The Minolta 500si

[Niner]

Got this camera and another for next to nothing so put a roll of film in the 500si and took it for an adventure.

The 500si came out as a Minolta second generation auto focus camera around 1994. It was sold as the 500si in the US, also the RZ400si by Ritz. It could be found with other labels depending on if the the camera was made with a data back or had a panoramic program or was being offered in some other country than the US. Some of the labels it also carried : RZ430sio 450si.

According to a popular photography story when APS came out photo finishers wanted to make some tests with the new film and Minolta made handful of 500si that would take APS photos on film loaded into a 35mm canister. The rarest of the rare if you can find one.

https://books.google.com/books?id=hgrDe ... &q&f=false

My first experience with it today wasn't all sweetness and light. To start with the shutter speed setting in any program mode seemed to have judged the camera shooting at a film speed rating about five times slower than the 100 speed I had loaded. I tried resetting what the camera was telling me was an already correctly read 100 speed rating. Then after the camera warned up or my resetting the speed, or I just got lucky, it started to seem to be working right for the film speed. The early, what should have been overexposed images picked up some camera shake but didn't seem over exposed. The other thing that had a bit of a glitch was that the button to change from auto exposure to manual didn't always want to switch. However, for a camera that probably hasn't been used in a quarter of a century it was relatively pleasant to use.