Minolta X-700: 18 Years of Continuous Production One of the Greatest Cameras Ever Made?

[baachitraka]

The Minolta X-700 remained in production from 1981 until 1999, an impressive 18-year run in a highly competitive camera market...

 

[ic-racer]

18 years; likewise also the Mercedes R107 body style. 1971 to 1989. This is the 1989 model.

 

[ic-racer]

Some more approximate durations:

Nikon F: 13 years
Nikon F3: 20 years
Rolleiflex 2.8F: 21 years
Nikon FM 10: 23 years

 

[xkaes]

The Minolta X-370 wasn't far behind with 16 years (1984-1999) -- and if you include the numerous Chinese clones (made on the same Minolta manufacturing lines after 1999), such as the Seagull DF-300, Phoexix DF-3000, Safari DF-300, Revue DF-300, Argus DF-300, Carena DF-300, Centon DF-300, Zenit DF-300, etc. it's probably more than 20 years.

Then there is the Minolta SR-1 with 13 years -- not far behind -- 1959-1971.

 

[Alan Townsend]

The Minolta X-700 remained in production from 1981 until 1999, an impressive 18-year run in a highly competitive camera market...

I still use the one I bought back in 1992 and it still works, but compared with the earlier SRT 101, not such a great camera from the photographer perspective. That period of time was a sort of malaise period for 35mm manual focus cameras as they were being phased out by autofocus. When I bought my X700, there was no Ebau, otherwise I would have bought a used SRT-101, the camera I had owned earlier and was very happy with.

The X700 was a sort of niche camera in its time. It was also an economy version of a camera that employed electronics in lieu of mechanical design. It was a good camera from a marketing perspective, not so much from a photographer perspective who owned previous SRT series Minolta's. Let me list its failings compared with the SRT-101. The only advantage was light weight, ushered in by the Olympus OM cameras, and automation level so that people with no knowledge cam use it easier.

1. Reliability was not as good due to electronic failures.

2. Focus screen were plastic rather than glass and much more difficult to use therefore.

3. Much harder to use for people with poor eye site.

4. Nearly useless in metered manual mode, the favored mode of many experienced photographers.

5. Viewfinder shows a smaller percentage of the image, and the image is smaller than previous models.

6. Cable release socket is way too close to body, making it nearly impossible to use.

7. Lack of mirror lockup yields fuzzy photos when camera is on tripod. This camera was designed for hand held use, and not for use on tripods.

Mine still works, but I use my more recently aquired SRT-101 cameras for important work, and the X700 is used for non critical things, like film testing where it's aperture priority mode is more useful. It made sense commercially for Minolta at that time, but like many other models, was not as good to use for those more experienced photographers who know what they want.

 

[4season]

Sony A6000: ~13 years IIRC. They even introduced white and charcoal variants late in the product cycle. Sony can be very thrifty when it comes to engineering resources.

 

[baachitraka]

me personally is OM-1/2n fan but this X700 looks not so bad for point and shoot.

that said, if I start again I will start with SRT 101/303...

 

[Paul Howell]

I have both X700 and SRTs, a 101 and 201, the X 700 is ok, good set of features, the motor drive is reliable, for street photography works well. On the other hand the simplicity of the 101 with mirror lock up is great for landscapes. The meters on my 101 and 201 are still accurate to a 1/2 stop. The X700 is still sought as it has A and P with later lens.

 

[dynachrome]

This is one of my favorite camera subjects. I have a fleet of X700 cameras and have used them for many years. I will differ from Alan's comments and explain why. It is known that X700 and other Minolta X series cameras have problems with capacitors. These are easily replaced by any competent repair person. No X700 which I have with replaced capacitors has acted up in this area again. It is true that the focusing screens are plastic rather than glass. They are more fiddly to change than screens in a Nikon F or Canon F-1 because they have no metal frames. Some X700s (I think the later ones) have a bracket which pulls down for changing screens. This is a little easier than in the X700s without the bracket. The screens themselves are excellent. They are bright and contrasty. They are also somewhat rare, except for the standard screen. I decided a long time ago that it was not worth fooling around with changing them with any frequency. I have a number of the rare screens (not the standard ones). One of my X700s has a grid screen and one has a plain matte screen. The rest all have the standard screen. I did a lot of macro photography with the body with the grid screen. I used the body with the plain matte screen for very close work. I have the whole Auto Bellows III system with all four lenses (and even the gel filter holder) and the plain matte screen was very useful with the 12.5 and 25 micro lenses.

