Advanced electronics. Blows the competition away totally. Price is great. Auto focus and metering are all great and comparible with cameras costing much, much more.

Might be a bit small and light for some, but with mine, I put on an older magnicon 28-85 macro lens. The camera feels better in your hands with older heavier lenses. Which is great because now the whole package feels better.

Although I list myself as a begginer, I consider myself pretty smart. I did all the research neccessary top make a good decision when I purchased my second autofocus camera. I used to own an old maxxum 3000i. Since it was time to upgrade, I naturally looked into the minolta line up. This camera the maxxum five, beats the competition hands down. It features are all better. It's technology is all better. It's price is even better. This is the perfect camera for anyone who is a minolta user since it will accept the full line of minolta auto focus lens's, not to mention all of the wonderful after market ones. Once you look around, I think that a better deal is hard to come buy.

Customer Service

Minolta is pretty good, although I haven't had any problems at all with the maxxum 5.

Similar Products Used:

Minolta 3000i and various minolta and after-market lenes

auto focus and range of features

a bit small, and feels a bit cheap

This camera is a must for all beginners, it has superb features and an extreamly fast autofocus system. However, i find it slightly on the small side, but used with a battery pack it's fine.

Fast operation, 1/4000th of a second shutter speed,three frames per second and compact size. Metal lense mount and quallity. Also there are 14 plus customs you can set for film rewind, beep sound, eye start and many more. A $1000 camera for around $500.

After reading the other summarys for this camera, maybe the battery life but I havn''t gone through my first set yet. In the manual in says 15-25 rolls with 50percent with the flash, so that seems pretty good.

Taking about 8 months to choses a Auto Focus Beginner-Intermediate SLR camera, I decided on three diffrent cameras to choose from: 1.Canon Reble 2000 2.Nikon F/N 65 3.Minolta Maxxum 5 In the very begining of my reshearching I liked the Nikon, but the Minolta seemed to outrun the other cameras in almost every feature. The Minolta Maxxum 5 has a shutter speed of 1/4000th of a second compared to 1/2000th of a second for the other two. Frames per second, Minolta 3, Nikon 2.5 and the Canon 1.5 per second. Also the Maxxum 5 has a feature called "eye start",which lets your subject be in focus when you bring your viewfinder to your eye. Another plus for the Minolta in it''s "ultra high speed auto focus" system-the fastest in it''s class. I would really suggest this great system to any SLR photographer who wants quallity, easy use with room to grow with the manual features and a all around great camera. Also avalible is the Date model, which I bought, is a good idea. Five thumbs up to Minolta for a awesome Single lens reflex camera!! BUY THIS!!

Customer Service

none

Similar Products Used:

Fuji DL-95 Super. Nikon 800zoom QD

Light weight, fast autofocus, wireless flash, great metering.

Light weight (feels a little small in large hands), particularly with a large lens hanging off it. BP-200 helps by adding weight and size. Focus hold and exposure lock buttons are too close together. Would like to see flash compensation capability.

This camera has more features than any others in it''s price range. I stepped up from an HTSI+ in order to get faster autofocus, eye-start focusing, DOF preview, and faster drive motor (3 fps). I was not disappointed. I initially thought the eye-start was a bit of a gimmick, but now I''m hooked on it. It really speeds up the process. What really jumped out at me was the fast autofocus. Even using some of the older Minolta lenses (24-50f4, 85f1.4) the autofocus is noticably quicker with the Max 5 than the HTSI+. The camera also comes with the standard features that Minolta bodies are known for: very flexible wireless flash system, nice spot exposure meter, and excellent evaluative metering. Just a great little camera for the price.

Customer Service

Haven''t used.

Similar Products Used:

Minolta HTSI+, Canon AE-1.

Well, that impressive list of features! 1/4000th sec shutter speed, spot metering, metal lens mount, super quick AF and 3fps motorwind are my faves!

none really aprty from a little small and not quite as solid feeling as it could be. Oh and a quiet buzzy clicky noise (I am being picky here) which, according to Minolta UK is the flash circuitry. (not the usual flash charge whine!)Anyone else notice this? Contact me...

All in all an excellent camera, feature packed, lightweight and a high spec for it''s price.I only paid £175 body only for mine!

Customer Service

Excellent feedback via email from tech dept

Similar Products Used:

Minolta 700si, minolta 7000, Canon eos 650, eos 5000

A very good camera for the money

Small compact size Fast autofocus (especially with eye start on) Depth of field preview More custom functions than other cameras in this price range (ie. manual iso setting, eye start autofocus, etc...)

Battery life w/ (2) CR2 batteries. Suprised that the batteries were running low so quick. Bought the accessory battery pack (BP-200, $50 at B&H Photo) that takes (4) AA batteries. I can now take double the amount of rolls and the AA batteries are a lot more cost efficient.

