A Minolta X700 Shoots Meccano

<p>Snowy Cottage:</p><div></div>

<p>Snowy Barn ... last one</p><div></div>

<p>John, as a boy I had a meccano set including some early parts inherited from my father. I gave the set to my younger son and it still gets use if we need to build some obscure piece of machinery. The greatest meccano triumph in our family was my father's tropical fish feeder. It featured a horizontal 12 inch record with 14 slots in it. The wheel rotated once a fortnight so allowing the tropical fish a daily feed while we were on holiday. The mechnism involved a very long train of gears to slow down the rotation of the record. The fish survived. Another success was a meccano Orrery showing relative motion of the Sun, Earth and Moon. This required a lot of gearing including the meccano helical gear set which I still have. My brother's greatest triumph was a working three speed and reverse gear box. So you can see these shots take me back. I particularly like your Winter Sun shot. That snow looks familiar!</p>

<p>I'd like to like the X700 but all 3 I've owned died prematurely from strokes caused by bum capacitors-- a baked-in defect. Happy they were dirt cheap. My Nikon FEs from the same period have been trouble-free.</p>

<p>Awesome pics, John, thanks, I thoroughly enjoyed them! Really great to see what this equipment can do.</p>

<p>Pitched 'em all, Les. No clue about vintage. Tired of the X700 lottery after the 3rd one croaked. Love Rokkor glass. Too bad about their manual electronic bodies, though.</p>

<p>The one Les Sarile sent me a while back had a low enough serial number, I guess, and has been entirely trouble free. I had another that packed up and new capacitors didn't do the job, but this one doesn't seem to mind riding in hot and cold cars, and other casual treatment, making it a great carry-everywhere camera. </p>

<p>It looks like a nice, full featured camera, but I'm not a fan of Minolta lenses. The shots look far too contrasty, even though they probably aren't. That pretty much sums up my experience w/ Minolta lenses, BUT it sure worked for the pic titled "Winter Sun". Like that one a lot.</p>

<p>Really? I find the lenses pretty normal for contrast. Usually when you see the film shots with the high contrast like this, that's being caused by either the film or the scanning.</p>

<p>Really? I find the lenses pretty normal for contrast. Usually when you see the film shots with the high contrast like this, that's being caused by either the film or the scanning.</p>

<p>About the contrast, well the film was Kodak 400/2 VR Plus. scanned and printed at a local lab. The prints are about as contrasty as the scans. It was that sort of a day, very bright winter sun. The later ones I showed with the snow, don't have anything like as much contrast.</p>

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<p ><a href="/photodb/user?user_id=696354">Les Sarile</a> <a href="/member-status-icons"><img title="Subscriber" src="/v3graphics/member-status-icons/sub10.gif" alt="" /></a>, Jan 30, 2013; 11:30 a.m.</p>

 

<p>I understand that X-700 bodies with serial numbers of 25xxxxx and below have good-quality capacitors, 27xxxxx and higher have cheap, failure-prone capacitors, and 26xxxxx are mixed (which I suppose means the change was made during 26xxxxx). Do your serial numbers correspond to the bad batch?</p>

 

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<p>Reading this, I went to look at my 2 bodies. One is 175 and the other is 317, and the 317 hasn't been used in a year or more. Purchased new in 2000. So I decided to test it out, fearing the worst... but it fired up just fine, no issues at all. At least some of the later model ones must be ok, I would think.</p>

Just curious....I grabbed an X700 on ebay a while back. I found that the shutter has quite a kick to it and is fairly loud.

This is louder than I remember my original X700 from the 80's to have been. Is it just my bad memory? Is the X700

shutter fairly loud with a kick....or is the one I've bought got an issue with a damper or whatever?

Les...I've always wanted an XK

<p>Somehow overlooked this post. Nice work and beautiful camera.</p>

<p>I've been desperately trying to keep myself from getting into Minolta - I already have too many irons in the fire, but you make a compelling case for them.</p>