I think the number of cameras you have is just perfect :-) Like you said, it wasn’t too long ago that you could pick them up for $20-30. I got serious about acquiring working bodies about 10 years ago. It’s a lot of fun! I do have a soft spot for Minolta cameras, though, as my first “real” camera was an X-700. And while some of those expansion cards are a bit gimmicky, the multi-spot adds true functionality. It’s like a secret weapon. Thanks for watching!

But now I’VE learned that, so thanks for passing that tidbit on 😁 I’m surprised it survived the dunk in the first place. I wouldn’t have expected that. But good on them!

Many thanks! And, yep, Minolta had some great ones. My first “real” camera was an X-700, so I’ve always been a fan.

Thanks so much! Yes, I agree that Minolta doesn’t get the love they deserve - especially for their autofocus bodies and lenses. I’m as guilty as anyone for that, though. My first “real” camera was an X-700 that I just loved. But when autofocus hit, I knew I’d need to evolve toward a new system. And the Canon autofocus was much faster than the original 7000. So, I jumped brands and never gave Minolta’s AF gear a second thought. As a matter of fact, it took me until I did the video on the 7000 to really appreciate them for what they were. NOW, I have my eyes set on a Maxxum 7 at some point!

AF cameras were evolving by leaps and bounds back then. And the “i” series Minoltas were some of the best of the time!

“Swedish postal worker”….lol. Thanks for the insight regarding the newer lenses. And thanks for the 800si tip. That camera is such a unique design because of the huge, concealed prism flash. I recall it was a controversial design when it came out. I have wanted to try one, though. So, I’ll continue to leave it on my wish list! Many thanks!

Many thanks! I picked these “i” cameras up after having such a blast with my 7000 (after not giving that camera ANY credit for 30 years). I severely mis-judged it. But for some reason, the 9000 just continues to underwhelm me. Early in my career, my boss had one that I shot occasionally - and I recently picked one up to try again - but it just doesn’t “speak” to me. I do have a 9xi, though, that does feel good in the hand and in operation. ONE day, I’d love to try the Maxxum 9, but I think I’d be better served by getting the Maxxum 7. But you’re correct. It’s never too late! Thanks for watching!

Awesome to hear from another member of the “Minolta Club”. You’re right about the SRT series. They accomplished that with two separate metering cells. Very innovative for such an early use of TTL metering - and another reason I’m so fond of those SRTs! I knew that at least a few of the cards were “Xi -specific”. Besides the Custom Function, are there others that you know of?

@@vintagecameradigest my camera manual doesn’t list xi only cards, but it does say the A/S card is non-compatible, which makes sense considering it’s standard on the main camera.

That’s a fancy-sounding name for sure :-) Other’s have mentioned the 800si as one of the best of the lot. Although it is a bit odd-looking with that huge pop-up flash concealed in the pentaprism housing. I’ve eyed them for the past couple of years but haven’t hit the “buy” button on one yet. Maybe soon, though!

They’re still relatively inexpensive. The lenses are higher, as you found, due to the compatibility with Sony. Didn’t realize there may be an issue with how you remove one of the cards. But, it’s certainly plausible. Thanks for watching!

That rubber stuff is the worst. I’ll put these bodies up for a month or so, and the next time I pull them out the grips will be chalky. Luckily it rubs off easily with a microfiber cloth. But, yeah, they’ll completely fall apart one day. They’ll still work, of course. Just won’t be too pretty. That’s a great price on that kit, btw! Enjoy!

The plastic breaking seems to have been quite common on many cameras from the 80s. But the white stuff on the rubber is easily fixable though! It will come of if you just use it a lot and another way that works is using q-tips and rubbing alcohol or hand sanatizers on the rubber. I've done that on many a lens now and they do get much better :)

Good tip! I know that rubbing alcohol will also work - sometimes - for removing the “stickiness” from the rubber deterioration. If a camera is really afflicted with it - past the point of alcohol - you can make a paste of baking soda and water and use it as an abrasive. Takes some elbow grease and makes a bit of a mess BUT it will work. I think this became an even worse problem in the 90s. Nikon F90 and N80 are notorious examples of this, too.

