How Good are Minolta MD-series Lenses?

Nice portrait Wolfeye. Nice Minolta qualities there, bokeh is nice. Minolta made some very good 50mm lenses. Xd 11s are nice though the leather wraps typically need replacing. For my style of photography, I always wished they had a mirror lock-up function but they don't. One of the designs that Leica borrowed on for their R series cameras.

I honestly believe any of the "name" brand cameras are capable of better shots than most of us are capable of making.

Mike

I have won two auctions for Celtic 135mm MD mount lenses before for CRAP glass. Don't even bother.

Wolfeye said:

Just curious, having two X-700's myself, as to what exactly the XD-11 can do that the X-700 can't? Can the XD-11 mount the MD-1 motor drive, or does it have one that can shoot at the MD-1's 3.5fps?

I'm sure many Minolta users would love to hear more about your relationship with Minolta. I'd personally love to know why they left the camera business and why their first DSLR took so long to come out.

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There are few short answers to your questions.

The XD-11 conceptual is different form nearly every camera before or since. The intent was to build a full featured camera specifically designed to meet the real world requirements of a photojournalist focused working pro. A ultra flexible, fast responding, unit with no unnecessary frills added. The result contained invisible but highly appreciated capabilities. Things like balance, response, a near total lack of vibration and shock, minimum of controls, all functions viewable in the finder, and the worlds most sophisticated exposure system were of the most important aspects of the design. A system needed by the folks who shot Kodachrome (II and 64) and of necessity bracketed exposures as a matter of course when a shot really mattered and was static. A very real ease of use issue.The shutter release is electrical and the camera is turned on by touch. There is little or no delay between pressing the shutter release and the actual firing of the shutter, which is also done electrically. Substituting magnets and electronics for gears and springs, there are few mechanical parts to the shutter system, and is controlled by a microprocessor and is dead accurate and repeatable because of this. The action is very soft and impact free, and mirror lock was eliminated as not necessary, and the XK filled that perceived need anyway. Unlike the X-700 the shutter is titanium and runs vertical allowing for a higher flash sync speed. The flash system was intended for high voltage heavy duty use with professional flash systems like Balcar and Broncolor. The ultra useful groundglasses were interchangeable, but not by the user to insure accuracy and to keep the finder sealed from dust and dirt. You ordered your cameras with whatever groundglass you preferred. All were the then revolutionary Minolta accumatt type now standard on Hasselblad and Rollei and almost copied by many others. The all metal structure existed to maximize the robustness of the system and to provide strength and long term integrity which was a major problem for the pro at the time with most cameras regardless of source. (This was a common concern in all top level Minolta cameras from the SR-M forward). Although quite capable of the addition of a motor faster than the 3 frame per 2 second winder which was an intended integral part of the XD-11 design, such a device was never offered since it was contrary to any known need or desire, required a reload after 10 seconds, and was contrary to very concept which was intended to answer, added unwanted weight and bulk, and since there was the XK motor it was totally redundant and wholly unnecessary. Minolta culture demands that a high speed motorized camera is of dubious real world value without a motorized re-wind. My Leica M's were motorized anyway and were almost never taken off the low speed, which turned the motor into a winder, and my opinion was a factor in the final camera.

All this added up to a marketing nightmare. Features that were more subjective and hidden than glaringly obvious. Capabilities understood by users were all but invisible to the prospective customer and remote to posers and the unaware. Strengths intended for folks who thought nothing of putting 20 or more rolls of film through their cameras per day, every day. (about average for a magazine or annual report assignment at the time, I went through a case or more of Kodachrome, I.E. 300 rolls, every month). The person this camera was best suited for rarely if ever even glanced at a consumer photo fan magazine. Worse yet was the fact that this was a highly thought out working photographers tool which looked identical to the other cameras intended for the hobbyist and occasional snapshooter whose single camera lived in a dresser drawer loaded with very forgiving color negative film, and the XD-11 inexplicably cost twice or more as much as the X-700. The only obvious advantage held by the XD-11 was the ability to work perfectly and automatically in any mode, shutter or aperture priority and still provide all info in the viewfinder. This drove the headline bred marketing types to catatonic states. Touchy feeley stuff, subjective realities, bullet proof long term sustainable virtues, and valuable qualities that preserved reputations and income, were incomprehensible in the fierce fiction filled marketplace driven by Pop Photo, payola, quiet money, simple graft, ad space, distributors and Shutterbug.

