Editorial Review:Amazon.com Product Description:Take your digital photography to a new level with the feature-packed and easy-to-use DiMAGE S304, which features a high-image-quality 3.34-megapixel 1.125-inch CCD. An all-glass lens, 7.15-28mm (35-140mm in 35mm equivalents), with 4X optical zoom, sets this camera apart from the competition with a combination rarely found in compact digital formats. An anomalous dispersion element and twin double-sided aspheric elements work together to minimize chromatic aberrations and reduce curvilinear distortion, giving you crisp, accurate, edge-to-edge imaging. Compose these images with the 1.8-inch, 122,000-pixel color LCD monitor or use the optical viewfinder for SLR-style shooting.
For professional results with the point-and-shoot style operation of the S304, you can choose from five pre-set modes: macro, portrait, landscape, night portrait, and text. For more creative shooting, use a wide variety of adjustable features, including manual focus, selectable ISO, custom white-balance controls, exposure compensation and bracketing, and a digital-effects control that allows adjustment of color saturation, contrast, and sharpening. A movable focus point allows for off-center compositions. Multisegment metering technology provides accurate exposures. Four resolution modes cover the range from film quality photographs to images for e-mail. Movie mode allows 60 seconds of live action and a voice-memo feature helps identify your work.
The DiMAGE S304 comes complete with 16 MB CompactFlash card, A/V cable, USB cable, Minolta Image Viewer Utility CD-ROM, four AA alkaline batteries, lens cap, and neck strap.
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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
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Dimage S304 3.2M
I had the EXACT same experience as the Feb. 16 2004 reviewer! The only difference is that my Dimage had to be sent back to the factory straight from the box because it was filled with fine lint like particles. It NEVER has worked properly.....I will never purchase a Minolta anything! ever! and I'll tell all my friends....
Rating: -
Good Camera (if/when it works!)
Had this camera for a little over a year and it's a piece of junk. From day one it has never worked right. At least 90% of the time it locks up when I turn it on; the red LED light stays on and I have to open the battery door for thirty seconds to reset the camera. Sometimes when I change modes it locks up. I have no confidence that it will work when I turn it on. When it does "boot up" correctly I jump for joy (is this how it's suppose to be?). This thing also uses a lot of power, my 1800ma NiMh batteries (4 AA) only lasts about 25 pics at medium resolution and small image size. It's a shame because this camera is constructed well (metal case), takes terrific pictures (when it works), zoom is great, LCD screen is very clear for it's size, uses easy to get CompactFlash cards and batteries. It's out of warranty right now and I don't think it's worth trying to repair so it'll get tossed into the rubbish can; what a waste! Maybe I just got a lemon when I bought it but I will never buy another Minolta digital camera again, this S304 really tarnished Minolta's reputation in my books. I won't tell everyone "don't buy it"......it's up to you, maybe you won't get a lemon like I did.
Rating: 
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a mediocre product for such a price. excellent if cheap.
The Minolta s304 is a fine camera if you can get it for significantly less than it's current retail price. The 3.3 megapixel resolution makes for some excellent daylight shots, and the 60 second movie recorder renders superb quality avi files. However, the camera suffers excessively from camera shake in low-light conditions. In addition, the manual setting for taking shots is difficult to manipulate...even for the intermediate level photographer. Night-time shots suffer from imbalance in color levels
Rechargeable Ni-MH batteries are an absolute must for this camera. My unit came with 4 AA alkaline batteries which expired after roughly 45 minutes of usage. I've owned my current set of 1850 mAH Kodak Photolifes for roughly a year now and they've consistently given the camera an operational battery life 2-3 days with regular on/off usage.
While the s304 has a workable zoom it fails to give adequate focus (in both automatic and manual modess), rendering blurred images - especially to subjects taken with the digital zoom.
I won't recommend this camera to a first-time buyer.
Rating: 
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I would buy it again.
I looked at many many digital cameras before buying this one. I finally decided to buy it because it looked like it had everything I needed and it was cheaper than others. Well, I am really happy with my purchase. I bought this camera in 11/01 so I have had it for a long time. I have taken it to Hawaii and Florida and just around town and it has not failed me yet.
Indoor pictures are not great with this camera but they are not horrible. I have taken some professional looking pictures with this camera and look at them on the computer daily. I would not even think about using regular batteries with it though, that would be a joke. This camera does suck battery juice like crazzzy.
I enjoy taking pictures and this camera really has been great. I use webshots on my computer and I have my pictures of Hawaii cycle through on the desktop everyday, actually every 15 minutes. People are always commenting on them asking if they are professional pictures. I even printed some of them out and they looked great.
If you do not have a lot of money to spend and want a pretty good camera I would go with this one. It really has just about everything. ...
Rating: -
easy, simple and great features
This is my second digital camera. My first being Sony Maciva. This camera is great and very easy to use. I was at first worried about battery life but I am very please with performance of batteries. I would recommend a charger and only high quality batteries. I also bought a 64 & 128 memory card. I never run out of space.
Highly recommend.
