper than I'd like. The battery door is a little plastic slide held in place by a plastic nub. The shield over the USB port is a bit of rubber that you peel back. It's not water resistant.

The autofocus seems weak. Much of the time it won't focus, even though the lighting is good and the object is clearly framed within the focus bars. The autofocus on my 10-year old 35 mm camera is much better.

Until you buy additional memory cards, it will store exactly 7 pictures at 1600 X 1200 resolution (adequate for quality 4X6 prints).

The LCD screen is bright and easy-to-read. Given the way it eats batteries, I wish there was an option to dim the screen, but there's not.

It uses the standard "push the button halfway to focus, all the way to shoot" technique. But I end up shooting by mistake when I'm trying to let it focus. I can't tell if the button is too sensitive or it just shoots when the autofocus doesn't work.

I'm a software engineer, and it took me several hours to configure it for Windows 98 Second Edition. (I had to force it to install the msd_.inf drivers from the CD that ships with the camera. I had to install a "USB Mass Storage Device," not the "Dimage Camera" that came up automatically when I plugged it in.) Configuring it for Windows 2000 was a piece of cake.

It ships with batteries and a note that says "Although alkaline batteries are supplied with this product, its performance will be limited. . . ." Expect them to last for half an hour. I bought NiMH batteries and a charger, as the docs recommend, for another $30, and these work much better.

I think the microphone and speaker are unnecessary. (They are there because you can record--get this--23 seconds of low-quality, slow-framerate video under bright conditions. What's the point?)

The optical viewport also seems unnecessary. It's just a pane of glass in the camera body--nothing else. It doesn't even have lines to indicate the edges of the image or the area that the autofocus triggers. You have to use the LCD anyway to see whether or not the autofocus is picking up your image.

All that said, it's an inexpensive digital camera that takes quality photos. It has a great feature that increases the brightness by holding the shutter open longer. I'm happy with it.

I wanted a basic starter digital camera and I also own a minolta 35mm, so I knew that it would probably be a good buy. It had all the features I needed. It takes good pictures, but of course not as good as my 35mm minolta. The only negative things about it is the startup speed and battery life, which was solved by getting NiMH rechargeable batteries.

I loved my starter digital camera, once I
figured out the battery situation. That is,
until someone accidentally dropped it.
Needless to say, one short trip (in a
very light carrying case) from waist high
to the kitchen floor, did this camera in
for life. If you buy it, handle it carefully.
Because it is soooo light, it's easy to fumble it.