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Is your Minolta SRT model looking a little rough? What about your old reliable XD-11? Does it still look pristine? Maybe your XG-7 could use a little refurbishing. If you got an old, but well loved Minolta SLR, you can make into something very special. With a little elbow grease and a replacement leather kit from CameraLeather, you can turn your run-of-the-mill SLR into a one-of-a-kind show camera.

While CameraLeather won’t necessarily make your camera take better photos, it will definitely increase your pride in ownership. I’ve always found that when I value a special instrument, I tend to work harder at getting a result that matches the quality of the tool. So in the end, these kits might just improve the caliber of your photos after all.

Make your classic Minolta a real standout. CameraLeather offers a wide variety of colors and textures as these SRT models demonstrate.

Photo: CameraLeather, used with permission

CameraLeather, as the name implies, offers a line of leather kits that any handy DIYer can use to resurface the grip area on their classic SLR. DSLRs, with their molded, composite bodies probably don’t lend themselves to leather covering. The older metal bodied cameras, on the other hand, are the perfect target for one of these leather kits. Since CameraLeather offers a wide range of colors and styles, you an customize your aging SRT or XD-11 to look better than new. Best of all. the kits are inexpensive, ranging in price from to $10.50 for synthetic materials to $44 for the exotic kid skins. Most of the pre-cut covering kits for 35mm SLRs are less then $20.00. The biggest investment required in the time you invest to remove the old overing and apply the new one.

CameraLeather offers an incredible array of coverings.

Photo: CameraLeather, used with permission

To my mind, these leather coverings evoke an earlier era, when wealthy people would tote beautifully crafted classics with them on far flung-travels. I could imagine seeing one of these aboard the Orient Express or on a trip up the Nile in one of Agatha Christie’s novels. These cameras wouldn’t look out of place in a stateroom on the Titanic, either.

Too British for you? How about a fellow named Gatsby slinging one of these over his shoulder, bound for a day of yacht racing off Newport, Rhode Island. I would think a leather endowed XD-11 would be just his thing.

Ok, enough romanticizing. These leather covered cameras are uber-cool, but are they practical? I don’t want to lock my camera up in a display case — my cameras are for taking photos. How well will these coverings hold up?

That is one of many questions I had for Morgan Sparks of CameraLeather. Following are my questions and the answers provided by Sparks::

How difficult is it to recover Minolta SRT and X series SLRs?

How well does the leather stand up in use? Can someone use the camera regularly without damage from sweaty palms or oily skin?

Has anyone tried your fabric on lens barrels? After long use, some of the rubber grips on my Rokker lenses have stretched or come off completely. It might be interesting to buy a matching fabric sheet and cut it to fit the lens, making the lens and camera match. Impractical? What do you think?

Hmm. This seems like a very interesting project. There are a couple of hitches, however. First, it’s been years since I actually shot film. I still have some of my old SLRs and it might be fun to take one out and play with it now and then, but the film train has pretty much left the station. And she ain’t ever coming back.

Secondly, I am at a loss to think of which of my old SLRs I would want to cover. My old SRTs are pretty well used. They have been dropped, nicked, exposed to all manner of hard use — one has even been run over by an errant race car.

Other metal bodied Minolta SLRs, like this XD11 are also good candidates for the leather treatment..

Photo: CameraLeather, used with permission

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not careless about my equipment, but sometimes getting the shot is more important than keeping the camera in pristine condition. So these scars are a badge of honor as far as I’m concerned. But I’m afraid an immaculate leather covering would clash with the scared metal housing. I would have to distress the leather to make it match — that doesn’t seem like a very good idea.

I do have a mint Minolta SR-7 and I’m sure a leather covering would look great on it. CamaeraLeather doesn’t offer a kit expressly for the SR-7, but it is so close in appearance to the later SRT series that I think I could adapt a SRT kit. If not, CameraLeather sells uncut sheets of the adhesive backed leather so I could go that route and custom make my covering.

But as I said, the SR-7 is in mint, nearly unused condition. It probably isn’t greatly valuable today, but I would guess in the coming years it might be worth something. But it I remove the original hard covering and replace it with leather, the camera probably will not have any real value to a collector. Sigh.

