The shutter lag is better than average at wide angle and slow at telephoto. The camera has a feature all the reviewers seem to overlook when it comes to shutter lag. Minolta puts continuous focus on most of their cameras and the 414 has it. With the continuous mode on the camera focuses right up to shutter release. If you look at the specs you will see that the 414 is extremely fast with pre-focus. You pre-focus (and pre-meter) when you hold the shutter halfway depressed. You can’t use that as your normal shooting approach with most cameras as the camera stops updating the focus once you pre-focus. With the Minolas you can pre-focus in most situations and have virtually no shutter lag.
The continuous focus is really handy for taking pictures of kids, parties, gatherings or anything with stuff in motion. My big camera has it and my little pocket camera doesn’t. I really miss it when using the pocket camera and get a lot of blurred shots from stuff moving toward or away from the camera after I depress the shutter. Perpetual motion rugrats are a particular problem for my little C50 that I have no problem with at all using my D7i.
Minolta also intelligently uses CF cards in their larger cameras. They are better in too many ways to list, but the main one is that they are cheaper. You can usually look on techbargains or techdeals and find some great rebate deals you can never find with other cards. Plan on buying at least a 128Mb and preferably a 256Mb card. If you plan to take it on vacation without a laptop a larger card would be even better.
You have to get a charger and set of rechargeable batteries. Alkalines don’t give many shots and the one use disposable lithium batteries are too pricey. You can get a deal from Thomas with a MAHA (the best) charger and 8 Power X (also the best) batteries for $28. That is two sets of batteries for your camera – each of which will probably fill a 528Mb card if you are careful with the LCD and flash. With cameras with proprietary batteries they recommend a spare and they run around $60 unless you want to mess with Brand X from Ebay. You will find all sorts of uses for the higher capacity rechargeable AAs if you find you don’t use the extra set.
That is a particularly nice camera IMO. Don’t scrimp on memory or batteries. With CF and AA you are able to have plenty of capacity to really experiment with the camera.
Yet another good review:
http://www.steves-digicams.com/2003_reviews/s414.html
Edit: Forgot to link Thomas.
http://www.thomas-distributing.com/mh-gtcharger.htm
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