I am very lucky at my age to have 20/20 vision in my right eye, the one I use for focusing. Do I consider the X700 difficult to focus through? I do not. The Minolta X series model made for manual metering is the X570. I find that between the exposure compensation dial on the X700 and tilting the camera up or down and using the exposure lock button, I do not miss regular manual metering. The meter itself is accurate but like any other in-camera metering system, you have to know what you are pointing the camera at and that meters of that time were all calibrated for 18% gray. Whether the finder shows 100% of the film area is another subject. For most uses this is not terribly important. Things like flat copy work are done today mostly by scanning. If it is really an issue I can use a Nikon F, F2 or F3. For most purposes, my Canon F-1 cameras are close enough. When I started taking pictures, color print film was not very good. My first color films were Kodachrome II and Agfachrome CT18. The slide mounts covered a small part of the picture area so a less than 100% finder was adequate for most users. If you don't like using the standard cable release socket you can use the Cord S or Cord L or the Multi-Function Back instead.

The lack of the mirror lock-up function is something you face with all of the X series Minoltas. For the shutter speeds I might typically use with the camera on a tripod, I have not experienced fuzzy photos. Some speeds are more of a problem than others. I also have a fleet of SRT cameras so if I need one with mirror lock-up, I can use one of them. The differences between the X700 and the SRT models stopped being an either/or proposition for me a long time ago. When the X700 came out in 1981 I thought it was a step back for Minolta from the XD-11. The XD had a vertical non-fabric shutter with a higher flash synch speed. It also had multi-mode metering options. Its focusing screens were "factory interchangeable" like those in the Canon A-1 (this is why I prefer the AE-1 Program to the A-1). The X700 had another important difference. It has TTL flash metering. This proved more useful for me in the macro range than mirror lock-up. I have all of the Minolta PX flash units and accessories. The X700 has hybrid construction. It has both metal and plastic parts. It has proven to be long lasting and reliable. For macro work, Aperture Priority is more useful than Shutter Priority. I say this as someone who started with Konica SLRs, which have Shutter Priority automation. By the time the X700 came out, Minolta would already be working on the Maxxum 7000. The Maxxum combined the vertical shutter of the XD-11 with the TTL flash metering and interchangeable focusing screens of the X700 and, of course, AF. For me, the X700 has been a very useful tool within the limits of its design parameters. My latest Minolta? An SRT 202 (2nd version) with a beautiful 50/1.4 MC Rokkor-X. The camera was just expertly serviced by John Titterington and I plan to use it later this week.

 

[Les Sarile]

MP198306-006 by Les DMess, on Flickr

x-700 Motor1 MFBack by Les DMess, on Flickr

I have yet to put that intervalometer to good use

 

[RLangham]

I don’t know that there’s a camera I’ve had more times and sold off more times. Always forget that I don’t like it for some reason. Too plasticky maybe.

 

[Paul Howell]

X 700 vs XE or XE motor?

 

[4season]

I don’t know that there’s a camera I’ve had more times and sold off more times. Always forget that I don’t like it for some reason. Too plasticky maybe.

But IMO, X700 plastics aren't really a weak spot (they're mostly self-lubricating) but capacitors sure are. Plastic gears seem similar to the sorts used in H-P laser printers.

 

[RLangham]

But IMO, X700 plastics aren't really a weak spot (they're mostly self-lubricating) but capacitors sure are. Plastic gears seem similar to the sorts used in H-P laser printers.

Yeah, electrolytic capacitors are funny like that. They’re such a vital technology that we accept a pretty crazy failure rate from them. Or at least, it used to be pretty high.

