User comments
Mail me comments about your Minolta mf gear, especially about XE! I'll add them here. Remove the no.spam from the address.
Jay F. Piper wrotes about his experience of the Minolta XE:
Subject: Re: Happy New Year, minor macro correction part 2
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 11:52:11 -0500
From: Jay.F.Piper@us.mw.com
To: Mikko Niskanen <mikko.niskanen@turkuamk.fi>The XE-7 has the smoothest and most quiet shutter of all the various SLRs I have used - as a high school and college photographer I got to use Nikon at the IC/AI transition era and Canon up to the last mechanical F-1, also. The XE-1/5/7 cameras took many of the best features of the remarkable XK and put them in a more refined body. If you do not need the interchangable finders and screens of the XK, then the XE is probably the most refined, defintiely the least intrusive manual minolta. It is ideal for use indoors - almost as quiet as a leaf shutter for weddings, shows, concerts. It is also a great camera for landscape and portrait use. The screen is not as bright as XD and X-700/500/300 but it is very crisp, with good magnification and coverage, one of the best older-style groundglass screens.
Use an f/2.8 or faster lens and images really snap into focus. The camera is about the size of an SRT and feels more solid, my father used 2 XE-7s for 20+ years without any need for repair. An XE with the faster fixed-focal length MC or MD lenses is a reliable classic camera that is a real pleasure to use. The older and heavier MC lenses really seemed to balance the larger and heavier XK body, I found no prefernce for handling the MD vs MC lenses with the less bulky, slightly lighter XE body. I took many nice portraits with the 85/2 MD before seling my last XE to simplify my kit to X-700's and an SRT. Some of my favorite Minolta lenses used with the XE were the 24/2.8, 35/2.8 and 1.8 (for sharpness save $ and get tiny 2.8 unless you really need the extra stop of speed), 45/2, 50/1.4, 85/2, and 200/3.5.
Macro Lenses
Justin "Red" Bailey answers to my question about different macro
lenses in manualminolta@egroups:Subject: [manualminolta] Minolta macro comparisons
(was: Minolta macro flash options)
Date: Fri, 22 Sep 2000 06:41:37 +0300
From: "Justin Bailey" <red_bailey@hotmail.com>
To: manualminolta@egroups.comI use quite a few macro lenses for my Minolta cameras. I posted results from three of them in the files section, but the 100/4 Auto Bellows is not the best shot (it was just the most recent one I had).
Rokkor 50/3,5. I'm afraid this does not see a lot of use, the focal length is too short. It certainly performs well, sharp centre to edge, no distortions. Just what a 50mm macro should be.
Tokina AT-X 90/2,5. Very sharp (I mean very). I sometimes find ugly background bokeh with this lens (can cause doubling of lines). The 1:1 converter for this is an extension tube, with correcting optics in it. Also a useful compact portrait lens. In the past, this was rated as the sharpest lens in the PhotoZone lens test database (it's recently been surpassed, I think).
Rokkor 100/3,5. Very sharp, centre and corners. The bokeh for this lens is beautiful, fore- and back- ground. The matched 1:1 tube has a very useful tripod mount on it. Large, beautiful focusing feel, heavy. This lens was available in MC and MD Rokkors (mine's MC). A similar, but slightly less great, 100/4 was sold in MD Rokkor and MD Minolta.
Rokkor 100/4 Auto Bellows. Reasonably sharp across the frame, featuring a fairly flat field of focus. The bokeh is not bad, but not smooth (some polygonal shapes). It's not sharp at infinity and medium distances (as they say, completely symmetrical optical designs are optimized for 1:1 reproduction). A completely different short-mount 100/4 Macro was sold in the MD line.
Rokkor 135/4 short-mount. Reasonably sharp across the frame. More field-curvature than the other bellows lens. Bokeh is smooth (has 12-blade iris, which forms a circular aperture at any setting). Also not sharp at long distances.
(I'm not a big user of bellows lenses right now. The fact is, they do not offer very high magnification. As I said before, the 100/4 only achieves
1,1:1 on the Auto Bellows 1. They have more use on the Auto Bellows III at medium to close-up distances, where you can shift and swing them.)All this plus Minolta close-up lenses, reversed wide-angles, stacked lenses (there was a long thread on this in the eGroups MinoltaXK and then Minolta lists several months ago), all with or without bellows/tubes. How do I find time for anything else?
---
Justin "RED" Bailey
red_bailey@hotmail.com--- Original Message ---
From: Mikko Niskanen <mikko.niskanen@turkuamk.fi>
Subject: Re: [manualminolta] Minolta macro flash options
Date: Wed, 20 Sep 2000 11:28:18 +0300The pics were fine - I also saw you have the Tokina 90/2.5 and Minolta
100/3.5 macros. Could you write some words about comparing these two? I
would like to add it to the macro section of my pages.Mikko, from Raisio, Finland
Ruyjin wrotes about Tamron macro lenses in minolta@egroups:
Subject: Re: [minolta] Tamron macro lenses
Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 04:57:19 +0300
From: "ryujin" <ryugin@peach.ocn.ne.jp>
To: minolta@egroups.comI have older one, tamron SP 90mmF2.5 Older version has a different rubber surface on focus ring and aperture ring from a new model. You see many straight lines on them. I don't have 2x converter. According to a manual for the lens, my Tamron lens uses SP 2x converter. You can put the converter between a lens and a adaptor mount. When you use the converter, you should remove adaptor mount from a lens and put converter at the rear of a lens and put adaptor mount on the converter. The sales point of using 2xconverter and the tamron lens is:
1: 1 to 1 close up at 0.39m. (Close up length does not change, but 1 to 1
is capable due to 2x focus length.)2: it makes 180mm tele photo lens.
