Minolta DiMAGE 5 (2001)

The Minolta DiMAGE 5 was announced on February 11, 2001, at PMA, alongside the higher-resolution DiMAGE 7. It was one of Minolta's first digital bridge cameras. The body is a fixed-lens, SLR-style design with a 7x zoom lens equivalent to 35-250mm in 35mm terms, and a manual zoom ring on the lens barrel. It has a 3.3-megapixel 1/1.8-type CCD, an electronic viewfinder and a rear LCD. Exposure control is full PASM, plus scene programs for Portrait, Sports, Sunset, Night, and Text.

The DiMAGE 5 shared its instruction manual with the DiMAGE 7, with model-specific sections flagged throughout. The 5 was the lower-priced, lower-resolution sibling. The manual's table of contents shows a deep feature set: exposure bracketing and digital enhanced bracketing, interval shooting, custom white balance, flex focus point, diopter adjustment, a camera-shake warning, histogram display, DPOF print ordering, movie recording, and even an "electronic keyboard" for data imprinting. Exposure modes ran the full range from Program through Aperture- and Shutter-priority to Manual, with bulb exposures supported.

Pricing at launch was $900 US / £799 UK. ePHOTOZine praised the control layout, with dials for changing options and a jog dial near the shutter release for selecting settings. It also repeated the complaints about build quality that had been leveled at the pricier DiMAGE 7. ISO sensitivity is documented as 100, 200, and 400 in the camera's manual. Some secondary sources extend the range to 800, but Minolta's own documentation doesn't back that up. Shutter speeds reached 1/2000 second, with a slow end of 4 seconds documented by some sources.

Today the DiMAGE 5 is an affordable way into early-2000s digital bridge cameras. One current listing site shows prices around $66. The service manual circulates in archived downloads, which is more than many cameras from this transitional period can claim.