Wanting to step up from a point and shoot camera, I spent quite some time researching SLR cameras that were in my price range. I narrowed it down to the Canon Rebel 2000, Nikon N65, Pentax ZX-7, and the Minolta Maxxum 5. All were similar in price for kits that included the body and a matching 28-80mm lens. I ended up doing a pros and cons listing for all of these cameras. The Minolta ended up with a little more pros and less cons than the others. I then went and viewed all of these cameras at the shop. I was instantly sold on the Minolta for two major reasons: 1. Compact size. The Maxxum 5 is considerably smaller than the others. (A plus especially stepping up from a small point and shoot camera) 2. Eye start focus. Some may think that this is only a gadget but this feature makes focusing for quick shots so much easier. Since buying the camera I have added a 19-35mm wide angle lens (Quantaray), a 75-300mm telephoto lens (Minolta), and a fast 50mm prime lens (Minolta). All of these lenses take excellent photos. Overall I have been extremely satisfied with this camera. The photos from this camera are excellent. I have never had so many compliments on my photos. My wife and I have stopped taking our kids to photo studios for portraits and now do our own. The money we have saved on sitting fees, photo costs, etc... has more than paid for this camera. I would recommend this camera to anyone looking for an affordable but yet sophisticated SLR camera. You will not be disappointed.

Customer Service

Called Minolta because the camera manual showed a cap for the hot shoe and I did not get one with mine. They sent one out overnight to me. He mentioned that a lot of the Maxxum 5''s got sent out wit

Similar Products Used:

Only SLR used previously was a fully manual Nikon FM10.

Lightweight body but still has a solid feel to it Mid-Roll rewind Good Metering Nice sounding shutter! Fast and Responsive AF that hardly hunts Eye-Start Good built-in flash Value for Money

Eye-Start Flash pops up when you catch it with your shirt AF Illuminator but this is disabled via a custom function as the manual tells you Could feel more professional

This camera performs very nicely. It has handles some very difficult lighting conditions that I have put to it very nicely. I have had slide film in and it works fine with it all being correctly exposed. It has the ability to set ISO easily which I found great when using bulk-load film that wasn''t DX-Coded. This also makes pushing/pulling a breeze. It uses ADI for falsh, although, to be honest I can''t see the benefits over TTL. Mid-roll rewind s simple with a conveiently placed button. Just make sure you remember to set the custom function to leave the leader out! I have now had well over 30 films through it and only one of these I was disappointed with the results from.

Customer Service

Haven''t needed it as the camera works perfectly

Similar Products Used:

Minolta Dynax 700si Minolta Dynax 7 Minolta Dynax 404si EOS 55 EOS 300

-low price -Fast autofocus -Accurate exposure meter -Program modes for P&S -Has many features needed for serious photography

-small size takes getting used to for large hands -built in flash for AF illuminator is annoying -Battery indicator doesn''t work well. Shows battery low after several consecutive rolls. Later it will show full charge.

For its features and price. This is an excellent camera for a beginner or an intermediate user. It has a FAST autofocus and a very accurate exposure meter. It''s size, weigtht, and auto modes makes it handy as a point and shoot. But, when you want to slow down and take control of picture - all the features you need are there. The only downfalls of this camera is that it may be too small for some hands. I have large hands and when I first got the camera I had to concentrate on my finger placement(I kept pressing the "AF" and "SPOT" buttons by accident). By my 10th roll of film it started to feel more natural. Also, this is by no means a "heavy duty" camera. I doubt that it will ever survive a drop. If you have young kids like me, buy the extended warranty :-)

Customer Service

Haven''t used

Similar Products Used:

Minolta X-700, Minolta 7000

- Very well designed - Lightweigthed - Small

None I can see at the moment

I''m currently a Nikon fan, but when I was looking for an budgeted SLR to handle as a point-and-shot camera Minolta Dynax 5 was the only I loved, more than the similar Nikon F65/N65. Its design is almost perfect, even in my big hands, it''s the smallest SLR on the market and this is very important if you are planning to use it as a p&s camera, loaded with color print, it''s lightweighted. In the past I used an Olympus p&s camera, but I was not so happy to loose the reflex viewfinder feature. On the other side picture quality from p&s are not as good as I like, so when Canon, Nikon, Minolta and Pentax started to sell their budgeted SLR I started to look at them. Why not a Nikon F65? Probably being a seriuos Nikon fan I prefer to use only top class camera from them, like my two F90X/N90s and use Dynax 5 for fun. F65 virtually cannot be mixed with F90X, they are too different to use in the same shooting session, so why don''t follow my love at first sight for Dynax 5?

Customer Service

I hope I''ll never use it.

Similar Products Used:

None, I used heavy reflex all the time (Canon, Nikon). The most similar is Olympus Infinity Stylus Wide 80