I mainly mean that the camera body is plasticky. I feel like making cameras lighter was a big mistake of the 70’s and 80’s that we’ve largely kept making since then. It certainly exacerbates hand shake and mirror slap. But it also makes a very expensive piece of equipment feel cheap and disposable, and I don’t think that’s necessarily a great thing.

 

[naaldvoerder]

I still use the one I bought back in 1992 and it still works, but compared with the earlier SRT 101, not such a great camera from the photographer perspective. That period of time was a sort of malaise period for 35mm manual focus cameras as they were being phased out by autofocus. When I bought my X700, there was no Ebau, otherwise I would have bought a used SRT-101, the camera I had owned earlier and was very happy with.

The X700 was a sort of niche camera in its time. It was also an economy version of a camera that employed electronics in lieu of mechanical design. It was a good camera from a marketing perspective, not so much from a photographer perspective who owned previous SRT series Minolta's. Let me list its failings compared with the SRT-101. The only advantage was light weight, ushered in by the Olympus OM cameras, and automation level so that people with no knowledge cam use it easier.

1. Reliability was not as good due to electronic failures.

2. Focus screen were plastic rather than glass and much more difficult to use therefore.

3. Much harder to use for people with poor eye site.

4. Nearly useless in metered manual mode, the favored mode of many experienced photographers.

5. Viewfinder shows a smaller percentage of the image, and the image is smaller than previous models.

6. Cable release socket is way too close to body, making it nearly impossible to use.

7. Lack of mirror lockup yields fuzzy photos when camera is on tripod. This camera was designed for hand held use, and not for use on tripods.

Mine still works, but I use my more recently aquired SRT-101 cameras for important work, and the X700 is used for non critical things, like film testing where it's aperture priority mode is more useful. It made sense commercially for Minolta at that time, but like many other models, was not as good to use for those more experienced photographers who know what they want.

It has always struck me as rather odd, and maybe just fashionable, to criticise a camera for including features that make photography easier, in spite of the fact that metered automation is included in just about every photographic tool since the 70s. It is almost like the lack of automation is supposed to testify to the user's "knowledge" and "experience". While the SRT 101 is undoubtedly a good and trustworthy camera for its own era, and can be fully appreciated for the level of engineering in those times, there are plenty of features that make the X-700 a better photographic tool.

1 The X-700 is probably more prone to failure, but for most users this would only be a problem when planning a 3 months vacation deep into the Amazons. The rest of us, replace the capacitors if needed, and buy a spare body for 50 euro.

2 Focusing screens in both the X-700 and the SRT are made from acrylic. Just as plasticcy as about any other focusing screen, in just about any other camera of just about any other camerabrand. The Acute Matte Focusing Screen of the X-700 was one of the brightest screens around when it was introduced.

3 Manual metering in The X-700 is just about as clumsy as in the SRT. That is why it has a provision to switch to aperture priority automation.

4 The viewfinder coverage in the X-700 is 95% with a 50mm lens, the viewfinder coverage in the SRT 101 is 94%.

5 I use a cable release regularly with my X-700. It is very doable. If one prefers, it is even possible to leave the release cable semi-permanently attached to the camera, and still use the shutter release button when wanted. And, on top of that, its relocation away from the shutter button gave room for the very luxurious touch-switch.

6 The X-700 is smaller, lighter and has far better ergonomics. 90% of photography for most people is walking around with a camera in their hands. The X-700 is a joy to lift, to hold and to handle. its accompanying series of MD III lenses is also significantly lighter, smaller, and all but a few, optically better, compared to its predecessors.


As said, many statements about these camera's are more about fashion, less about fact.

 

[xkaes]

The X700 was a sort of niche camera in its time. It was also an economy version of a camera that employed electronics in lieu of mechanical design.

When the X-700 appeared -- which was before their MAXXUM cameras -- it was the top of the line for their consumer cameras. The only exception was the XK. The Minolta economy models at the time were the XG models -- which were soon replaced by the X-570, X-370 and similar models without the PROGRAM exposure feature or TTL flash, for example. I'm not a huge fan of the X-700, but it was the top-of-the-line manually-focusing SLR for many years, introduced many features that were "firsts", and even was the "Camera of the Year" in 1981. It lasted so long for a reason.