Maybe I could look around for an old XD-11 on ebay. It would lend itself well to the refined look of leather and Minolta made enough of them that they wouldn’t be as much of a collector’s item as the older SR model.

Leather is precut for every supported camera model.

Photo: CameraLeather, used with permission

I wonder what it would be like to shoot film again? I’m going to have to think about that. I would never return to film in place of digital for my professional work…but it might be fun to haul around a leather bound film SLR for family events and the like.

While I’m studying on the problem, if you have a suitable candidate for a leather treatment, check out the CameraLeather website.

If you do try your hand at recovering an old Minolta SLR, send in some photos so I can share with other Alphatracks readers. Who knows, maybe we can spark a revival of classic Minolta SLRs.

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Alphatracks has always been aimed at Sony and Minolta SLR users. Not that there is anything wrong with non-SLR gear, There have been numerous great non-SLR cameras sold under the Sony/Minolta brands. You have to draw the line somewhere, however, and since I have primarily used SLRs, I like to stick to what I know.

I’ve noticed that many readers are somewhat unclear as to which cameras are actually SLRs. Some appear to think it means any camera that uses interchangeable lenses. (Which is not the case.) Others mistakenly apply the term to so-called “bridge” or pro-summer cameras. These cameras typically rely on an electronic view finder (EVF) , which disqualifies them as a dSLR. So what exactly makes a camera SLR?

Shouldn’t that be a MLR?

It’s the instant return mirror (and supporting system) that puts the reflex into a SLR.

Most people know that SLR stands for “single lens reflex,” which in itself is fairly confusing. After all, nearly 100 percent of the SLRs ever produced are designed with an interchangeable lens mount. Shouldn’t these cameras be called Multiple Lens Reflex cameras?

To understand just why we refer to these cameras as single lens units we need to examine a bit of camera history, The early cameras, such as those used by Matthew Bradey during the American Civil War, recorded a single image at a time. The photographer looked through the lens, focused, composed and then inserted the film plate behind the lens to make an image. While the entire process was crude by today’s standards, the photographer enjoyed great control, since he looked directly through the actual imaging lens to compose the shot.

While this was satisfactory for still life, portraits and landscapes, this process did not lend itself to rapid photography. These early cameras could only record one image at a time. Which is why you have never seen a motor-driven view camera.

Realizing the need to offer sequences of exposures, camera makers begin to experiment with various roll-film designs, With a roll of film in the camera, the photographer could fire off continuous images without reloading. While this improved throughput dramatically, it caused another problem. The roll of film had to pass closely behind the camera’s optics, which meant that the photographer could no longer look through the camera lens to design the shot.

Rangefinder cameras appear to keep things in focus

There was no problem with the lower-end consumer roll-film cameras, because these generally used an inexpensive “fixed-focus” lens. Better quality optics require the lens to be focused, however, and as we’ve seen, the photographer couldn’t look through the lens with a roll-film camera. One of the first solutions to this problem was the Rangefinder — a type of camera that offered a distance measuring scale in the viewfinder. By determining the range from the viewfinder, the photographer could then adjust the focus to match — usually with very good results.

Twin Lens Reflex cameras offer another solution

Twin lens reflex used upper lens to focus, lower lens actually took the photo.

While the rangefinder type cameras worked well, the camera industry is always evolving. A second method of allowing the photographer to focus and compose appeared in the “Twin-Lens Reflex” cameras. These cameras used two identical lenses, arranged one on top of the other in the manner of an over-and-under shotgun. The film winds past the lower lens, while the photographer can focus through the upper lens. Since most of the twin-lens cameras were fairly bulky, designers added a mirror and ground glass to the top of the camera, hence the term “reflex.

Now the user could hold the camera at waist level and look down at the ground glass which previewed the image via the mirror behind the upper lens. As the user adjusted the focus on the upper lens, a gear mechanism moved the lower “taking lens” to match.

While both rangefinders and twin-lens cameras offered a credible way to focus and preview a shot, neither allowed the photographer to look directly through the imaging lens. This made exact composition difficult in certain situations.

SLRs take cameras another step forward.

Cut-away view shows the light path through a typical SLR. Light enters through the lens, hitting the lower mirror, where it is reflected upwards. It then strikes the top of the prism, where it is reflected again to strike the front of the prism. It is reflected yet a third time to pass through the viewfinder.

