Milsurp After Hours

This camera was introduced in the US in 1995. It had won the 1994 Japanese Camera of the year award as the a-707si the year previous to US introduction. The Japanese version also had a built in panoramic mode and a data back for date inclusion on negatives.

The 700si was pretty sophisticated with not only auto focus but it would auto focus when you brought it to your eye. You could turn the features off if you like. In the P mode you could also select Ps or Pa so you could pick your aperture or shutter speed and the camera would do the rest. And...as an overkill Minolta had a digital card program selection you could buy which would do pretty much what you could do for yourself....like Ps for sports action mode made the sports action card redundant. The only thing the card program offered that would be good is that it would record your aperture and shutter speed per shot. Can't find that card listed on ebay at the moment. That mind of Minolta feature would be interesting to have. You could do just A or S or manual, double exposure, etc., and the meter would still work. The meter could be spot or had as default a 14 segment honeycomb meter.

I was going to go easy on the camera buying for a while but with an opening bid of $1 I bid $5 and won it for $1 because nobody else bid. l It also came with an auto film winder for an XD series thrown in for lanyape and of course not for this camera with the auto film advance built in. The tax and shipping brought this purchase up to $17. A gamble on my part that it would work.....and this time I won.

Over the last few months, I have been playing with a few Minolta Dynax autofocus cameras. These were marketed as Maxxum in the USA. I got a Dynax 5, 4, 40, 404SI and a 505SI. Actually, I have two 5s and another 505SI on the way. None were more than £20 and most came with a camera bag as well. I have put a film through most of them. A couple came with a film already in it so I finished them off and got them processed. One was mostly winter shots of ice formations and a couple of views of hills and a lake. I wonder what happened to the photographer that he never got to see his photos. The other only had a few shots taken of views of a building over a lake. The Dynax 4 and 5 are the last of the Minolta film cameras are are still barely 20 years old.
I have a Minolta X-500 manual focus camera that I had the light seals replaced on and checked out. That cost more than the camera cost. I have just got a film back from that camera and very pleased with it. The photos are nicely exposed and sharp. That will be the camera I will be using for film in the future.
I will put up some photos of the cameras when I get them done.
Regards
Peter.

I love my Minolta cameras. Never could see the benefit of camera companies calling the same camera a different name in different countries. It might have been a way for dumping inventory one place without causing an uproar someplace else. But I don't know.

The Maxxum 70, which is the same as the Dynax 60 won some awards in Europe and was, I think, the last of the SLR Maxxums. It's the one I like best for simplicity of use with lots of usable features. You can buy them for not much but they have all the "mind of Minolta" features. I've got a couple of them.

I have several Minolta Maxxum cameras but no AF lenses longer than 100 mm. As a Christmas present to myself I got a 75-300 off of ebay for about $35 total including shipping. Took it out today with the 700si since it was to hand.

White pelicans don't stay around here. The brown ones live here. The white pelicans like to winter at the local municipal park. The ducks and geese don't mine.