Soon after I started with digital photography with the small Sony point and shoot, I felt the need for a real camera. My budget was still tight, so thought I a so-called "bridge" or "prosumer" (what a word!) camera would do nicely. The Minolta Dimage A1. I used some student loan money to buy it. It wasn't a financially sound decision, that is for sure.
This camera had a whopping 5.2 megapixels and could output files up to 2560×1920 pixels. That is less than some monitors and TVs can display nowadays. But it had some really nice features like image stabilization and a tiltable viewfinder. Something that is still uncommon today, even though I found this feature to be incredibly useful. The lens went from 28-200 mm equivalent and had a pleasant mechanical zoom ring. This was almost a proper camera with control dials, buttons, manual zoom, focus options, white balance control and I think even RAW output. But the camera was very prone to noise and its dynamic range struggled even on not so bright days. Nevertheless, I took some memorable pictures with it. I did enjoy the compactness but still somewhat sturdy construction. A good middle ground.
Eventually, this camera became as limiting as my first one. Image quality wasn't great and it was very slow to use with an atrociously bad autofocus. And of course I wanted something new. I used it for about 9 months and took (kept) only 85 photos. It was the latest model to begin with, and advances in camera and sensor technology made this sensor obsolete pretty soon.