In their quest to allow users to see through the actual “taking” lens, camera makers turned to the periscope — a simple device using two mirrors placed at opposite angles to bend the light path. Periscopes are easy to understand — any kid can construct one from a couple of mirrors and some scrap wood. In a camera, the lower mirror is placed at a 45 degree angle directly behind the lens. Light striking the mirror is projected upwards to a ground glass. A pentaprism, which contains two additional mirrors, is located behind the viewfinder. The prism is used to flip the image so it can be viewed “right-side up”

There is just one hitch. If you’ve been paying attention, you no-doubt realized that the lower mirror blocks the light path to the film (or digital sensor as the case may be.) Now the photographer can look though the lens, but the image can’t be projected on to the film plane.

So the camera designers had to add another wrinkle. They had to move that mirror. Just long enough to make an exposure, since when the mirror moved, the photographer couldn’t see anything through the lens. So they designed the “instant-return” mirror.

At the instant of exposure, the mirror flies upward, the shutter opens, closes and the mirror snaps back down. It is a incredible feat, when you consider that instant return mirrors have to flip up and back in a heartbeat, over and over for the life of the camera.

Once the instant return mirror was perfected, photographers could once again design their images by looking through the lens. Unlike the twin lens reflex, this new breed of camera needed only one lens to focus and shoot with. So they became known as… you guessed it…. Single-Lens Reflex cameras.

Digital SLRs work exactly the same way — the same reflex system of mirrors and prism is used in front of a a digital sensor instead of film.

For further reading:

Wikipedia SLR page>

How Stuff Works – Single Lens Reflex

Images on this page published under the GNU Free Documentation License.

SLR Cutaway derived from image provided by:
Juhanson

Rolleiflex Twin Lens Reflex provided by
Jean-Jacques MILAN/Photographie – 40

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Hey! Need a user manual for your SRT101? Or maybe for an old XG-M? Your father in-law gave you his old Maxxum 800si, but you’re unsure how to use it? Look no further than the original source.

I get lots of questions from users asking about manuals. “Where can I get a manual for my Minolta (insert camera model here) ? Since almost any Minolta you acquire will be pre-owned, there is a good chance it will be missing that all important manual.

Many people don’t realize that Konica-Minolta still maintains an excellent collection of original user manuals at the KM support site. Even though KM has exited the camera manufacturing business, they haven’t taken their manuals and software offline. Thus, as this is written (August 2007), you can still find downloadable manuals for almost all of KM’s digital cameras, as well as the majority of AF models. If you are lucky, you will even find a manual for your forty year old manual-focus SLR at the site.

The downloads are free, so if you need a manual for any Minolta camera, scanner, printer, etc. this is the first place to look.

Of course there is always the chance this resource might disappear at some point, and not every Minolta model is represented. If you can’t locate what you need at the KM site, the following sites offer various collections of user manuals.

http://www.vikenk.com/minolta_manual.htm

A fairly comprehensive collection of user manuals covering the Maxxum A-mount and the earlier Minolta manual cameras. There are also some accessory manuals. Most of the manuals are available for free download, although to conserve bandwidth the site requires you to request some of the more obscure items. Viken also sells some Minolta service manuals

http://www.geocities.com/eskoufos/fmm.html

Another great Minolta manual collection. I have used this site in the past and found everything I was looking for. The site offers auto and manual SLR users guides, as well as rangefinders, individual lens manuals, even some free service manuals.,

http://www.kyphoto.com/classics/repairmanuals.html

Site offers free service materials, including four pages of SRT101 disassembly drawings.

http://www.rokkorfiles.com/Manuals.htm

In addition to tons of information about the Minolta manual focus cameras, the Rokkor Files also offers a large selection of scanned Minolta instructions and guides. You can download the PDFs for free, but Andy also has a number of original paper factory manuals for sale.

http://www.ephotozine.com/equipment/manuals/Minolta/64

Lots of scanned manuals covering scanners, flash guns, lenses and of course, cameras.

http://www.photobooksonline.com/books/userbk12.html

The manuals on this site aren’t free, but you’ll find lots of stuff that you won’t see anywhere else. Instead of online PDFs, this site offers reprints of the original paper manuals. They have a large collection, some of it predating the Minolta SLRs, including Autocords and folding Minoltas.

