posted
While digging through my old room, I came across two bags, one filled with slides and a slide viewer, the other containing an old Minolta X-700 and a 28mm, 1:2.8 lens--it has another lens, a third party 28-70 zoom, ugh. Nonetheless, this discovery made my heart leap, as being cameraless for over a year had made the heart grow overwhelmingly fond.
What I didn't expect was to fall in love with this bit of photographic history. It's an old manual focus/film advance body, the last Minolta made (circa 1981). It takes small batteries which last forever and will work in sub-zero temperatures. It has less moving parts to break and take up weight in a backpack when hiking. It has a pentaprisim, a rarity these days, when even the wallet busting digital rebel has a mirror viewfinder. It has a depth of field preview that will even allow the shutter to fire when depressed, compensating for the possiblity of a less than snappy aperature (not that my lenses need this, they are all solidly built). It has a screw in, manual cable release, instead of an outrageously priced electronic one. I could go on, but I fear I am rapidly losing the attention of anyone save Mack.
Despite the huge popularity of Minolta's manual bodies and lenses, when Minolta switched to auto-focus, they changed their mount. As a result, there is all this quality glass floating around for next to nothing. The 28mm that came with it is amazingly sharp, and I have purchased a 50mm 1.4 and 135mm 2.8 for $50 and $30 respectively. They are fantastically sharp lenses, with excellent colour temperature and contrast. The former is widely recognised to be the best 1.4 50mm ever made for any 35mm SLR. It is absolutely gorgeous, and doubles as a superb loupe for examining slides and prints alike.
I must admit, I still pine for the EOS 20D; I long for it's professional digital body features at a fraction of the cost. I would love the convienence of a DSLR. However, after using this camera I must say, even notwithstanding the enormous price savings in getting excellent lenses for next to nothing, given a choice, I would be hard pressed to abandon this for digital.
Gave up photography as a hobby by the time it was legal for me to drink. But gotta admit that your excellent and enjoyable review tempts me to return to film photography. And you say those old masterpieces of engineering are cheap. sigh... "goodbye money, hello film" here I come.
posted
By all means, take up the hobby once more; however, please keep it under your hat that the Minolta manual focus lenses are a steal. I wouldn't want that to change.
Posts: 1769 | Registered: Feb 2000
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quote: I could go on, but I fear I am rapidly losing the attention of anyone save Mack.
Tease, I was just getting hot.
If yours is a New, old camera, I guess I've just acquired an old, new camera as my mom upgraded to a 8 mega pixel digital SLR and gave me her old one which was pretty nice in its day.
But just last week I took my Pentax K1000 on vacation. I've had this camera over half of my life. I don't have any lenses besides the 50 mm it came with, though.
My sister-in-law's wedding pictures (taken with an 8 megapixel) persuade me to think that digital still has a long, long way to go.
Posts: 11017 | Registered: Apr 2003
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I've been feeling the urge to do some filmwork and play around with different types of film. I've picked up some infrared film and have some Tmax around here SOMEwhere.
I also have rolls upon rolls of Ilford HP-5.
What I really long for is the chance to do some more darkroom work. I seriously miss that.
Posts: 14745 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
That's a lot of gushing, Chaeron. I love your camera too.
Mack, you don't get to work in the darkroom? It's so fun! and a great investment. I'm fortunate enough to attend a school that sells a quarterly pass to the darkroom, but I'm taking a class instead. So it's almost the same, except there's a teacher. I'm really bad with the reels.
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