A little bit of "Only From The Mind of Minolta" history ...

[ricardovaste]

<blockquote>

<p>Is it more enjoyable to take a good photo with a vintage camera, or just more work?</p>

</blockquote>

<p>I've found it more enjoyable on the odd occation. That's when I'm realistic with the results I'll get and i choose specific applications for them (usually casual portraits). I do 'enjoy' using an SRT (for example) for things like that, it's never more work, they're <em>very </em> simply camreas made <em>very </em> well :)</p>

[howardstanbury]

<p>I agree with that; I have been using an XD7 recently and it's a joy to take pictures with. Very solid. I don't mind doing the focusing - it still takes care of exposure, which suits me.</p>

[cadillacmike]

<p>The XK was an expensive flop in the market. Biggest problem was one body COULD NOT take a motor drive, while the other one had it PERMANENTLY attached ????? Canon and Nikon ate their lunch. <br>

The Minolta SR mount endured for 27 years, but the Canon bereech lock mount endured for 36 years. You could mount a 1959 Super Canomatic lens on a 1995 built F-1. and if you get the FD-EOS converter (the real Canon 1.26X one, you can mount some lenses on the newest bodies! Nikon F for all its supposed longevity, has large scale incompatibility ranges, especially when trying to mount older lenses on new AF / Digital bodies. <br>

all said, I really like the SRT series, and if i ever branch out from collecting Canon, I'm getting an SRT 102 and SRT 202, and maybe a non-motorized XK.</p>

 

[dave_green5]

<p>The biggest gaffe was not putting a motor drive OPTION on the XE/XE-7, and only providing a slow auto-winder for the XD-11. If those cameras could have taken a 3.5-4 FPS motor, they were good enough to have been serious competitors to Nikon and Canon</p>

[rdm]

<p>Too bad Minolta didn't stick with the Vectis mount for all their later DSLRs like they did on the RD 3000. The Para prism Design i think is great (especially for people with big noses ;)) also the 38mm flange distance of the mount would have made their cameras as versatile as Olympus's 4/3 cameras are now.<br>

Interesting how Oly ran with that same Para Prism and short flange mount design (39mm) and boy did it pay off big.<br /> They probably could have even had an adapter on it to use the SR/MC/MD lenses. Or at least an after market manufacturer could have made one. And imagine how compact those cameras lenses could be now if they did.<br /> I still never have seen the MA/MAV mount adapter, or one for sale for that matter. Not even something written by someone who used one.<br /> I wonder if Schematics of it exists still somewhere. Wish i knew how to do patten archive searches, because i bet they would be there.</p>