http://www.camerabooks.com/category.aspx?categoryID=1187

Another site selling original instruction manuals. Obviously, the available manuals will vary.

http://www.micro-tools.com/pdf/Minolta/index.html

Great site for free parts manuals. It covers mostly the Konica-Minolta digital stuff, although I did see the Maxxum 5, 7 and 9 film SLRs listed. Sorry, the Maxxum 5D and 7D don’t appear to be available here.

http://www.retrevo.com/samples/Konica-Minolta-manuals.html

This site focuses on electronics, and as such offers lots of printer and scanner manuals. You will find most of the Dimage series camera manuals as well.

Maxxum Dynax AF Lens Repair Manual CD

Pete Ganzel is the original Minolta hacker — he is responsible for a number of incredible Minolta upgrades and mods. Ganzel sells a CD entitled the Minolta Maxxum Dynax AF Lens Service Repair Manual Mini CD, which covers most of the popular Minolta a-mount lenses. The $24.00 CD features 693 pages of information along with hi-res exploded parts diagrams. A must it you are into repairing or modding you Minolta AF lenses.

http://www.tradebit.com/filedetail.php/830435

A site selling a download of a 190 page service manual for the X-700. I haven’t seen it, but if i had a sick X700, I would consider it.

This is only a sampling, but I hope it helps those looking for information on their old, out-of-production cameras. If you know of any other manual sites that shoul be listed here, leave a comment so I can add it to the list.

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Part 1 of the Alphatracks Minolta/Sony SLR lens guide

Second only to questions about vertical grips for the Sony Alpha A100, the most numerous Alphatracks searches involve lenses. Questions like “Can I use old Minolta lenses on Sony A100?” are frequent. Intriguingly, I have even gotten questions like “Will my new Sony lenses fit on my dad’s old X700?”

Confusion reigns when photographers, especially those new to the dSLR scene, attempt to sort out which Minolta lenses fit which camera. Minolta produced SLR lenses from the 1950s until 2006 — and Sony is still selling re-branded versions of some of the more popular Minolta glass. That is a heck of a lot of lenses. Those new to the world of SLRs hear that the A100 will accept Minolta lenses, so they can be forgiven if they expect an old MC lens from 1972 to attach to the A100. Conversely, there are brand new A100 owners who are doubtful that recent A-mount Minolta lenses will work on their camera.

This will be a three part series focusing on lens options for Minolta SLRs, as well as the KM and Sony dSLRs. I’m not going to explore any particular lens — instead I will delve into the different lens mounts and attempt to dispel some of the confusion.

First up, the Rokkor SR, MC and MD lenses.

Minolta — or at least the company we know as Minolta — had a long history producing cameras long before the era of SLRs. After making a variety of rangefinders and the famous Autocord Minolta the the plunge and entered the SLR ranks. The first Minolta SLR, oddly enough, was known as the the SR2, even though it was released before the SR1 model.

Both these SLRs introduced the Minolta designed, three blade bayonet mount. Introduced in 1958, the Minolta mount was superior to most competing contemporary SLR lens mounts. At the time, many competitors still relied on the old-style screw mount. Most SLR makers ended up redesigning their lens mounts to keep up with technology — but the Minolta mount was so well designed that the camera maker was able to consistently update their technology while still keeping backwards and forwards compatibility between cameras and lenses.

The original SR mount lenses were “stop-down” lenses, meaning you had to manually close down the lens to the aperture you wanted. In theory you would focus wide-open, then stop the lens down to make an exposure.

By the time the Minolta SR7 arrived is 1962, Minolta and others had figured out ways to allow the camera to automatically stop the lens down to the correct f-stop. In Minolta’s case, you could focus wide open, then when you pressed the shutter, a rod would cause the lens to close down to the f-stop you had set. As soon as the exposure was finished, the lens would open up again to provide a bright view finder.

The first “MC” lens appeared with the original SRT101 in 1966. This was the first SLR to offer through-the-lens metering. Minolta added a tab to the lens to allow the camera to tell which f-stop the photographer had set. Minolta dubbed these lenses MC for “meter-coupled.” It utilized the same SR lens-mount — but the MC lenses had the extra tab.