 

[xkaes]

that said, if I start again I will start with SRT 101/303...

Get a camera that at least has a hot shoe. The SRT 102 has that, and a lot more, for a lot less.

 

[Alan Townsend]

It has always struck me as rather odd, and maybe just fashionable, to criticise a camera for including features that make photography easier, in spite of the fact that metered automation is included in just about every photographic tool since the 70s.

Show me a view camera that has automation at all, and I will eat my words. Today, I use my SRT101's like view cameras. Always on tripods, almost always hand held manual metering with frequent ttl meter checking for comparison. The x700 was clearly designed for hand held use and is no good on the tripod. Particularly the user interface for all the Xseries cameras is cheap and poor. The cutouts for the numbers with adjacent red led's is really poor. Need to point camera at sky to read numbers, which is useless on tripod. Need to point camera and hold meter reading is no good on tripod.

In the early 90's when I bought my x700, I already had owned two x370's, one of which had failed within only a few years time. At that time, I was doing color photography using 800 speed Fuji film and almost always hand held, so these cameras are fairly good for that. I always hated the cheap UI with those cameras. Today, I shoot like a view camera, like I did prior to the 90's on b/w film so strongly prefer my earlier cameras.

In many ways the Olympus OM cameras ruined 35mm photography, since all the manufacturers rush to miniaturize their models to copy them, which resulted in compromised performance and reliability. Bigger and heavier cameras have advantages on the tripod and are much easier to work on due to the extra space inside. Smaller and lighter is not always the best. It depends on the type of photography you do.

This has nothing to do with ego, it's all about personal experience and opinions. I really do not like the X-series cameras at all, mostly the cheap UI and plasticy feel others allude to. I had three of these, two of which failed after a few years use. The X700 still works. I believe those cheap capacitors were tantalums rather than electrolytic, but I could be wrong.

Another thing I hate about my x700 is that every time I replace the batteries the camera does not work until I clean the contacts again with an eraser. SRT does not do that.

 

[MattKing]

In many ways the Olympus OM cameras ruined 35mm photography, since all the manufacturers rush to miniaturize their models to copy them, which resulted in compromised performance and reliability.

Not really. The OM cameras themselves are quite robust.
The quality compromises in the marketplace weren't because of changes in size, they were motivated by the need to minimize price and maximize convenience features to ensure marketability.
Prior to all the market changes that roughly coincided with the OM introduction, SLRs were relatively rare and generally found only in the kits of a very small percentage of committed amateur and professional photographers - most amateurs used box cameras or inexpensive fixed lens cameras.
It was the democratization of the market that the Canon AE-1 brought in that saw the huge switch over to SLRs as the camera of choice for many hobbyist and casual shooters.
The move to a smaller form was the Olympus approach to meet a perceived need in the burgeoning marketplace, while still providing a robust entry designed to service a particular niche - the photomicrography field.
I was selling cameras around that time. People liked the smaller size, but the two factors that most determined what kind of camera they wanted were the price/convenience feature balance vs. the availability of professional support/exotic special purpose lenses. With amateurs generally preferring the former, and professionals emphasizing the latter. And there were far, far, far more customers in the former category.

 

[Paul Howell]

Show me a view camera that has automation at all, and I will eat my words. Today, I use my SRT101's like view cameras. Always on tripods, almost always hand held manual metering with frequent ttl meter checking for comparison. The x700 was clearly designed for hand held use and is no good on the tripod. Particularly the user interface for all the Xseries cameras is cheap and poor. The cutouts for the numbers with adjacent red led's is really poor. Need to point camera at sky to read numbers, which is useless on tripod. Need to point camera and hold meter reading is no good on tripod.