For those who do not know- Kodak in Fairlawn N.J. picked up from the pro labs in NY in the evening and the film was back late morning the next day. The film was highly predictable for the high volume users since you could specify the emulsion batch you wanted and you could have a film supply devoid of fluctuations for months. This was very important to use since we could go a very long time before we actually saw most of what we shot. One way to infuriate a picture editor was to give them tons of identical images from overuse of motorized film eaters, to wade through (variation was desired, duplication bred hostility, bracketing was an essential accepted evil) as well as becoming a real burden you in terms of constant reloading. A winder met all needs on 99% of assignments. The high speed motorized 250 exposure XK or SR-M rig waited in the corner or trunk with the Hasselblad EL/70 exposure rig for use when needed.

This is getting far to lengthy. There is even more to the story. Suffice it to say. Minolta was very different for the others. It was run by one man, Sam K. from the first year when it sold a total of $25,000 worth of product till the end when it was selling $2 Billion a year. Sam is a great guy by anyones measure and possesses quite a unusual mind for a business person. He is fair and considerate almost to a fault, clever and funny to everyone's surprise. His Minolta like the mothership in Osaka marched to its own different drummer. It was a company driven by product people, all of which had their own personal passion for photography. Even the manufacturing side was driven by passion about what they did. Meeting Minolta people was always a refreshingly different, valuable experience. I was a Nikon (EPOI) stockholder and I personally knew the entire executive hoard. I was a Leica "favored photographer" and had many friends there. I Knew Victor Hasselblad. I knew people at most of the others. Kodak had a photographer and reporter covering me using the first Autofocus Minolta's to shoot the Live Aide concert for Life Magazine. I was very well connected within the photo biz.

The people of Minolta were a breed apart. An entire company driven by photography, light and creativity. Originally family owned, modern corporate precepts were in every way secondary to the mission of understanding, creating, and making things that were distinctive, laudable, original, and worthy of intense pride of accomplishment. A big part of what they did was patents, sub systems and components used by other manufacturers. Retail cameras were almost a second thought to thought itself. (which is what Minolta has resolved to, today). They never seemed to really care about selling cameras, sales numbers, or the dynamics of the marketplace, unlike almost every other Japanese camera company. Only Kyosera, (Contax/Yashica) and maybe Fuji were close to being as extreme as Minolta.

The sales department was a fraction of the size of the other big camera companies. The mission was totally different. Some like Nikon, Konica, Sigma, Pentax were driven by marketing which planned product based on perceived saleability and market control. Sell, sell,sell. Canon, Olympus, Mamiyia by accountants who allowed high quality product based on ultimate profit potential. Produce, produce, produce. Minolta, Contax and parts of Canon and Fuji were driven by research, innovation, the factories, and sheer passion for what they did. Originate. innovate, manufacture.

Minolta culture gave us the XK, XD-11 and ultimately the Maxxum. It also impeded Minoltas' commitment to what we call the DSLR. Minolta was deeply aware of the realities of digital design and the attendant pitfalls. They were the first camera company to embrace them broadly. The groundbreaking, industry defining, Maxxum 7000 was little more than a microcomputer connected to a few magnets and motors, a film transport and a viewing system. It defined SLR camera design for the last 25 years. It began with the XD-11, and the quest to eliminate every mechanical, and tension based subsystem which were prone to wear, aging, inaccuracy and required maintenance, which was the cornerstone of the concept.

The culture abhorred short product life. Nobody wanted to nor would commit to a DSLR product which was market viable for one year (or really even less), which is what we got from Nikon, Canon and Kodak. Even though I love, even till today my Kodak Pro 14n, I knew it was a absurd proposition when new, and it was the only machine even at its $10,000 which even came close to what it could do, and it took 8 manipulated years to achieve better. Minolta could neither produce at a loss or usurp another companies base product just to prove a management goal (blunder), which is what Kodak did. (another very long, very strange, and unfortunately, very ugly story). Pride would not allow the Nikon route, and the result was even worse. There was no way to anticipate the impact a combination of arrogance, hubris, and stupidity combined with mindless corporate greed would have on the global photo world. (Sometimes simply shortened to K.O.D.A.K. but there a lot of others to blame also) Worse yet was the incredible, soulless, Konica marriage which blindly imitated a doomsday cult. Yet in the end, its lateness is in a rational world, debatable, a nice camera has emerged from all this commonly known as the Sony A900 and a great one is about to be thrust upon us. Soon.

Sorry for all the omissions but brevity was necessary...

