Konica Minolta Photo Imaging U.S.A. Inc. — a newly formed business unit of the recently-merged Konica Corp. and Minolta Co. Ltd. — on Tuesday announced its DiMAGE G400 4.0 megapixel digital camera. The camera sports a 3x optical zoom lens, metal exterior with integrated lens cover, 0.7 second startup time, autofocusing, autoexposure, auto white balance and more.
The quick startup and fast (1.5 second) shutdown is attributed to a newly designed signal processing engine — it’s twice as fast overall as the DiMAGE G500, according to Konica Minolta. The camera can focus and determine exposure in about 0.2 seconds and has a shutter release lag of about 0.03 seconds.
The G400 also has a Super Continuous exposure mode that takes up to three images at a rate of 2.5 frames per second. And the camera features six scene-select models to optimize the camera for use with specific subjects. Color, sharpness and contrast can all be adjusted, also. The camera sports a noise reduction function that automatically activates for long (0.5 second or longer) exposures, to help reduce “graininess” sometimes present in dark images.
The G400 sports a dual-slot memory card system that supports both Sony Memory Stick modules and Secure Digital (SD) memory cards, alone or in combination — for a total of up to 640MB of on-board storage. It can record still images and 320 x 240 “extended recording” (XR) movies (in Motion JPEG format), as well as audio. Files can be transferred to a computer through USB.
A rechargeable lithium-ion battery is included, along with a USB cable, neck strap, 16MB Secure Digital memory card, battery charger and software. Pricing was not immediately available.