52 rolls, 52 cameras, 52 weeks

Another Minolta this week, in the shape of the X-300 SLR…

I picked this up a couple of years ago needing a repair to the MC coupler around the lens mount, the aperture ring was impossible to turn. A little dismantling found a spring that was attached to nothing in particular and some fiddling and a lot of swearing got it all put back together and the camera seems to work just fine!

I've picked up a couple of the excellent Rokkor lenses in the meantime, the MD 45mm f/2 that appears in the photographs and an MC 28mm f/2.8. The X-300 is a simple manual/aperture-priority automatic SLR that was produced between 1984 and 1990 as a less expensive alternative to the X-500, lacking its off-the-film flash mode, depth-of-field preview button and interchangeable focusing screens.

When I returned to SLR photography in the early 1990s (after a period of using some very uninspiring point & shoot cameras) I bought a Centon DF-300, a Chinese copy of the X-300 made for the UK photographic retail chain Jessops and quite frankly I hated it, quickly getting rid of it in favour of (if memory serves) a Canon EOS 1000FN.

The 'original' X-300 has a much better build quality and a nicer feel to it than the DF-300 and the Rokkor lenses should be noticeably better than the truly horrible Centon zooms that I purchased all those years ago!

Another 35mm SLR this week in the form of the Minolta 7000 AF (also sold as the Maxxum 7000 and α7000).

The Minolta 7000 is regarded by many as being the first real autofocus 35mm SLR camera, hitting the market in February 1985. The Nikon F3AF and Pentax ME F were earlier than this but both required bulky motorised AF lenses to function whereas the Minolta had its AF sensors and focusing drive inside the camera body which allowed much smaller and cheaper lenses to be produced.

I remember a couple of my school friends having Canon AE-1 Program kits and they both regarded autofocus as 'cheating' somewhat… how times change!

The new AF lens mount wasn't initially popular with loyal Minolta users as the existing (and often excellent) MC and MD lenses weren't compatible with it but the company did gain a lot of new customers who liked the convenience and advantages that autofocus offered.

I picked this example up in a charity shop last year, complete with the 50mm f/1.7 lens for £15 and was surprised to find another (much tattier) example in another shop in the same town later that day for three times that price!