Fred

For an overview of the various Minolta lenses, their names, designations and differences, see:
www.rokkorfiles.com
http://minolta.eazypix.de/

Awesome read, thank you!

Fred De Van said:

There are few short answers to your questions.
The XD-11 conceptual is different form nearly every camera before or since. The intent was to build a full featured camera specifically designed to meet the real world requirements of a photojournalist focused working pro. A ultra flexible, fast responding, unit with no unnecessary frills added.

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Thank you Fred. That was much more detail than I'd hoped for, and much appreciated. While I am not a heavy user, and am more akin to the "Pop Photo" fanboy than a hardworking pro, I've learned to discern along my way... after Herb Keppler died, I stopped reading Pop Photo altogether. In terms of working speed, with what I do, the viewfinder info is of little importance because I have no time to be changing it anyway, OR I have tons of time and I change them while looking away from the viewfinder anyway. I love the X-700 because it not only works as a great aperture-priority camera, it delivers results I like in program mode. Strap on a motor drive, a PX-TTL flash, and set the data back up to do interval shooting, and I can "shoot" photos of my kids' birthday parties AND actually be at the party, participating. That's the beauty of the X-700 to me. It can do all that stuff, for me. I'm the Pop Photo kinda guy it was designed and marketed for.

Fred De Van said:

All this added up to a marketing nightmare. Features that were more subjective and hidden than glaringly obvious. Capabilities understood by users were all but invisible to the prospective customer and remote to posers and the unaware.
Fred

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Indeed, marketing, as you said, was not Minolta's strong suit. Even so they did rock the world with the Maxxum 7000 and had they stuck it out in the camera business, I think they would have done so again at some point.

Fred De Van said:

The culture abhorred short product life. Nobody wanted to nor would commit to a DSLR product which was market viable for one year (or really even less), which is what we got from Nikon, Canon and Kodak. Even though I love, even till today my Kodak Pro 14n, I knew it was a absurd proposition when new, and it was the only machine even at its $10,000 which even came close to what it could do, and it took 8 manipulated years to achieve better. Minolta could neither produce at a loss or usurp another companies base product just to prove a management goal (blunder), which is what Kodak did. (another very long, very strange, and unfortunately, very ugly story). Pride would not allow the Nikon route, and the result was even worse. There was no way to anticipate the impact a combination of arrogance, hubris, and stupidity combined with mindless corporate greed would have on the global photo world. (Sometimes simply shortened to K.O.D.A.K. but there a lot of others to blame also) Worse yet was the incredible, soulless, Konica marriage which blindly imitated a doomsday cult. Yet in the end, its lateness is in a rational world, debatable, a nice camera has emerged from all this commonly known as the Sony A900 and a great one is about to be thrust upon us. Soon.

Fred

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It's interesting to think of product life being short in the DSLR world, but some of us have relatively long-in-the-tooth DSLRs which we use. I have a Canon 20D that works fine. Takes nice pictures. It only becomes a museum piece to me if I can't get or make a battery, or if CF cards disappear. If I were standing at a Vegas betting establishment and had to bet on film and batteries being around for my X-700 in 20 years or there being CF and batteries for my 20D, I'd be frozen. Wouldn't be able to place a bet. No clue.

The Konica merger was interesting. I have recently started using Konica SLRs and find them, up to and including the FT-1 motor, to be incredible cameras with superb glass. I think they were a lot like Minolta at one time. Driven by quality and innovation. The Autoreflex T-3 is a tank and a marvel. Too bad that by the time of the merger Konica had become something far different.

Thank you again, Fred. I thoroughly enjoyed reading your words and appreciate the time it took.

Wolfeye said:

Indeed, marketing, as you said, was not Minolta's strong suit. Even so they did rock the world with the Maxxum 7000 and had they stuck it out in the camera business, I think they would have done so again at some point.

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Interesting statement about Minolta's marketing. I have heard this before, quite a bit, actually. However, I remember Minolta having a decent market image when I lived in Poland in the 80s and 90s. I am not sure why that was, perhaps they were simply more affordable, as prices of Western goods were outrageous at that time.

I used to own Minolta gear until about 3 years ago when I decided to sell the entire kit. I regret it now, of course . I took my most memorable photos with a Minolta - my infant son shortly after birth.

I figured it out! The only brands that survive are those with two syllable names. Nikon. Canon. Pentax. Sony. Oly.

