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!