Sunday, May 28, 2017

Minolta X-700

What is there to be said about one of the iconic film camera bodies ever made, within one of the best manual focus lens systems ever made? Quite a lot. In this review I'll be going over the venerable Minolta X-700, some of the features, and raving about both the lens/accessory system and the camera body.

If you have ever trawled a thrift store, flea market, or visited a camera shop with a used section, you've probably seen one. Sitting on the shelf, it seems to vacuum all of the light in the room around it. Most of the time it comes in flat black with the venerable "X-700" listed under the shutter speed dial (there was a less common chrome version, but who wants that? Flat black is the most common!). I have proudly owned no less than five of these cameras. I love the weight, the feel and ergonomics of the body, the meter, and the lens system. I have not tired of this camera in 10 years. I left the system, and came back to this camera...twice. I even use the lens system on my digital body.

Many experts will knock some of the detracting elements - namely the slow flash sync speed (at 1/60), the sound of the shutter, and the fairly limited lifespan (due to low-quality capacitors). Other than those three critiques, there's really nothing else anyone can say against this camera or the system. This camera is LOUD with a satisfying "KER-THACK" with every picture. It sounds like a machine. It feels like a machine. Your subject will know you are taking a picture of them, from 15 feet away. Flash photography is out in all but the darkest and most controlled scenarios. When I need flash photography, I personally will either a) use digital (for social or speed situations) or b) use a medium format camera. Also, remember when I said that I switched camera systems twice? Both times were due to the notorious shutter capacitor issue - it will blow one day out of the blue. You don't know when or how, or what conditions to avoid. It will just...go...and you will be stuck without a camera again. Every time I pick it up and find my batteries are dying, I sweat and think how I want to switch to an X-570 or an XD-11/X-1 for the more reliable electronics. I haven't yet simply due to the cheap nature of these cameras. I haven't spent more than $50 for all five of the X-700 bodies I have ever owned over the years, total. You find them everywhere there are used cameras because they made them for almost two decades.

Enough about the bad, let's talk about the good. What are you buying when you buy any film camera body? You're buying into a name, lens system, accessory system, mod community, and limited set of spare parts (limited by however many other camera bodies there are left).

All the major manufacturer manual focus film lenses are at the very least good enough and better than third party manual focus film lenses - Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta, Contax, Konica, etc. They are all at least good enough in most cases. If you care about name recognition, you may know Leica. In the 90's, Leica actually licensed some of the Minolta manual focus lenses and bodies, and then either jointly developed, slightly tweaked, or 100% copied Minolta design in their Leica R3 and R4 series SLR camera bodies. The X-700 was not one of these designs (Minolta XE-7/Leica R3 and Minolta XD-11/Leica R4) but the X-700 was made by the same people that made each of them. If it's good enough for Leica, it's good enough for me.

Being that they made this camera for 19 years, there are millions of of them in the wild and tons of spare parts if you ever need one. The grips and accessories are second to none. The aesthetics and innovation put forth by the team at Minolta are top tier in all respects. Minolta created the first camera with a "Program" mode in the X-700, making this SLR more of a point n shoot and ensuring that millions of people are able to take photographs without any prior photographic knowledge. I learned framing and how to work a scene with this Program mode, and nowadays I switch between the metered Manual and the Aperture priority, which are still amazing due to how good this meter is. It meters from ISO 25 all the way up to ISO 1600, with 2 stops of compensation in 1/2 stop increments. It takes modern LR44/357 button batteries and they last a very long time because of how great the capacitive touch is with this camera - the on/off switch is only a lock for a half-depress of the shutter. 15 seconds later the camera is off again for as long as you don't fidget. Yes, the camera is 100% off no matter the "On" position, unless that shutter is half-depressed or the exposure lock button is tickled. 15 seconds later, it's completely off again until you're ready to laugh.

The Minolta X-700 has a 1-1000 shutter speed with a bulb mode and it accepts generic shutter triggers. When you find one of these bad boys, most likely you'll also find some no-name 6-inch braided shutter trigger, the manuals inside a dirty camera bag you'll throw away or keep in a closet, and a sweet 45/2 Rokkor lens. Speaking of lenses, most of them are dirt cheap! You can can find a 35/1.8 for less than $300, and 135/2.8, 45/2, and 50/1.7 lenses are plentiful beyond plentiful. I've owned probably as many as I have owned camera bodies. The Minolta SR mount carriers every kind of lens you can imagine from 7.5mm fisheye all the way up to 800mm see-the-birds-in-the-next-town, with multiple zoom lenses, macro lenses, tilt-shift lenses, extenders, screw-on hoods, etc. Minolta was a great player, and that is why Sony bought them.

This will wrap up the review of the X-700. I didn't go over everything that the X-700 has going for it, but I did go over the most important things that it has. Try one for yourself; You'll see.

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