Don't know if it still exists, but when I owned my Minolta equipment, there was an excellent forum called the Minolta Manual Focus Forum which was a part of Yahoo groups. They had a huge archive of threads and they had some very well informed Minolta enthusiasts. They discussed the strengths of every Minolta manual focus lens, camera and accessory. Not sure if it is still around but may be worth a web search if you are interested in that system.

There are three

john borrelli said:

Don't know if it still exists, but when I owned my Minolta equipment, there was an excellent forum called the Minolta Manual Focus Forum which was a part of Yahoo groups. They had a huge archive of threads and they had some very well informed Minolta enthusiasts. They discussed the strengths of every Minolta manual focus lens, camera and accessory. Not sure if it is still around but may be worth a web search if you are interested in that system.

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There are 3 of them on Yahoo that are good MD sources. In addition to the one you mentioned there's a spin-off group called "uncensored" or something. Then there's also the Minolta X-700 club.

And, as has been mentioned here in this thread, there's www.rokkorfiles.com

aparat said:

Interesting statement about Minolta's marketing. I have heard this before, quite a bit, actually. However, I remember Minolta having a decent market image when I lived in Poland in the 80s and 90s.

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Minolta Germany was the strongest and most vibrant group within the Minolta marketing family. It rocked. The USA marketing unit hardly had enough people to adequately serve New York and had no interest nor will to play the game the way the others did.

Minolta staff were like fixtures. The people who worked there liked working there. Almost no turnover. None of the normal back biting and gripes. It was facinating and comforting to witness. How they did so much with so little, without the tricks and sleaze was an amazement that really frustrated the competitors and made them friends.

Contax was even thinner. They had 3 people, no facilities to speak of and enough spirit for a mob of 50.

The nicest people in the world were to be found at Minolta, Contax, Leica, Fuji, GAF and Ilford. The technical side of Kodak were fairly commendable, but they could not survive their management.

Wolfeye, you are right.

It has been a few years for me on this Minolta stuff as I have been most recently on the Large Format Photography Forum. But the Rokkor files, a great site, did have a link to the forum I was trying to recall. If anyone is interested, It is the Manual Minolta Free Group. There is a link listed at the Rokkor Files. The names I remember that were great contributers, I hope they don't mind me mentioning them by name, include Olaf Ulrich, Ze'ev Kanter and Dave Saalsaa. Hope I'm close on the name spelling. Anyone interested in buying MF Minolta might want to search the archive for these individual's contributions. Hope this info is of some interest to the community.

Please stop talking about Minolta, two days ago I was a happy X-300 user and as of yesterday I officially switched to a XD-11 + 3 lenses. Do I need rehab? Someone please break my internet connection!!

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry9000/4.6.0.167 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102 UP.Link/6.3.0.0.0)

Ain't it funny how we all wind up to be beggars.

As a Doctor of Photography I prescribe you to send it all to me and will be cured until the next time. ;p

jaimeb82 said:

Please stop talking about Minolta, two days ago I was a happy X-300 user and as of yesterday I officially switched to a XD-11 + 3 lenses. Do I need rehab? Someone please break my internet connection!!

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You're going to have a lot of fun. Just don't bid against me on the lenses that I want for myself!

You're lucky!

jaimeb82 said:

Please stop talking about Minolta, two days ago I was a happy X-300 user and as of yesterday I officially switched to a XD-11 + 3 lenses. Do I need rehab? Someone please break my internet connection!!

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My birthday, Father's day, and our wedding anniversary all come in the next month or so, so I have been put on notice that I am NOT to buy myself anything - I can only suggest things as gifts.

I'm jealous!

jaimeb82 said:

Please stop talking about Minolta, two days ago I was a happy X-300 user and as of yesterday I officially switched to a XD-11 + 3 lenses. Do I need rehab? Someone please break my internet connection!!

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The force of G.A.S. strong it is! Resist it do not!

Steve

Ahhhh. Brushed up on your Yoda, you have. But crush a D70 with the power of your mind can you? HMMMM??????????

"But crush a D70 with the power of your mind can you? "

That do I.

After posted that I had.

G.A.S. attack did it.

Now Hasselblad 903 SWC have I!

Resist the Force of G.A.S. must I tho I cannot.

Yield to the Force did I!

Hmmm ...

