Photoclubalpha

There seems to be quite a lot of variability with this lens. In the pre-digital days the German Magazine "ColorFoto" did mind bendingly thorough test reports. The earlier ones...(Somewhere in a box in the basement) rated the lens as poor, worse than the Canon and Nikon equivalents. Their l...

I have the original-original version. In other words in MD mount. It dates from the late 1970's early 1980's and at the time was considered one of the first 28-85 or so lenses to be of acceptable quality. Along with the 35-105 and 70-210 it made it into the autofocus era pretty much unchanged. Scann...

You find a lot of debate in the Leica rangefinder arena with respect to "new" vs "old" The latest ASP lenses are extremely sharp, but many prefer the older all spherical designs. Generally "good" bokeh is a sign of less correction for spherical aberration. With a spheri...

While referring to "Forgotten" G lenses what about those used on several Dimage cameras, such as the "GT lens" on the Dimage 7/7i/7hi/A1/A2 and I one or two others? Who knows what the "real" difference between a "Sony G" and a "Zeiss" lens is? If you...

I guess it is something we are all trying to get to grips with. A lens with very good central performance tends to look good on APS-C, however, edge performance tends to become significant with full frame. One lens that really surprised me was the cheap ultra compact 28-80 3.5-5.6. You really really...

I find the general disregard for this lens odd. Most of the reviews I have read over the years rate it better than the 24-85 which in turn was generally better regarded than the 24-105. Perhaps some people think it to be similar to the 28-105 Xi, which gets a generally poor review. Although the 28-1...

A very well put together piece. What is interesting is all the "firsts" they claim for Minolta. It would be interesting to try and validate them. I was doing some web searching on the issue of "Image stabilized lenses", you know, the thing Canon made famous. The amazing thing is ...

As much as we may curse Minolta for obsoleting our MC/MD lenses back in 1985, there really is no good way to use them digitally. (Unless you want to use a 4/3 Olympus that is - Shock! Horror!) It pains me too, as I have 17 MC/MD lenses covering 17mm to 300mm. I bought one of the Generic 1.2x convert...

Thanks for the welcome! I have been lurking on this forum for a while while really enjoying the discussion. I have been actively photographing since the 1970's so hopefully I have some useful information to share. I started with an SRT-101 like so many others. Herb Keppler was a huge influence on me...

This does not really surprise me. Going back to the days when Popular Photography had really good reviews, the top end Minoltas were very competitive with anything else out there. For example the Maxxum 7 was the fastest focussing camera they tested at the time. However, compared to the 7 the 7D was...

It seems to be more of a problem with some lens and camera combinations than others. Perhaps it depends on the exact calibration of each component. I suspect the amount of longitudinal chromatic aberration a lens exhibits might be a factor too. I know I went nuts when I first got my 7D. I was checki...

The 35-200 Xi is a strange lens to be sure. Once you get past the odd/weird mode of operation and forget about manual focus it is a very pleasant surprise to use. I was fascinated by this lens for years after seeing glowing reports in the "Amateur Photographer" way back when. They gave it ...