Many MC lenses featured a depth of field preview button. It was redunant, because nearly every Mnolta SLR of the era featued a DOF preview. The DOF lever disappeared from the MD lenses.

It is important to understand that, despite the rapid change and improvements, virtually all Minolta lenses would fit on any Minolta SLR. Of course you needed a MC lens if you wanted to meter with an SRT, but you could use the older SR lenses in manual mode on the SRT. At the same time, you could use a MC lens on a SR series camera with no side effects. There wee a couple of very specialized lenses that might need slight modifications to work properly, but virtually all SR and MC lenses were fully interchangeable.

This happy state of affairs continued as Minolta introduced the improved SRT102. I don’t have any accurate production figures, but in the mid-seventies, Minolta claimed their main lens factory was cranking out 40,000 lenses a month. Add in specialty lenses produced elsewhere, and it appears Minolta was producing nearly a half million MC lenses per year.

The Minolta SLR system, circa 1975. Taken from an old Minolta marketing piece, this probably shows the Rokkor-X lens lineup, as the XK, the SRT 102, the SRT 101 and the SRM motordriven camera are shown. The XK used Rokkor X (MC) lenses. The MD lenses wouldn’t be introduced for another two years. Sadly, with the exception of the filters, copy stands and ambient light meters, almost nothing shown in this photo can be used directly on any current dSLR.

Minolta’s first electronic shutter cameras

1973 saw the first Minolta with an electronic shutter, the legendary (and expensive) XK. This was followed up quickly with the more affordable XE-7 and XE-5. All three of these cameras offered a new option for Minolta shooters. In addition to shooting manually (the only option with previous Minolta SLRs), the new X series camera now offered an aperture priority setting. A photographer could select an f-stop and the camera would set a shutter speed that would provide the proper exposure. The Minolta engineers were able to make this work with no changes to the MC lens mount. So once again you could use all Minolta lenses on the new cameras in manual mode. If you wanted to use aperture priority, you needed an MC lens.

At first, I was a little disappointed that my new XE-7 only offered aperture priority since I was shooting auto racing full time and a fast shutter speed was of major importance to me. I quickly found out that I was worrying about nothing, as I could just rack the aperture ring back and forth to cause the camera to set the shutter speed I wanted. Still, at the tme, I didn’t understand why Minolta didn’t offer a shutter priority option. The reason was simple. The camera had no way to adjust the aperture with an MC lens. So you couldn’t select a shutter speed and have the camera set the aperture to the correct exposure.

1977: the XD-11 and the first MD lenses

The two tabs on the aperature ring indicate this is a MD lens. The first tab is located near the green f22 marking, while the MD tab can be seen near the orange 50-135 marking.

Always thinking toward the future, the Minolta engineers solved the shutter priority puzzle in 1977, They released the XD-11 — the world’s first SLR that offered a choice of either Aperture or Shutter priority (as well as manual) modes. In order to bring off this magic, however, they had to make a slight change to Minolta lenses. Nothing drastic. Just a small tab added to the aperture ring. With this small change the XD-11 and subsequent X700 variants could stop down or open the lens when in shutter priority mode. Since this lens was designed for a dual mode camera, Minolta adopted the name MD for these dual mode lenses.

The original SR lens mount was now nearly twenty years old, but full compatibility was still maintained. You could attach the new MD lenses to an old SR2 or you could use any old SR or MC lenses on your new XD-11. Of course you couldn’t use the old lenses in shutter priority mode, but you still could shoot in aperture priority or manually.

The X700, released in 1981, was Minolta’s first Program mode camera — it could set both f-stop and shutter speed when in the program setting. This required no changes to the lens mount or lenses. You could use any MD lens in program mode. You could still use the older lens as well — with the same aperture or manual limitation.

Auto focus — death knell for the Rokkors

Finally, in 1985, advances in camera design finally caught up with the famed Minolta lens mount. That year, Minolta introduced a full system of automatic focusing cameras. It was a major advancement, and placed Minolta well ahead of all other camera makers. To bring this off, however, Minolta had to drastically redesign their lens mount for the first time. Even the wizards at Minolta couldn’t find enough space in the X-mount to incorporate autofocus.

Almost all of the original Minolta lenses were identified as Auto Rokkor while the MC lenses carry the legend Rokkor-X. The early MD lenses also carried the Rokkor-X designation, but the name disappeared along the way. Even Minolta’s economy Celtic line carried the MC marking.

