I need help with my film camera

Just got a Minolta XD-11 but I’m a complete noob with film cameras. How do I know when I run or of film?

It should have a frame counter that will tell you how many you have shot on a given roll. When it gets to the number of exposures for the roll you bought, that's it. Usually 24 or 36 exposures. It will stop shooting when it gets to the end of the roll. Rewind and load another roll.

 

Rick H.

Before you do anything else - go here Minolta XD-11 instruction manual, user manual, free PFD camera manuals and get a copy of the users manual, and read it from front to back. You will not only answer most of your questions, but also prevent yourself from inadvertently screwing up the camera.

Word of caution....after having shot the last full frame, the advance lever will not advance.

Do not force it.

At this point the film must be rewound.

 

As offered in the link in the previous post, click on the link and study the manual, you should be able to get quick detailed info on most operational questions you have.

 

Welcome to the site and welcome to the world of Classic Film Cameras.

in case you dont see the link above...

 

Minolta XD-11 instruction manual, user manual, free PFD camera manuals

Reminds me of a particular sale I made long ago. Into my store walked an older lady (probably younger than I am now), who said she needed a camera because she was leaving for a trip to Norway in about two hours. So, being the pre-judge type, I started by showing her a Kodak X-35 Instamatic. "Do you have anything better"', she asked. So I Upped her to a better instamatic. "No, what do you have that's better?" Mind you, she had never used a camera before this other than a box camera.

 

Eventually I got her to a Canon GIII. Still not quite good enough. Finally I pulled down a Canon Ftb. That was the one. "Does it have any accessories?" she asked. So she eventually bought a wide angle and telephoto, a 28 and 135 I seem to recall, both Canon brand.

 

All this time - and I had about an hour before her bus left for the airport - I instructed her the best I could. Eventually she left with the camera, the lenses, a brick of film, and a flash all in one nice camera bag. She didn't leave alone as I walked her the three block through downtown Minneapolis where she was to catch her bus. There was so much to tell her and so little time.

 

It was a three week trip for her and all this time I worried that she would return to North Dakota with nothing to show to her friends and nothing but curses for the salesman who took her money. So the dreaded day came when she brought her film into the store for processing. I hoped she would have it mailed to her in North Dakota. But no, she was staying with a friend for a few days and would come back to the store to share the results with me.

 

Back she came and her 20 roll were all printed. Yes, I was VERY nervous. But to end this little story quickly, every one of her photos was BEAUTIFUL.

Chuck, good for you. I was in a strange camera store for the first time and the salesman was just the opposite of you. Two old ladies came in and said they were going to Hawaii for the trip of a lifetime and wanted the best camera the could get. He immediately started to show them a Hasselblad. I left without bothering to make the purchase that I intended and never went back to that store.

Word of caution....after having shot the last full frame, the advance lever will not advance.

Do not force it.

At this point the film must be rewound.

 

Let me repeat, DO NOT FORCE IT.

 

If you do, you can even pull the film off the spool. Getting it out involves considerable darkroom manipulation.

Chuck, I really like that story! That's how you do it. You have to love some customers. 2 hours? How can you not be charmed by that. :-D

Not to discount the part Chuck played in it, but one of the REALLY great things about older camera manuals is that tended to be short(so folks would actually read them) and discussed both shutter speed and aperture with example photos.

 

I have an FTb manual around here somewhere, and I think it's about 30 pages long. Probably half is explaining how the camera works, and the other half goes into DOF, using the correct shutter speed for the situation, and how to use exposure compensation(which of course is entirely manual on an FTb, but the principle is still the same).

 

The manual for my D800 is about 300 pages long. Someone who knows cameras can pick one up and figure out the basics pretty quickly, but I keep the manual handy(usually stashed somewhere in my luggage when I'm traveling) as sometimes I want a particular setting that's not immediately obvious. I was looking for something the other day and spent about 10 minutes digging in the custom function menu-it took me about 5 more minutes to find it in the manual, and I would have NEVER guessed that the particular custom function I needed to set was what it said. Of course, with DSLRs I have a prayer of a chance of getting there without a manual-I have F5 and F100 custom function cheater cards in all of my camera bags and labels with the ones I might actually use on the cameras. Short of memorizing them, there's NO way to set those without a reference as they are just a number to denote the function number and a second number or letter to denote where it's set.

"..but I keep the manual handy (usually stashed somewhere in my luggage when I'm traveling)"

 

- How quaint!