Thank you all for your tips! I will try it!

Excellent! I’ll be checking that out. Thanks for watching!

Glad you enjoyed it! And many, many thanks!

I’m not totally sure that’s what the issue was, but the video got hung up in “copyright check” stage for about 10 hrs yesterday. So, I just cut as much of the background out that I could and re-uploaded. Still took a lot longer than usual, but at least this time it cleared. Who knows.

Thanks for watching!

Thanks for watching! The 7 is definitely on my wish list!

I promise that you’ll love it!

That’s what I hear

Oh, wow, I despise those burned in date things, lol! Well, I wouldn’t have known that about the battery in the film door, either. But now we both do! 😁 I can certainly relate to sticking to the manual gear for the most part. At one point I considered these “too modern” but, uh, it’s been 35 years, so…I guess they’ll do. Btw - what lens do you have on yours? They all tend to be pretty affordable, unless you’re looking at the 85 1.4 or something crazy like that. It does sound like yours is missing a tooth. But I do encourage you to give it another try. I don’t have any experience with that particular model, but I’m sure it’s not much different from either of these.

From the results that I’ve gotten with it, I generally like the film. The price-point can’t be beat. And I’m pleased with the grain and color. It doesn’t seem to be as contrasty as Ektar. I don’t think I’d choose it over Portra for portraits and such, but it’s a very decent 100 ISO film. As for the expansion cards - one that I really want to experiment with is the Fantasy Effect card. It actually de-focuses the image slightly during exposure to produce a sort of soft-focus effect. That seems a bit gimmicky, but could be fun. I have plans to do a bit more coverage of the cards. This episode got a bit long, so I opted not to include all that here. Thanks for watching!

Ok, so I checked out the 7000i. If you remove the lens and look at the lower right on the lens mount (facing you) there is a small screw that engages with the focusing mechanism of the lens. When the camera is set to AF, that screw protrudes slightly from the mount. When set to Manual, it retracts. So if the screw drive stays retracted even after moving the switch, it’s a camera issue. If its not retracted, and the lens still doesn’t AF, then it’s a lens issue. Hope this helps. Let me know what you find.

@@vintagecameradigest you are a genius just looked at it isn’t making contact with the lens hence why not switching to AF!! It must have a faulty spring as doesn’t come out enough! Thank you

Glad I could help but sorry you have a faulty camera. That stinks.

Two different generations for sure, but both great Minoltas!

Sorry for the delayed response. After taking all the readings (and you don’t have to do 8 but whatever you need), the LCD displays the last spot taken, “Spot 8” for instance. If you press the shutter halfway, the display changes to the shutter/aperture setting that’s been computed.

@@vintagecameradigest Ok thanks. I am going to shoot some portraits in some tricky situations and I’m going to introduce off camera flash on some of the scenarios. I’ve been wanting to do an OCF video with film.

Can’t wait to see that. I’ve been intending to do some portrait shoots with some of these cameras. Hope to get around to that soon!

Thanks! That’s an interesting idea…probably several ways I could go about that. These are scans from my lab and not the very highest resolution. And of course I’m further scaling them down to fit the video resolution. But I can certainly see how high-res versions could be helpful to viewers. Let me play around with a couple of options. I’ll add a link for sample images in the video description once I work out the best way. Thanks for the excellent suggestion!

Per your suggestion I've added a gallery of "better" resolution samples from this shoot. Link is in the video description. Thanks for the suggestion. It only makes sense to do this, and I'm not totally sure why I've not thought about it before. As I mentioned, these are standard lab scans - so they're not extremely high res, but they're a LOT better than video resolution. Now, I'll probably go back and do the same for all the other videos :-)

@@vintagecameradigest It's nice to see response so quickly! If the images are at least 12 megapixels then this is good. Speaking of which, which scanner you use?