The new Maxxum A-mount spelled the end of backwards compatibility. The X-mount lens opening was too small to allow for the various sensors and contacts required for the electronic focusing components. So the A-mount was born, with a larger opening and electronic connections to replace many of the X-mount’s mechanical workings. The two mounts look similar, but the lenses are not interchangeable between the systems.

Contrary to popular belief, however, the introduction of the A-mount did not spell the end of the X-mount. Minolta continued to produce variations of the X700 and X-570 cameras for many years after the introduction if the Maxxum and the A-mount. I was quite shocked to see that Minolta still offered the X700 in it’s product line in 2000, some fifteen years after the introduction of the A-mount.

That means you cannot use a timeline to identify whether a lens will fit the A-mount dSLRs. A Minolta lens purchased in, say 1996, is probably a A-mount, but could very possibly be an X-mount.

In addition, that also means that there is a huge amount of older SR, MC and MD glass out there, some of it fairly new. No wonder there is so much interest in using these great old lenses on modern dSLRs.

There are options to use the Rokkor lenses on the A-mount and other cameras — with some severe restrictions. We’ll discuss that in part three. Before we get into that, however, we need to explore Minolta’s (and Sony’s) A-mount lenses.

While I used my own experience and my collection of old Minolta literature to assemble this article, I did use some other Minolta-related websites to check some facts and dates. If you want to delve deeper into Minolta manual lenses, try Minman at http://members.aol.com/manualminolta/. You’ll find a wealth of information about manual-focus Minolta cameras and lenses. Another excellent source is Peter Blaise Monahon’s website at http://www.geocities.com/peterblaise/minoltamf/. Either of these sites should provide you with all the info you want on the SR, MD and MC lenses.

Next time we will look at the A-mount and which Minolta lenses fit the Alpha dSLRs.

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A while back, I wrote about the Rokkor Files — an excellent site about manual focus Minolta cameras. While there is a wealth of good information on the site, there was one page that troubled me. Site owner Antony Hands offered an in-depth preview of the Seagull D55 — a new digital camera built with Minolta’s manual focus lens mount. Thus, anyone with a stockpile of Rokkor X lenses would have an upgrade path into the digital universe. Sound the trumpets or something.

There was just one problem — there is no Seagull D55 planned. It was all an elaborate April Fools day hoax.

It is a really, really well done hoax, however. There are photos of the prototype, complete specs of the proposed dSLR and a review of how Seagull came to build a new manual focus dSLR.

I have to admit, I was taken in for the first part of the article. It was entirely plausible, since the Chinese Seagull camera company had produced several film SLRs with the Minolta MD manual focus mount. There are thousands of excellent Minolta MD lenses out there, many of which you can pickup for a song on ebay. The idea that a Chinese company might just offer a dSLR that could take advantage of all those MD lenses makes a certain kind of sense. A manual focus dSLR? Why not?

As I continued through the detailed review, I stated to get the idea that something was fishy. I switched to another browser tab and googled Seagull camera. I found several references, but no mention of any D55. I returned to the Rokkor Files, already suspecting the worst. I clicked on the supposed distributor link at the bottom of the link and immediately got the “Aprils Fools” message.

So I was had. But only for a short while. It was amusing, but it bothered me that it was too good of a hoax. I suspected that a lot of people might read the article, but never click on the link that informed them it was a joke. They might go away thinking that the Seagull D55 might appear in the near future.

Antony Hands isn’t the first blogger to plan an elaborate April Fool’s Day prank. Even the more traditional media outlets sometimes engage in this sort of thing. Many years ago, a major computer magazine published a tech tip claiming that you could improve the data transfer speed of your hard drive by disassembling it and spraying the platter with Lemon Pledge. It was, of course, a April Fool’s day prank. I wasn’t fooled, because I knew that you needed a Class A clean room to safely open a hard drive. The magazine, however gave no indication that it was a prank — readers just had to figure it out from the April issue date. No doubt most people did, but it bothered me that some people might just take the article at face value. Would someone really be naive enough to take apart their hard drive and coat the platter with Lemon Pledge? The magazine in question was highly valued for their excellent technical advise and at that time most people were fairly unsophisticated about computer technology. I’m fairly certain that somewhere, someone acted on the magazine’s advise and destroyed a perfectly-good hard drive and all it’s data. Probably more than one someone.

