Minolta 250/5.6 - unassuming, pricey, worth it?

marius.zaech · Joined: 27 Jan 2021 Posts: 59 Location: Switzerland

Recently a friend gave me her x700 to repair. I've lent her one of my lenses before, and when she gave me her Camera there was a lens attached to it. Quite surprisingly it was not any old lens but one of the more rare and sought after one: A 250/5.6 in pristine condition!

Of course I had to take it out for some shots.

My impressions so far:
- The lens is very unusual and take some getting used to. It's tiny size and light weight are both it's biggest strength and surprisingly a weakness: it's very hard to handhold this! Even with image stabilization I would not go under 1/500 since you lack the stable grip that a larger and heavier lens comes with.

- If you do manage to get a stable and well focussed shot it is indeed very sharp, at least sharper than similar 500/8 mirror teles I've tried.

- The possibilites a small tele lens opens up are very interesting. It's easy to take anywhere, it's unassuming and you won't get weird looks when photographing, even in a busy city environment. And I wish that I had this while hiking in summer, it's surely a great lens to get those nicely compressed landscape shots from the top of a mountain that would otherwise be a bit of a hassle.

In essence: I would love to own this lens because of it's practicality and because it is simply a cool and unusual piece of gear, but I refuse to pay what people want for it.

Photos all taken in Zürich last Friday:

High contrast lake scene:

At MFD:

City details:

About the Bokeh: it surely can get quite busy... almost surreal. Not quite sure if i like it or not:

marius.zaech · Joined: 27 Jan 2021 Posts: 59 Location: Switzerland

And to actually show the sharpness possible:
(unedited, jpg conversion through lightroom)

crop:

full scene:

marius.zaech · Joined: 27 Jan 2021 Posts: 59 Location: Switzerland

While the bokeh and rendering can be weird and distracting it also opens up artistic possibilities. Here are two shots I really like and have edited in my style:

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RokkorDoctor · Expire: 2025-05-01

I find it can be used to good effect, as long as one is aware of its limitations (slow and long FL, as you found out it is all too easy to get too optimistic re. shutter speed and end up with movement blurr).

Also it is noticeably brighter in the centre (or in other words, the corners are darker) which can be fixed in PP.

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4084 Location: Switzerland