SHOW US YOUR CAMERAS!!

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

Here's another one, recently bought from its original owner:

The Cosina CT-1 is a fully mechanical body from the early 1980s (sold also as Nikon FE-10, FM-10 and Canon T60). It seems to be quite nice; all shutter speeds work, and the lenses are clean and with working apertures. This nice little set consists of a fast Cosinon 2/28mm, a slower (and much smaller) 2.8/35mm, the ubiquituous 1.7/50mm, and a rather good 2.8/135mm lens. The mechanical quality of the lens barrels is so-so - basically a metal construction with lots of plastics on the surface. As mentioned earlier their focusing has run dry, but that happens to contemporary Nikkors as well !

I haven't tried the 1.7/50mm and the 2/28mm lenses, but as soon as i know more, I'll write a few remarks on their performance.

S

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

Probably the most sophisticated analog SLR ever built - the Minolta Dynax 7 (also known as Maxxum 7). Here's a nice set I just got yesterday, including the Minolta AF 3.5-4.5/24-105mm zoom, the Minolta AF 2/28mm fast wideangle and a 3600 HS D flash.

The Dynax 7 has a few features one would expect from a digital SLR, but not from a film camera - such as a kind of EXIF data recording, a LCD monitor on the back (which makes her look like an early DSLR), and lots of buttons.

EDIT:

Here's the rear side Wink

Doesn't she look like a real early DSLR? In fact around 1995-2000 Minolta did produce some of the technologically most advanced DSLRs. Sadly, the then head of Minolta (the son of its founder) was stubbornly convinced that digital photography would never succeed. It was his decision that the extremely expensive early Minolta DSLR (RD-175 [1995], and RD-3000 [1999]) would be put into the cheapest plastic SLR bodies available - and not into the beautiful full metal (stainless steel!) body of the Dynax 9!

So in the year 2000 the Dynax 7 was born. Would it have been a digital SLR (as the engineers wanted it to be) I'm pretty sure Minolta would still sell cameras today. When finally in 2004 the digital Dynax 7D came out, it was too late, even though the Dynax 7D is extremely well made given the fact that it is not a professional DSLR.

S

pentaxpete · Joined: 02 Dec 2011 Posts: 651 Location: BRENTWOOD England

My Camera Club and Fellow Flickr member who buys gear at Car Boot Sales gave me a 1978 COSINA CSM M42 mount camera to test then said i could KEEP IT ! I thought the 55mm f2.1 aperture 'auto-Cosinon' lens was not quite as sharp as the 50mm f1.9 Cosinon on my Cosina CT-1. The CSM has 'Stop-Down' metering and as you press shutter release lens stops down and meter activates and you have to turn aperture ring until a GREEN light appears in top of viewfinder !

I did a VIDEO Review about it which you can see here :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTnGcDluDs4

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

Those Cosinas are usually overlooked - as much as the Mamiya Z series are. At the age of twelve I've been using my fathers Mamiya ZE to take my first images. Later on, when I was sixteen, I bought my own Mamyia, this time a ZM:

Like the Cosina CT-1 or the CSM, it is very much a "no frills" SLR, however in a different way. The Mamiya ZM is - unlike the Cosinas - constructed around an electronic shutter. While the ZM can be used as a manual camera (with shutter speeds ranging from 1/1000 s to 8 s), I usually relied on its automatic exposure (AE) mode. After pre-selecting the aperture, the camera would select the proper shutter speed. The separate AEL mode (auto exposure lock) allows you to measure the important part of your subject, lock the corresponding shutter speed by half-pressing the shutter, re-frame the image, and then actually take the image by fully pressing the shutter. Another method to correct AE values relies on over-/underexposure: the large "+/-" dial on the top left side of the camera allows you to dial-in +/- corrections of up to 2 EV. This was pretty useful for quite a few situations, especially for backlight sceneries and snow landscapes.

This image shows how straightforward and clean the ZM was designed. Especially the rubber structure on the focus ring of the Sekor E-S lenses was twenty years "too early"! In addition, the Sekor E and EF lenses were small, lightweight and pretty good - at least if you were lucky to have gotten a good sample. Those Mamiya Z series SLRs certainly were budget cameras, and quality control may not always have been a top priority. Nevertheless I've enjoyed my ZM and the corresponding lenses tremendously - mainly while shooting girls and rock concerts, back then Wink

S

kansalliskala · Expire: 2016-12-30

I like the industrial design of that Mamiya.

pentaxpete · Joined: 02 Dec 2011 Posts: 651 Location: BRENTWOOD England

Thanks for a good review -- maybe I will get one to 'test' sometime !

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

Here's another Konica - the legendary "T", equipped with an early Hexanon AR 1.4/57mm.

The coatings of the 1.4/57mm lens are really looking great if you you watch them at the right angle.

The Konica AR 1.8/85mm shown on the right of the Konica T is a very nice portrait lens. It has a rather low contrats wide open - which can be useful for portraits - but gets really excellent at f5.6. This early version has some slightly yellowish glass; later versions with rubber ring are more neutral in colors. I got this copy on a flea market for a really low price, somthing like CHF 8.-- as far as I remember.

The Konica AR 4/21mm is an early retrofocus superwide, and its lens section is extremely similar to the Carl Zeiss Jena Flektogon 4/20mm. However, the large single postive front lens of the Flektogon was replaced by a doublet, probably improving the color correction. The AR 4/21mm has an extremely uniform performance from f4 up to f16. This lens was part of a set which I bought a few years ago for about CHF 90.--.

S

kansalliskala · Expire: 2016-12-30

really nice set!

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

Another Minolta, the "downgraded X-700" aka X-500, here shown with the corresponding MD-III lenses 2/135mm and 2.8/200mm.

The X-500 and X-700 cameras have one of the very best SLR viewfinders I know - much larger than e. g. the later Nikon (D)SLRs. Both cameras should be combined with the Minolta MD-1 motor drive. This one, again, handles superior to the motordrives for the Canon New F-1 or the Nikon F3, but it is slower (only 3.5 fps).

The X-500 does have a few nice features which make it - in my opinion - more useful than the earlier X-700, among them the light metering in manual mode, and the TTL flash sync speed (fixed 1/60s with the X-700, variable / adjustable with the X-500).

S

NikonAIS · Posted: Tue Mar 16, 2021 12:17 am Post subject:

DigiChromeEd · Joined: 29 Dec 2009 Posts: 3462 Location: Northern Ireland

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

The rather common Konica Autoreflex T4 SLR with Konica AR 1.4/50mm (2nd version). On the right two not-so-common Konica AR wideangle lenses, the AR 2.8/21mm and the AR 2.8/24mm II:

S

Zamo · Joined: 08 Feb 2019 Posts: 168

DigiChromeEd · Joined: 29 Dec 2009 Posts: 3462 Location: Northern Ireland

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

Blazer0ne · Expire: 2024-12-07

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

stevemark · Joined: 29 Apr 2011 Posts: 4098 Location: Switzerland

... and since we just are at it - here are the two lenses, AR 4/21mm and AR 2.8/21mm:

Of course DigichromEd's T3 is much better preserved than my T ...

S