Well, your suggestion was a good one, and I’m always open to ways of providing helpful content. So thanks for that! To your question, I’m currently using a DSLR scanning set-up and have been for a few years now. But in the past I’ve used Epson and Canon scanners with great results. And when using those, my scanning software of choice is VueScan by Hamrick software.

I’m traveling today, but I’ll give the camera a close look when I return home. It could be an issue with the switch or AF motor. Maybe we can get it figured out.

Thanks for the question. Do you have another lens to try? Or just the one?

Thanks for the question! I invite any others to give their input, but I’ll also give it a go. I have torn down and re-assembled many lenses in the last decade. And I’ve learned to recognize what problems I can fix and which I need to leave alone. Fungus can sometimes be the latter, but only if it appears between two cemented elements. If it’s on an outer surface or on a single element, a 1:1 mix of hydrogen peroxide and ammonia will work to at least kill it and hopefully remove it. If the elements have fancy coatings and the fungus has been there long enough, it may be permanently etched into it. But you probably won’t know any of that until you get the lens apart. So…full disclosure here…I have only part-way disassembled one of the 135s to clean up the rear elements. Past that, I can’t vouch for. BUT, these lenses are much less scary to work on since they don’t have their own focusing helicoid - which would be one of the things I don’t want to touch. To get access to the front elements, you’ll need a set of those rubber friction “wrenches” or you can use a pill bottle if you find the right size and one of those rubber jar-opener things. This will let you unscrew the front trim ring/bezel. From that point, a spanner wrench will be a must. I prefer the kind with the “bent” ends because it’s much easier to access deep-set elements - like the rear ones on the 135. This is all I can really say with any degree of certainty. I haven’t come across a video so far that outlines the disassembly of these lenses specifically. I’ll finish by leaving this little bit of advice: when you remove an element MAKE SURE you find a way to remember which side is front or back. Installing one backwards - while leading to interesting optical effects - will annoy you. And if you’ve removed more than one at a time, you may have a hard time figuring out which one is backwards. Hope others can jump in and offer some further suggestions. Good luck, my friend!

@@vintagecameradigest Thanks Steve, I need to get the tools first, but I've got a bit more confidence now in having a go. I used to strip machine tooling down so hopefully that will help. The lens polarity I didn't think of but it makes a lot of sense to me, I just hope they don't have a lot of thread lock. Lol Thanks, this channel is great.

NIkkor lenses for 35mm do tend to have some sort of thread lock - at least the later ones. They prove a pain when trying to remove the lens mount. But since these for the Bronica don’t have the “traditional” mount, maybe you’ll be good. Keep me posted on the progress!

@@vintagecameradigest I will get back to you on my luck with them, it will probably be a couple of months as I'm not ordering the tools until 3 weeks time. Then I need a camera for them. I have just bought 4 Zeiss Ikon Netter's, 2 6x6, 75mm and 1 6x9, 105mm all f6.3, plus another 6x9 105 mm with a f4.5 lens. Plus a darkroom outfit that should be upto these formats which will keep me busy in the meantime.

Sounds like you’ll be busy! All those cameras and lenses sound amazing. You’ve got a lot to look forward to! My recommendation on the Bronica camera would be the S2A if you want to keep it all manual. And of course the EC and EC-TL electronic bodies work with those lenses as well. Most times the S2A is hard to distinguish from the S2, and many, many sellers erroneously list an S2 as the S2A. Early S2As actually have “S2A” as part of the serial number. But that got phased out when the EC model was released. An easy way to distinguish is to look at the strap lugs. If they have little plastic wings under them, it’s an S2. The strap lugs were changed (to “wingless”) when the EC came out so that both bodies could accept the same strap. And chronologically that would make it an S2A. Cheers!