I agree that for landscapes and still lives a 101 work much better than a X700. Then again so does most all mechanical bodies with mirror lock work. The Nikon F is very good as you can use the waist level finder, one of the few uses that a WL finder on a 35mm is useful. I use my X700 for street and the occasional wild life day. On the other hand the Minolta 5 with a 50mm or short zoom is becoming my fav for street. Has both spot and matrix metering, the only thing is lacks is mirror lock up, but even at slow shutter speeds no excessive vibration.

 

[xkaes]

Show me a view camera that has automation at all, and I will eat my words.

Do you prefer crow, raven, jays or magpies? There are large format cameras that have automated focusing, movements, shutter control, etc. Not my style, for sure. Of course their definition of "automated" might not be the same as yours. With some camera gear, "automated" simply means "motorized".

 

[xkaes]

I agree that for landscapes and still lives a 101 work much better than a X700. Then again so does most all mechanical bodies with mirror lock work. The Nikon F is very good as you can use the waist level finder, one of the few uses that a WL finder on a 35mm is useful. I use my X700 for street and the occasional wild life day. On the other hand the Minolta 5 with a 50mm or short zoom is becoming my fav for street. Has both spot and matrix metering, the only thing is lacks is mirror lock up, but even at slow shutter speeds no excessive vibration.

Any of Minolta's SLRs has a kinda, sorta waist-lever finder if used with an angle finder -- call it a "chest-level finder". The Minolta Anglefinder VN has 1X and 2X magnification, and rotates 360° -- very helpful for macro work. It even fits on my Maxxum 5 & α Sweet II -- and Sony digitals!

 

[George Mann]

18 years; likewise also the Mercedes R107 body style. 1971 to 1989. This is the 1989 model.

View attachment 427144

Being a former Mercedes specialist, I owned 3 R107's and modified two of them with my own performance mods.

 

[naaldvoerder]

Show me a view camera that has automation at all, and I will eat my words. Today, I use my SRT101's like view cameras. Always on tripods, almost always hand held manual metering with frequent ttl meter checking for comparison. The x700 was clearly designed for hand held use and is no good on the tripod. Particularly the user interface for all the Xseries cameras is cheap and poor. The cutouts for the numbers with adjacent red led's is really poor. Need to point camera at sky to read numbers, which is useless on tripod. Need to point camera and hold meter reading is no good on tripod.

In the early 90's when I bought my x700, I already had owned two x370's, one of which had failed within only a few years time. At that time, I was doing color photography using 800 speed Fuji film and almost always hand held, so these cameras are fairly good for that. I always hated the cheap UI with those cameras. Today, I shoot like a view camera, like I did prior to the 90's on b/w film so strongly prefer my earlier cameras.

In many ways the Olympus OM cameras ruined 35mm photography, since all the manufacturers rush to miniaturize their models to copy them, which resulted in compromised performance and reliability. Bigger and heavier cameras have advantages on the tripod and are much easier to work on due to the extra space inside. Smaller and lighter is not always the best. It depends on the type of photography you do.

This has nothing to do with ego, it's all about personal experience and opinions. I really do not like the X-series cameras at all, mostly the cheap UI and plasticy feel others allude to. I had three of these, two of which failed after a few years use. The X700 still works. I believe those cheap capacitors were tantalums rather than electrolytic, but I could be wrong.

Another thing I hate about my x700 is that every time I replace the batteries the camera does not work until I clean the contacts again with an eraser. SRT does not do that.

I didn't realise we were talking view camera's. If you want to use your camera like a view camera, I suggest you buy yourself a view camera. Now, you can prefer any camera to any other, for all I care. But do not make up shit, in order to proof your "experience" and "knowledge". I already made you eat a significant part of your words. "Automated view camera" or not, the focus screens in the SRT's are plastic, not glass. And are less bright. Viewfinder coverage is slightly smaller, not bigger. Just acknowledge it, instead of making up new shit. Olympus OM ruined 35mm photography? Really? Only for those who really prefer view camera's I guess.. Olympus OM camera's were an absolute marvel in camera design. Olympus-designer Yoshihisa Maitani drove his people to insanity, demanding so many features in such a small package. And its lenses have a stellar reputation, despite their diminutive size.

 

[Bob Merlin]

The X-570 is newer and more features, per Minolta!