Don't flame me for bringing up digital, but ...
If wide angle is your thing then the prime 20mm/F2.8 is well worth a second or third look. Again the MD version is probably the same design and quality Best of all is the price. They can be picked up for about half the price of a Nikon 20/2.8 either manual or AF or AIS versions.
If O/P's body is a 5 or 7 and I think a 3, the Sony A mount 50mm 1.4 will work just fine as will the much more expensive Sigma 50 1.4 art.
I think in the 50mm world of lens, a sleeper is the Sigma 2.8 macro, it is 5 pin and will work with older Minolta bodies as well as the last of the line.
Most of Minolta's MAXXUM lenses were simply adding auto-focusing to their amazing ROKKOR-X lenses. They all had FIVE-YESR warrantees. Their optical designs didn't change. Why should they? Take their 50mm f3.5 macro, for example. It first came out before 1960 -- with a LEICA screw-mount thread. But the optical design was exactly the same in every later Minolta & Maxxum 50mm f3.5 macro.
You can buy the lastest and greatest. You might get a different lens coating. Better? You will get newer parts and more plastic. Minolta -- and others -- made MILLIONS of MAXXUM lenses that you can basically get for free nowadays -- compared to the "latest and greatest". Pick your poison.
If accurate, I found the following site that list most of the useful information about various A mount lens including a few of the Sony follow on. The 50 1.4 in Minolta and Sony version all had 7 elements in 6 elements. There were some changes to the build quality, metal gave way to plastic.
It seems more likely to me they would use the MD (without Rokkor designation) lenses as a basis for the AF lenses, as those were the last manual focus lenses they made, and many were quite different from the earlier Rokkkors, many of them are much smaller.
Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. The body I picked up is the odd looking 7Xi. I am looking for a 9Xi but wanted to try the cheapest I could get to see if I liked the feel of the camera, which I do. Will look out for a 9xi also, now that I know I like the body style and hand fit. Main reason for getting one is to have something fast to use with AF and a compact enough body. The 9 looks lovely but is much taller than the 9XI. Bought a new 800Si before but sold it years back, was a very nice camera, might pick one up again. That is the great thing about the Minolta stuff, you can get it for a song.
Had a Canon EOS3 before for AF but found it just felt oversized on the hand grip, just couldn't get comfortable with it, my T90 feels perfect in the hand compared to the EOS3.
This 7Xi feels really nice in the hand, only thing i'm not sure of is why they put the front control dial at an odd angle, it doesn't feel natural but looking at pictures the 9Xi is at a more natural angle for the fore finger. Not a major issue but .....
Lens wise I will probably stick with 28, 50, 85 and 135 primes. Reason I'm considering the later versions is because they have a lrger manual focus ring, may not use it often but when I want to would prefer something decent to get my fingers around.
I have both the 7 and 9XI, of course the 9 has a very fast top shutter of 1/12000 of a second, good build quality. AF is pretty good, if get a 9xi look for the battery grip so you can use AA batteries. Good reason for the later models. The Minolta primes primes were pretty much the same design, Konica Minolta updated the designs when Sony bought the camera division. I've done some digging, as I am a long time Minolta/Sony A mount user I should have done more research. Not all Sony A mount lens are SSM, this includes some of the Zeiss lens. The one Sony lens I own the Zeiss 25 to 70 is an SSM lens.
I like the si series. In particular, the 600si that has controls like you'd find on a film slr.
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