Minolta X1 (2007)

Minolta really feels like the underdog of classic camera brands. You always hear about Canon or Nikon, but no one really talks about the advantages that Minolta brought to market.

They brought both shutter/aperture priority in an SLR, first mainstream AF cameras and some amazing lenses and bodies all throughout. Its a real shame that they sold their photography assets to Sony (though they have done so wonderful things with that legacy - you can still see it in 2021).

On the other hand, as someone who shoots both MD and A mount, and uses some of their film bodies, its nice that they're not ridiculous expensive.

Except, ironically, the X1 - which is a shame because its such a neat camera, a waist level view finder on 35mm would be so fun to play with - I love it in medium format.

I purchased a Minolta SLR (35mm) just before digital started to really take off. I had a dozen lenses and was fully invested. I wanted a digital body to come out, but it never did. A few years later, with no digital body in sight, I finally sold all my Minolta gear and bought something digital. A few months later, Sony purchased Minolta and released a digital body. What terrible timing I had trying to get into photography at the time.

Edit: There was a professional digital body, maybe a medium format equivalent, but I couldn’t afford that jump.

Big Minolta fan as well. About 10 years ago I found an RD175 at a flea market and restored it to working order, it was a great talking point about the history of digital cameras. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minolta_RD-175

Contax is another underdog. I still shoot 35mm with a Contax N and G, both are incredible pieces of technology and product design.

I'd a point and shoot, minolta dimage x31. I loved it! It was early to have an SD-card which meant that I could film more than 5 seconds (until RAM is full) because it was fast enough to save to the SD card while filming. It also had an internal optical focus which meant no (few) moving parts on the outside.

I've a great affection for Minolta, though born from retro appeal because I am not old enough to have seen their best stuff first time around. I'd love to know more about how the company operated during the 50s to 70s.

Their 1970s models, the X1, XE, and XD seem technically really exciting but don't appear to have held the attention of the professional market - unreliable, lacking something important, too expensive, or is it just about the brand? I gather that few XEs and XDs (the X1 is too rare to count) have made it to the present without some reliability problems, but that's not so surprising given the time span.

Briefly - before the pandemic arrived and took away most of my spare time - I had a hobby of repairing the Minolta SR-1, the earlier purely mechanical camera sold from 1959 to 1971. The SR-1 is interesting because it was Minolta's ongoing "entry level camera" rather than a single specific design - they used the same designation for at least five different cameras underneath, in the course of its sales life. They're surprisingly different under the covers, and you can track a bit of what was going on elsewhere in their product line through them.

So the SR-1 model A is a solid mechanical design, complicated but not too difficult to understand and repair. Model B is almost identical on the outside, but mechanically quite different underneath and with some odd design decisions that might have been a weak attempt at cost-saving or possibly about synchronisation with another product (this is the sort of thing that makes me wish I knew more about the company). I haven't seen a model C and am not totally sure it exists. Model D I think is a bit of a mess, combining the mechanicals of earlier models with various new features (primarily the lightmeter, though support for it existed in the model B even though the accessory didn't). And model E is a serious clean-slate rebuild that is mechanically simpler but less accessible and far more like what competitors such as Pentax were producing at the time.

I use an SR-1 model A as my usual film camera, it's a bit big and heavy and the winding lever carves a big channel in your forehead but it's so beautiful and satisfying to use.

(I wrote a couple of blog posts about the SR-1 models A and B, at https://thebreakfastpost.com/2019/12/21/notes-on-the-minolta... and https://thebreakfastpost.com/2020/03/12/notes-on-the-minolta... - I wanted to bring it up to the D and E but reality intervened.)

I've been on a buying spree this last month, picking up Minolta rokkor lenses for video use. They are some cheap and well made. Leica even borrowed their design for their 24mm.