Hello

[rokkor]

Hello fellow photo enthusiasts,

I live in beautiful Devon. I am joining photoclubalpha because I am planning to buy a Sony a200 and I am hoping that the collective wisdom of this club can help me make the right choices with this system.

My first SLR was a second hand Minolta SRT101 with Rokkor 50/1.4 bought about 37 years ago. May be the best camera/lens I ever had. My interest in and enthusiasm for photography waxed and waned over the years. The camera I currently use is a decent but ageing Sony digicam with my Minolta SLR film gear gathering dust. My new interests in grandchildren, travel and the need to photograph my wife's pottery made me realise the limitations of my current camera and re-ignited my first love of SLR cameras. So when I heard of the Sony a100 as the reincarnation of Minolta I got excited. With the arrival of the a200 it seems that the price and time is right to take the plunge.

[David Kilpatrick]

You are definitely buying at the right point on the development curve - the Alpha 200 is actually 'third generation', KM 5D, Sony A100 and now the 200. It should have ironed out just about all the minor niggles. They will be available around Jan 21.

David

[Omega892]

My first SLR was a second hand Minolta SRT101 with Rokkor 50/1.4 bought about 37 years ago.

Welcome.

I bought one of those in Gib(raltar) whilst on the way home on Ark after a hectic period in the Med (including collision with a Russian Kotlin destroyer which caused a little excitement) at the end of 1970. I already had purchased in UK an SRT101 with 55mm f1.7 (said by some to be sharper than the f1.4) through Wallace Heaton - cost an arm and a leg for those days, about 3 grand in today's money. But these two served well for the next 30+ years, with an X700 added along the way (now passed on to son). There was something about the handling of the SRT that the others just did not have especially Pentax which was so lightweight by comparison, the SRT being far more rugged. This is why I stayed with the Minolta brand when going AF.

[rokkor]

My first SLR was a second hand Minolta SRT101 with Rokkor 50/1.4 bought about 37 years ago.

I bought one of those in Gib(ralter)

I bought mine in New York. IIRC there was a 'luxury' purchase tax here at that time and cameras were classified as luxury (!) goods so they cost about twice the US price.

There was something about the handling of the SRT that the others just did not have especially P*nt*x which was so lightweight by comparison, the SRT being far more rugged. This is why I stayed with the Minolta brand when going AF.

Yes. Also, IIRC when I bought, Minolta already had open aperture metering unlike the P*nt*x (still with a screw mount) and in fact probably anything else except top N*k*n. That is why I then chose Minolta + the reputation of their lenses. Later I also succumbed to auto mode (due to my wife complaining about 'complicated' machine) and to AF after missing lots of skiing shots. I gave the SRT 101 to my son who was going to University. The change in build quality and the slow poor zoom kit were a shock and I wanted to swap back with my son but he had the SRT nicked from his digs. It got worse, on another skiing trip the camera froze never to wake again. I then bought a 505 SI super which I still have.

[Omega892]

Yes. Also, IIRC when I bought, Minolta already had open aperture metering unlike the P*nt*x (still with a screw mount) and in fact probably anything else except top N*k*n. That is why I then chose Minolta + the reputation of their lenses.

Yes, at the time I started with an SRT101 in 1968 they had the most user friendly features of any of the top brands. Wide aperture metering and a superb and rapid bayonet lens mount, important for me at the time as even with two bodies, often using different film stock, I needed rapid lens changing because aircraft don't tend to hang about and zooms were overweight, overpriced and relatively poor in image quality. Even Nikon had a kludge of an add on meter which required a double twist lens action on mounting to datum the lens and meter. I found the CLC quite reliable, given knowing that special conditions required compensation - easily done.

Canon had a rather fragmented product line at the time which only began to settle down about 1970 when it started to attract pro' attention. Minolta just didn't seem to get into that big time despite the efforts of Victor Blackman of Amateur Photographer who like myself and yourself had high regard for Rokkor lenses. The quality test reports they used to carry in AP in those days confirmed the Rokkor quality. The 28mm, f3.5 I also got in Gib' turned out to be one of their best.

If I could get back into the AlphaClub Gallery on Coppermine I could post up some pic's I took in NY in Feb 72.