So I wasn’t totally comfortable with the Rokkor Files prank. Some people would be so taken in by the hoax that it might affect their purchasing decisions. When I mentioned the Rokkor Files in my earlier post, I made a point of warning readers to check the date the story about the Seagull D55 was filed. I didn’t want to spoil Antony’s hard work, but I didn’t people going off thinking that Seagull was actually developing a camera that would support their lens collection.

I had pretty much forgotten about the mythical Seagull D55 until today, when I checked my server logs. I had recently been visited several times by someone who had been searching on Google for the Seagull D55. Since I had posted my somewhat cryptic warning on Alphatracks, gogglebot had indexed that term and sent several readers to my blog. Curious, I opened a new Google search and typed “Seagull D55″. I got several pages of results.

Some of these were well-known sites that apparently used the Rokkor Files story as the source for their own news story. There were also numerous posts to forums and discussion groups as people eagerly speculated when the D55 would be available.

I can’t fault people for falling for this story. It was plausible, the images and specifications looked real and the April Fool punch line was fairly obscure. Still some of these web sites should have done some homework before jumping on the story.

For the last time. There is no Seagull D55. It is a myth.

Of course, the fact that this hoax has spread so far on the web does indicate that there is lots of interest in using older Rokkor X lenses on a dSLR. There is a rare adapter that will allow you to use MD lenses on a Minolta AF lens mount — which would include the Sony A100. These show up on ebay now an then — but they usually end up selling for a couple hundred dollars. The Rokkor Files also has an in depth article about a real solution for using MD lenses on a digital camera. A company called Cameraquest offers an adapter that will mate Minolta MD lenses to an Olympus four-thirds dSLR, such as the E300. This isn’t hoax, but it isn’t inexpensive since you need a fairly recent Olympus dSLR and the Cameraquest adapter. Still if you absolutely need a digital option for your manual focus Minolta lenses, this might be the best option. I intend to look into this more fully in a future post.

Of course if someone at Seagull is paying attention to all that traffic clamoring for the non-existent D55, they would be smart to produce such an animal. If Seagull — or any other manufacturer were to provide an affordable dSLR that accepts Rokkor MD lenses — it is apparent they wouldn’t have to search very far for customers.

Until next time, stay focused! — Tom

Rokkor Files – Seagull D55

Rokkor Files Cameraquest adapter page

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In my previous discussion on how I came to shoot with Minolta, I explained how I started toting my dad’s old Wirgin stereo camera until I out grew it’s capabilities. I was taking an advanced darkroom class and my mentor suggested I pick up a nice Pentax.

On his suggestion, I headed off to Adray’s intending to buy a Pentax SLR. In those days, Adray Appliance in Dearborn was THE place to buy camera equipment in the suburban Detroit area. There were some other good camera stores in downtown Detroit, but Adray’s owned the western Detroit suburban camera market. The only place I saw that offered better camera selection and prices in that era was New York City. And Adray’s approached even that.

It took me less than thirty seconds to determine I wanted nothing to do with the Pentax SLRs. The tiny pentaprism looked like a toy to my eyes and the whole feel of the camera seemed toy-like. Even worse, at that time Pentax had yet to offer their K-bayonet mount. The idea of a screw-mount SLR camera just didn’t fit my idea of a serious camera for travel and adventure. I knew I would be doing a lot of shooting in the outdoors, in wilderness conditions. Cross-threading or getting sand and dirt in the screw-mount threads seemed inevitable with the use I had planned.

My new friend behind the counter, sensing a sale, suggested a Nikon — I don’t remember the model. Now, many Nikon owners are known to be fanatical about their cameras, feeling that Nikon is a step above anything else. If you are one of those, why not do us both a favor and stop reading right about now. You probably don’t want to hear what I have to say.

I hated that Nikon. It was bulky and square-cornered and heavy as a brick. In fact that was it felt like — a brick with a flat pentaprism and a lens stuck to it. On top of that, my sales friend explained that I would have stop down the lens to meter correctly. To be fair, Nikon has produced some excellent cameras and their current crop of dSLRs seem to have excellent ergonomics. Too bad the current engineers weren’t around in that era to prevent Nikon from producing bricks. Maybe I would have gone with a Nikon back then. As it was, I knew i would never be happy with that Nikon.