Mine's a PDF on my smartphone. Fully searchable in seconds.

pick one up and figure out the basics pretty quickly, but I keep the manual handy(usually stashed somewhere in my luggage when I'm traveling) as sometimes I want a particular setting that's not immediately obvious. I was looking for something the other day and spent about 10 minutes digging in the custom function menu-it took me about 5 more minutes to find it in the manual, and I would have NEVER guessed that the particular custom function I needed to set was what it said. Of course, with DSLRs I have a prayer o

 

 

hahahaha i find myself downloading it a hundred times because i can never find the darn file. whats worse, the computer asks if i want to overwrite the same file.... but i looked everywhere n couldnt find it! now where is this file going?... yup, thats the story of my life.

 

to complicate the matter.... i dont always shoot the same camera. now where did i put that file?... but wtf did i name it??? hahahaha yup yup yup

For Nikon, there's a dedicated phone app that shows electronic versions of their manuals. Unfortunately the format is proprietary and not very compact, and the app takes up loads of phone memory too.

 

I deleted it and went back to PDFs.

 

Maybe a folder dedicated to PDF files might be an idea?

hahahahha Yeah a folder called MANUALS.... what a novel idea.

Ive got one on every computer and tablet full of repair manuals, user manuals, hundreds of shutters, old n new cameras, strobes, electronics... etc. Still cant find anything when I need it.

 

What I need is someone like you to post the links so I can download it again when I need it. :p

I just leave everything in "Downloads". The Nikon DSLR manuals have an identifiable name (at least by prefix), but many manuals I've downloaded have an unintelligible string of gibberish characters as a name. I just add a prefix that's some clue in these cases.

 

Computers have file search facilities. In this case, if searching for "Minolta", "XD-11" or "XD11" didn't turn it up no matter where you'd put it, you've not added the prefix or you've been on something when you did so. You could search for all PDFs, order them by date, and preview anything you don't recognise - and do the suggested renaming then. I have my fair share of documentation (and technical papers) and usually seem to find things again - I at least don't usually lose things twice.

Computers have file search facilities. In this case, if searching for "Minolta", "XD-11" or "XD11" didn't turn it up no matter where you'd put it, you've not added the prefix or you've been on something when you did so.

 

Spotlight in OS X is such a staple for me that I couldn't tell you how many times a day I use it. Of course, I also use it as an application launcher in addition to just finding files.

 

Of course, search functions existed long before things like Spotlight, but the fact that it's effectively instantaneous(once the volume is indexed) takes it to the next level.

 

As a fun trivia question-does anyone remember the name of Apple's search function that was introduced in OS 8 and was used up to OS X Panther(10.3)?

I like an edited journal.....

Spotlight in OS X is such a staple for me that I couldn't tell you how many times a day I use it. Of course, I also use it as an application launcher in addition to just finding files.

 

Of course, search functions existed long before things like Spotlight, but the fact that it's effectively instantaneous(once the volume is indexed) takes it to the next level.

 

As a fun trivia question-does anyone remember the name of Apple's search function that was introduced in OS 8 and was used up to OS X Panther(10.3)?

Sherlock.

Oh yes. That was bugging me, but I didn't want to cheat by looking it up. The stuff on my Mac is relatively organised, and if I'm looking for stuff to be honest I open a terminal and use "find". But I've been using Linux (and other Unices) for a lot longer than I've been using a Mac.

The XD 11 is an electronic, but non AF Minolta in which you wind the film manually. Don't wind too hard, but once you try to wind and you can't do it because it resists you trying, it's time to rewind the film. Every camera has a slightly different procedure, but usually you turn the camera over, press a button (somewhere, varies) and while pressing the button (or some you don't have to keep pressing) you unstow the winding lever and wind gently till you get more resistance. You then can open the camera and remove the film, gently dislodging the leader from the leader takeup spool. You can also usually wind a bit harder and wind the leader all the way into the cassette, but if you develop your own film, don't because you'll need to get the leader out again. My first purchased camera was an XE-5 (new). The XD-11 was the next generation of camera.

Thanks for the link to my site... just moved to a different hosting company. Everything is the same, just cheaper for me. I'm also scanning some of the Minolta Maxxum camera manuals that are available from various places, but in horrible low DPI. Also putting them in color now that hosting companies allow basically unlimited storage these days.

Still scanning and posting, always seem to find some weird camera manual here and there.