Minolta A7

In my camera collection I have a standard amount of Nikon and Canon entries, leaning heavily on the side of Nikon, but then I have an even bigger collection of Olympus and Minolta. I really dig Olympus, probably my favorite brand of camera, then coming fast on its heels is Minolta. In a world of Nikon and Canon these other guys have a grossly-underrated offering of great cameras and lenses that frequently get overlooked. Maybe I just like cheering for the underdogs, or to have something in my hand that is not the standard thing that everyone else always gets.

Likewise, Harley Davidson makes a perfectly fine motorcycle… but everybody has one. So I gravitate toward Triumph or Moto Guzzi the same way I would lean Olympus and Minolta.

This Minolta is my only 21st Century film camera, having been unveiled in 2000, when film cameras were starting to make their exit. The A7, or the Alpha-7, or the Maxxum 7, or the Dynax 7… all depending upon what country you were in when you bought it, is a slick camera! Mine is an A-slash-Alpha 7 because I bought it from a Japanese seller, which means I had to figure out how to change the language settings on the LCD screen. I got it for a really decent price, otherwise I wouldn’t have bought it because I Just Got Five New Cameras This Month Already!!!

“Hey love,” my partner asks “What came from FedEx today?” “Why it’s a new old camera!” says I, and she replies “I don’t even know why I asked” because the answer was obvious. New cameras and new lenses came like Christmas morning. I had to put up a new shelf to hold them all because it’s not a collection unless you display all of them in the same place at the same time. I have a whole wall of cameras, as if I want to show off to any guests “Look what terrible impulse control I have!”

I need them, though. Every single one of them. Museums have to begin somewhere, right? At the core of every museum exhibit there is an obsessive nerd with an insatiable collecting instinct.

I really like this one, though. It’s not your standard bubbly rounded black plastic number, it’s a little more angular, and a little smaller than my other auto-everything cameras. A big bulky black camera with the battery grip and a big lens and a bigger flash is pretty snazz, but it’s going to be a nuisance to carry around with you. There is also a pretty nice balance of knobs-to-LCD Screen controls ratio. You have your knobs on the top for setting things you’ll use more often (single or multi-shot, PASM, exposure compensation, stuff like that), and then your buttons on the back for exposure lock and metering style and all that, then you have a metric eff-ton of ways to customize your shooting style with the LCD screen.

Minor drawbacks, the Oh-Enn-Oh-EffEff switch (sound it out in your head) is on the left side rather than the right, so you can’t turn the camera Oh-Enn or Oh-EffEff while one-handing it. And you do have to use the LCD screen plus thumb wheels to set the aperture and shutter speed, unlike my Nikon F4 which has physical knobs and rings for that purpose.

As for those customizable settings, however, so many options. They aren’t hard to find either, just click “Custom” and then spin the thumb wheel until the setting you want to change comes on screen. There are 35 different options available. Want the film to rewind automatically at the end or do you want to press a button when you’re ready? We have a setting for that. Want the film to retract all the way into the canister at the end or do you want to leave a little tab of film sticking out? We have a setting for that too. Want the frame counter to count forward from 1-to-36 or count backward from 36-to-1? Would you prefer the auto-focus to be fast and noisy or slow and quiet? How would you like to meter for flash? How would you like to bracket your shots? There are a lot of ways to customize that I didn’t consider when it comes to film cameras. Want to remember what your settings were for the last 5 or 6 shots? Click a button, the LCD screen will tell you. It’s a lot of info but somehow easier to manage than on a lot of similar film cameras, and is more intuitively designed.

I wanted to take Lomo’s “Potsdam Kino” film for a trial run, and I also wanted to try out a zoom lens on this camera (I normally only shoot with prime lenses) to see what I could do with it, see how I liked the results. So I loaded up the roll and snapped on the lens, and set out for a walk along the canals in Richmond, Virginia. I love shooting B&W using water as a prop, there is just so much I like to do with the reflections rendered in black and white.

As we wandered along I would frequently see something that looks like a good shot, hold the camera up to my eye, think for a sec and decide “Nah, that says nothing to me”… oh but wait, what if I turn the controls on the zoom lens? There, now THAT works for me. “Snap.” The shutter snap on this camera, by the way, very satisfying. There are some of my cameras where I just love that snap, either the feel or the sound, the A7 is one of those. There is nothing stealthy about this shutter, it’s going to be noticed, so I’d avoid using the A7 if street photography is your jam. Normally I prefer the compactness and performance of a prime lens, but I’ll have to see how the pics turn out, I’m really liking this zoom lens. It’s a very basic, not-amazing kit lens, but it’s working for me right now.

The one issue I have with using these more advanced cameras is that I never use them to their potential. I read up on all the cool shit I can do, then just shoot the same way I always do – aperture-priority, over-expose one full stop, no fill flash, meter for shadows. What’s the point of an advanced camera when I’m basically shooting the way I’d shoot an OM-2 or an A-1? It’s absurd, I really need to read more stuff and do something differently.

“Why do something different if this method is working for you?” someone might ask. Someone smarter than me. The answer is that the results aren’t as important to me as the experience. Trying something different, learning something different, super fun. That said, I had every intention of shooting with fill flash, using the convenient onboard flash, but I didn’t. I did try some different stuff with the metering, and by the time we got to the flood walls it was around 5 and the late fall sun was going down. Using 100 ISO film would be more difficult under these conditions, but I wanted to see what I could do with this camera and this lens. Point the camera at a darkened area, use the railing to steady the camera (I don’t carry a tripod), overexpose, breathe in, hold and “snap.” We’ll see what those shots look like when I develop the roll later.

What did they look like? Kinda dark, really. The Potsdam Kino film has some pretty strong contrast, so when the skies became darker the shadows were rendered much more intensely than the mids or highs. Still, I liked the results, and I enjoyed the action on the camera.

I’m flying out to Los Angeles in a couple of weeks and this is the camera I’m going to bring. It’s not too bulky or heavy for a week of walking around, and I feel pretty confident the photos made will be of some (technically) great quality. While I’m on the plane, however, I should definitely read up on how to work with some of the many features of this camera because what’s the point of having them if I’m not going to use them? Embrace the technology!