"Gee, those are great pictures! What kind of camera do you have??"
I get this question more times than I can count. Nobody believes me when I tell them I the vast majority of the pictures on this site were taken with old Minoltas!
| Minolta SRT-202 | (all-mechanical, circa 1968) |
| Minolta XK | (electro-mechanical, circa 1973) |
| Yashica T4 | (modern point-and-shoot) |
These cameras are real workhorses; in fact in the case of the SRT-202 you can use it in Siberia in the wintertime (most modern cameras' batteries die at such cold temperatures). The XK is probably my favorite camera; Minolta created it as a knock-off of the then-popular Nikon F2, but decided to go one better: they made an F2 with aperture-priority metering and an electronically-controlled shutter. Like the F2, the XK still enjoys a strong following throughout the world.
The lenses I used were nothing out of the ordinary:
The film I used (when I was using film) was almost exclusively Fuji, both slides (Sensia) and negatives (plain old Fujicolor Superia). I was turned onto Fuji back in 1984, when the company donated all the film I could shoot during a documentary assignment in Switzerland (they were the "official film" of the 1984 Olympics, and were giving away film like crazy), and I was so impressed with their vivid colors (especially their beautiful rendering of springtime greens) that I've been a loyal fan ever since.
When I started to shoot weddings in a big way my camera bag sported a Minolta Maxxum 9 and Maxxum 7, two outstanding photographic tools. You can read my published review of the 7 here.
I also have a published article explaining the technical details about Minolta's wireless flash; an expanded version of the published article appears here.
Since then, I've been using every Alpha-mount DSLR that has come out, starting with the 7D from Konica Minolta, to the Sony A900. (We can all be proud of what Sony has done with the Minolta legacy - they have preserved the Minolta "DNA" while throwing its immense sensor R&D and marketing resources at the platform. They've already come out with a full-frame sensor and accelerating the development of high-end lenses - something Minolta never had the resources to do in an aggressive manner. Happy day!)
Why have I chosen the Minolta / Sony platform? For one thing, Minolta's optics have always been superb (they were supplying optics and camera parts to Leica for many years), they invented the wireless flash and (up until 2004) they were the only company which allowed the pop-up flash to trigger them. Then there's the 'Zeiss' thing. And, until recently, I have never had to worry about other photographers asking to borrow my lenses or flashes. :-)
Autofocus Lenses currently in use:
-GF
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