Steve

I miss my X700. Had the 50mm macro and loved it. traded the minolta stuff for the 801 because of the high eye point (darn glasses ). the minolta glass back in the day was most excelent.

if you are interested i have a x700 in very very new condition ... am not using this lovely camera since a get my hasselblad cx
.... Edison...
batiendo@netscape.net

if you are interested i have a x700 in very very new condition ... am not using this lovely camera since a get my hasselblad cx
.... Edison...
batiendo@netscape.net

So here I am buying old film gear with all the discernment of a magpie lately...but I seem to be coming up with a fair amount pf Minolta lately. This is good, as a X700 was my first "good" camera. We'll ignore the fact that my old Sears/Mamiya 1000MXB outlasted my first X700. I find at a second hand store a new and I mean this thing looked like new X700 with a 500 1.4 lens for $8.50. Easy choice there, and this last couple weeks have produced a XG1 and a SRT102 with a Rokkor-SG 28mm, a nice find for me as I gave most of my Minolta glass away to a photo student friend of my sons when my X700 died. So now you guys bring up the XD-11. At one of the local pawn shops, there is such a beast with a Rokkor-X 50 F2. Sure enough, the leather has shrank away from the edges, and there is a small plastic scale piece wandering loose inside the viewfinder, but otherwise it appears solid. They are asking $40 and a quick "can we do any better" got it to $35. WOuld it be worthwhile to bring a set of batteries to test it out? From what the experts here are writing, the XD-11 would seem to be a must have.

I love pawn shops for film gear. I found a Tamron 200-500mm zoom in one, in the adapt-a-matic Minolta mount. I think I bought that lens by the pound, it's huge, but looking into that big glass eye makes it worth the $125 I paid.

Fred De Van said:

All this added up to a marketing nightmare. Features that were more subjective and hidden than glaringly obvious. Capabilities understood by users were all but invisible to the prospective customer and remote to posers and the unaware. Strengths intended for folks who thought nothing of putting 20 or more rolls of film through their cameras per day, every day. (about average for a magazine or annual report assignment at the time, I went through a case or more of Kodachrome, I.E. 300 rolls, every month). The person this camera was best suited for rarely if ever even glanced at a consumer photo fan magazine. Worse yet was the fact that this was a highly thought out working photographers tool which looked identical to the other cameras intended for the hobbyist and occasional snapshooter whose single camera lived in a dresser drawer loaded with very forgiving color negative film, and the XD-11 inexplicably cost twice or more as much as the X-700. The only obvious advantage held by the XD-11 was the ability to work perfectly and automatically in any mode, shutter or aperture priority and still provide all info in the viewfinder. This drove the headline bred marketing types to catatonic states. Touchy feeley stuff, subjective realities, bullet proof long term sustainable virtues, and valuable qualities that preserved reputations and income, were incomprehensible in the fierce fiction filled marketplace driven by Pop Photo, payola, quiet money, simple graft, ad space, distributors and Shutterbug.

Click to expand...

All that, and yet they couldn't put a leatherette covering on it that wouldn't shrivel up from shrinkage and make this wonderful, superbly functional camera into an eyesore. Seriously, the XD-11 was and is a wonderful camera, one of the very finest ever to come out of Minolta (along with the XE/XE-7 and the CLE - it's companions from Minolta's golden era) And Minolta did fail to adequately market it's virtues.

Thank you, Fred De Van.

Your memories of Minolta and the history associated with them are much more voluminous than mine, but the same quality is there. I remember as a young man attending an IEEE conference in New York City the embarassment I felt upon going to the Minolta people in New York with the SR-1b I had dropped on the stairs in the conference hall, and how pleasant they were, in spite of my transgression with their product. Then, of all things, they had it ready for me the next day to return to the conference. I admit that this did make an impression on that youthful man. It has continued to this day with the most recent 35 mm camera in the group being a Maxxum 9.

By the way, that Maxxum 9 is now in Bremen, Germany, at Runtime receiving the IC-1 chip upgrade that will allow it to work with the most recent Sony SAL lenses. As you mentioned, the guys in Germany were serious about Minolta. That may be one of the deciding factors in why the Sony people released to them the last remaining 200 late specification IC-1 chips with the flexible printed circuit boards for the Minolta Maxxum/Dynax/Alpha 9 camera.

Finally, to show that I have not forgotten the actual topic of this discussion, the Minolta MD lenses are very good. There are some who say that the mechanical construction of the MC lenses are better, but I think everyone agrees that the optical coatings on all of the Minolta lenses continually improved over the years peaking around the time of the MD lenses and following. I say this as someone who now has 19 different focal lengths in the manual focus prime ROKKOR lenses.