Your fingers eventually feel at home on the camera, and your eye stays on the subject.
The buttons are so well-placed and the viewfinder so informative that, once your fingers are trained to know what to do (which takes very little time) you never have to take your eye off the viewfinder. This is where the Maxxum 7000 is so intriguing. If this button-centric user interface seems complicated, remember that you get real-time information as you make these settings in the viewfinder. For complete control, the mode would be set to Manual, and the aperture is set with the left thumb up/down buttons while the shutter is set by the right shutter finger up/down buttons. If you want more control over the camera’s settings, then you would choose either Aperture or Shutter Priority Mode and then use either set of up/down buttons (one set near your shutter finger and the other on the left side of the lens where your “focusing” thumb would be) to dial in your desired aperture or shutter speed. The Minolta Maxxum’s top-plate looks almost like an 80s-era handheld game In Program mode, the Maxxum 7000 becomes a hefty but highly accurate point-and-shoot. This can be as simple as setting the exposure mode to Program and then shoot away, allowing the camera to choose aperture and shutter speed while it also focuses the lens. Instead of the traditional dials, the Maxxum 7000 uses four top placed buttons and two sets of up/down buttons to set the camera. The biggest break from the X-700 (and virtually all other previous SLRs) was how the camera is operated.
Introduced to the world in 1985 as “The World’s Easiest SLR,” the Minolta Maxxum 7000 was a remarkable camera for its time, and in many ways it the logical extension of the last manual-focus SLR Minolta ever made, the X-700 (a camera which I owned and greatly loved.) It included improved versions of the X-700’s program, aperture priority, and manual exposure modes as well as through-the-lens flash metering, touch switch, and hand grip, while adding not only autofocus, but shutter priority mode, motorised film transport, and a very bright viewfinder with LED display of visually all exposure mode, focus, and drive information. I put dozens of rolls of film through it and captured moments with students in their classrooms and on the playground. I immediately took it to the elementary school where I taught and began using it to shoot photographs for the school yearbook. Ironically, it didn’t take me long to find one, as I found a working example with a clean Minolta AF 50mm f1.7 lens in a nearby antique store for only $20. Why? Because it was the world’s first autofocus SLR camera body (The Polaroid SX-70 Sonar from 1977 is an autofocus single lens reflex instant camera, but that is a story for another day). One camera I definitely seeking was the Minolta Maxxum 7000. I was seeking out cameras that had some personal importance or historical significance, usually after having read about them online. I am in my “GAS” (Gear Acquisition Syndrome) phase, having returned to film photography the previous year after a 10-year period of shooting mostly my digital point-and-shoot camera. Sure, I missed the focus occasionally, but most of the time I got it right.įast forward to 2018. Perhaps I felt like “real” photographers should focus their cameras without assistance.
Maybe it was the extra expense that kept me from wanting one, but I think also that I was a little biased against the idea of autofocus. All of my subsequent SLR cameras were manual focus as well, even though the pages of my photography magazines will filled with adverts for autofocus SLRs.
Like all SLRs at the time, the XG-1 was a manual-focus camera, and soon the act of focusing the lens became second nature. It was a Minolta XG-1, which I purchased with my first teacher paycheck, having just graduated from college the previous spring. However, some recent experiences I have had with some of my vintage SLR cameras have led to consider using one particular camera more than the others, if not exclusively, and that camera is my Minolta Maxxum 7000.įirst, some background: My first serious camera came in the fall of 1980. With a few exceptions, I will sell or give away cameras I don’t use. “I buy cameras to get the experience of using them, and I enjoy having such a variety from which to choose,” I add. I am NOT a camera collector.” At least that is what I tell people when they see the numerous and various cameras sitting on shelfs in my condo. KF article top The very 80s-styled Minolta Maxxum 7000 (All pics: Kevin Lane)