I asked my sales-friend what else he had. “Well, there is the new Minolta SRT102,” he replied. He handed me the demo model and that was all he had to do to make the sale. Unlike the Nikon, the 102 felt good in my hands. The controls were extremely well laid-out, and the view finder was bright and clear, No stop-down metering here. The SRT102 could meter at full aperture.

In all, I felt the Nikon was an old farm truck, while the SRT102 was a sports car. I was sold. “Write it up,” I told the counter guy.

Amusingly enough I recently read the comments of a Nikon lover who claimed that the Minolta SRT series was ergonomically flawed compared to Nikon because the meter on/off switch was on the bottom of the camera. I would certainly prefer living with the SRT’s bottom mounted meter switch over the bulky, sharp-cornered Nikon any day. The only time the bottom switch caused any problem was when the camera was on a tripod or equipped with a flash bar that attached to the tripod socket. In these cases, the meter switch could be inaccessible. Even this was never much of a problem, primarily because the SRT102 was an all manual camera with a mechanical shutter. This meant the only thing the battery had to do was power the meter, so there was little battery drain. My usual procedure was to turn the meter on when I first brought the camera out of the case. I would then leave it on for as long as the shoot lasted — which might be all day when I covered major racing events. Then I would turn off the meter when I put the camera away for the day. Following this procedure, I usually replaced the battery once a year — whether it needed to be or not. Hardly seems to be much of an ergonomic problem — especially when the rest of the camera handled so well.

Unlike today, it wasn’t all that common to own a SLR in that era. To be sure, many amateurs and well-to-do folks owned SLRs and range-finders but it was much less common than today. The Minolta SRT and the rest of the offerings of that era were metal bodied cameras with mechanical shutters. In another decade, plastic bodies and less-expensive microchip controlled shutters would allow camera makers to slash the price of a SLR to the extent that they were affordable by even casual users. Today, you’ll find dSLRs in the hands of casual shooters as well. In the early seventies, SLRs were priced beyond the reach of most people. Even among those who could afford the sticker price, the idea of spending “that” much cash on a camera just didn’t seem practical.

There was second reason the average Joe (or Jill) avoided SLR cameras. They were perceived as difficult to operate — requiring a skilled expert to use properly. Only trained photographers knew how to operate a SLR. Of course this was a myth — early seventies SLRs were far easier to use than the dSLRs of today. But today’s cameras have auto exposure, auto focus, auto ISO (ASA back in the seventies), auto white-balances, auto x-ray vision. Okay, I made the last one up, but you get the idea. The older manual SLRs didn’t really require a PHD in Photographic Studies to operate — but many people assumed they did.

I remember the time I was photographing an auto race for a national publication. One of the racers that I knew casually approached me about some photo work he needed, He looked over my SRT102 equipped with a side grip flash and external battery pack. Shaking his head, he exclaimed “Man, how did you ever learn what all those dials and buttons are for? I couldn’t even begin to know how to use that thing!”

The hilarious thing was, this same man built racing engines for a living. Here was someone who understood all the intricate details of assembling a race engine to the finest tolerances and how to tune it to get the maximum power — yet he assumed my SLR was too difficult for him to use!

The SRT series was simple to use and required far less thumbing through the owner’s manual then any auto-everything film or digital SLR available today. Yet the older cameras were thought to be difficult to use, while almost anyone assumes they can use a dSLR. After all dSLRs are “automatic.”

I guess that’s what you call progress.

I’ll talk more about the SRT102 in the next post. Until then, stay focused! — Tom

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If you happen to be a devotee of classic Minolta SLRs, you need to check out the Rokkor Files at http://rokkorfiles.com. It is a fairly new site but there is a lot of great information about manual focus Minolta SLRs, including owner’s manuals, brochures, and even a a great article about using Minolta manual focus lenses on the Olympus E series digital cameras! I like the site because it is clean and attractive…with lots of photos of classic Minoltas. One caveat…If you are holding on to a fist-full of Rokkor lenses, be sure to look at the date that the article about the Seagull D55 digital camera was filed…before you get too excited.

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