I've just bought a reflex-like digital camera Minolta Dimage A1 (note A1 not A2) today (3/17/2008) It's a second-hand stuff (according to the seller Michel M. it's a third-hand or more). I do need your expertise...Well, what Minolta calls "simple AF" does NOT work and when I switched to their "continue AF" I got similar results (as you'll definitely notice), a perceptible relay trigger noise precedes the switch to black and white of the lcd monitor. I'd never seen that with my other cameras-even my canon A10. LCD displays used to show at least a clear image when focusing. Minolta people claim they have the best DSP around... The very noise happened any time I move my target from reasonably lighted objects to darker ones. And sometimes I came across a simple shut-down of the camera (not linked to my presets of 10-minute automatic standby). Am I a paranoid or are there hidden dysfunctions the seller didn't tell me? By the way, he said he made some small "repair" on the camera and presented me evidences of "hardware revision" of his device. Back home, I was perplex when I noticed some irregularity on the inner thread, and getting more perplex when I remembered the seller's telling me he'd lost the front lens protection cache...Strange and suspect...I'm not far from guessing he'd let his camera fall on the ground but he didn't dare to tell me the truth.
What do you think of all that, Albert ?
Thanks Albert for having appreciated my joke on the relay...I'll follow your recommendations!
follow-up on Tue Mar 18 08:49:58 2008:
The seller replied and did his coming out. Yes, he had forced the lens thread while adapting a filter. He assured me the quality of photos won't suffer from that (hmmm...do I look like a moron ?). This good man who's an electronic engineer too (as he claims to be) forgot to apologize for his plan to conceal part of what's really occurred to his device. He gave an explanation, the same as Shindra's, of w/b display switching. You don't have to have a degree in Electronics to find that out. Eventually all that seemed to be "un petit incident", but not for me. As a genuine Christian I am really disillusioned with those kind of sellers. Honesty is so old-fashioned....