A neighbor knew I shot film, so he gave me a Minolta SRT-101 and Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MC Rokkor-X PF that he didn’t use any more. I finally got around to running a roll through it after I worked with a Minolta X300 that was a gimme from a friend. The old-style Rokkor lens is nice to work with, and the screen in the camera viewfinder made focusing easy. I didn’t end up with any out of focus shots the way I did with the Yashica FX-3 Super 2000 when the aperture was wide open. The rendering on the lens is also nice – bokeh goes pretty close to circles in out of focus areas. The red car in the images with the “6” sticker in them becomes a streak of color with big circular highlights.
The only drawback on the body is one based on age – the mirror doesn’t come back down after firing the shutter. Advancing to the next frame moves the mirror back in place, so it doesn’t prevent me from taking a subsequent shot. Overall the meter seems good – I have matching shots from a Ricoh GR1 that metered very similarly.
Working with this body and the X300 seem to have pulled me into the Minolta world – I’ve picked up an X700 and XE-7, and will share images taken with those bodies in their own posts.
Minolta SRT-101
Minolta 50mm f/1.7 MC Rokkor-X PF
Kodak Gold 100
