Milsurp After Hours

The Minolta Maxxum QTsi. In Europe it was called the 303si. In Japan they already had used the 303si for another camera about three years before the 1999 birth of this easy to use camera. This camera is really a point and shoot made up like a SLR. It has a fixed Prism that acts just like a true pentaprism. It looks like other Maxxum SLR’s at first blush. However, it’s totally automatic. You never know what shutter speed or aperture is. There is no manual mode at all. The camera picks between shutter speeds ranging from 1/2000 to 30 seconds and doesn’t bother you with the information. Whatever the aperture you are in the dark about that too. You can pick just “P” and the camera does all the thinking or you can pick from ikons for the usual stuff…. Portrait, close up, scenic, night, fast action. It has a popup flash and you can add a flash with a shoe and you can control what the flash does or doesn’t do. You can take a burst of shots. And the short tele 35-80, that can be exchanged for other Minolta auto lenses, is fully auto extending or retracting and auto focusing. It’s all plastic and only weights in at 12 oz. without the battery. For less than $8 it was worth buying for the adventure of seeing what it would do. And… the auto focus would miss focus now and again and the film and the developing probably hurt the results. However…..it will take a photo.

The film I was using was Ultrafine Extreme 24 exposure 100 speed. Whatever it is, it didn’t come out “Ultrafine” in any degree of extreme. However, I think my D76 was a little on the warm side for the time I thought right and I overcooked the developing a bit.