3: The total size( length) of 2x converter and the Tamron lens except for adaptor mount is only 210.5mm and weight is 860g. It's a compact and handy lens.
Above sales points is what I translated from a maual in Japanese. A sentence between ( and ) is my comment.
And Tamron made a hood for the tamron lens. According to manual, it seems that you can pull up or down the hood after you attach it on a lens front. I think, once you put it on a lens, you can use the hood like you use a built-in hood of Minolta tele photo lens. A nice accessary.
I don't have the hood. But I did not have any complain of the lens. Only drawback of the lens is that it has a little distortion at near frame lines.
I think you don't notice it. I noticed that when I took many pictures of running trains. You see many poles around a train, I saw a few poles near
to frame lines slight distorted.And a focus ring of the lens is strange, it moves forward when you turn it. At 0.39m, focus ring is at a few centi meter away from you. But no problem, DOF scale is written on a lens barrel under a focus ring. DOF scale for infinity is written at another place which you can see when a focus ring is at infinity position.
Tamron SP 90 mmF2.5 spec:
Optical formula: 6 groups and 8 elements
Coating: BBAR coating
Close focus: 0.39m
Macro ratio: 1 to 2 - 1 to 10
Focusing method: Front optical elements is moved forward by rotating
helicoidAngle of focus ring moving(how much you have to turn a focus ring): infinity
to 1.5m is 29 degrees, 1.5m to 0.39m is 195 degrees. Totall is 225 degreesFilter thread: 49mm
Size: 66(length) x 64.5(width)mm
Weight: 420g
Hood: Tread typeAbove data ingnores adaptor mount. When you put adaptor mount on a lens, the data(size, weight) slight changes.
Ryujin
And adds to my answer:
Subject: Re: [minolta] Tamron macro lenses
Date: Thu, 28 Sep 2000 05:13:32 +0300
From: "ryujin" <ryugin@peach.ocn.ne.jp>
To: Mikko.Niskanen/Kehittaminen/AMK> Now this is intersting - the lens I have seen had 52mm thread. But I
> think there may have been several versions - Tamron used to make a lot
> of them (take the 70-210mm zoom range for an example :-)
>
I forgot to write two important things.1: Tamron made two models of Tamron SP 90mm F2.5 adaptor lens.
2: The lens uses SP2x converter Model 01F, but cannot use SP2x converter Model 200F. Model 01F is for Tamron lenses except for wide angle lenses. Model 200F is for only tele photo lens. In a current brochure, I find Model 01F, not 200F.
The first model is what I own, I wrote about it. The second model looks different from first one. The second model has a same optical formulra to old model. About same dimension as the first one, a little bigger. Filter size is 55mm. And focus ring rubber has a different patterns, many square patterns like MD. Since focus distances scale (infinity to 0.39m) and macro scale is shown in a plastic window on a lens barrel(imagine AF lens' focus distances scale), I think the focus ring does not move forward like the old model(mine) does. Easier handling.
You need macro extender to do 1 to 1 close up. According to 1992 Tamron brochure, Tamron made "macro extender for 52bb", 52bb is a product code for the tamron lens. I think it is one like a extension tube for MD macro 50 or 100. The macro extender does not have a camera mount. You cannot use it for lenses other than Tamron adaptor system lens.
The second model was released in 1989. It's called a new model in 1989 brochure.
And Tamron discontinued SP 90mm F2.5. Tamron SP 90 F2.8 for both AF cameras and manual focus adaptor system is currently available.
SP 90 F2.8 is totally different desgin from above two 90 F2.5. 10 elements and 9 groups. 55mm filter thread. Seems more complicated
optical design. SP 90 F2.8 reaches a subject of 1 to 1 without help of macro extender or 2x converter. It's a little larger (a few centi meter longer body size). it's light weight 366g without a mount.And I could not find any Tamron 90 macro lens which uses 52mm filter. I looked at four tamron brochures from 1987 to 1999.
Which model among the first and the second do you think what you saw looks like? You can know that from a rubber pattern of focus ring.Ryujin
Mike Nobbs from England told me about the Sigma 180/5.6 Macro in manualminolta@egroups:
Subject: [MINMAN] Re:Sigma 180/5.6 Macro (was: Re: re:Any experiences with Sigma 14mm f/3.5 MD? please share)
Date: Sat, 30 Dec 2000 23:03:30 +0000
From: "Mike Nobbs" <viking01@globalnet.co.uk>
To: <manualminolta@egroups.com>Mikko wrote:
> Mike, does this macro go to 1:1 without help, or just 1:2 ? I suppose it
> has conventional focusing, not IF.
>
> I have only recently discovered this lens has been available in MD mount,
> and I lack all the details - I would really appreciate if you wrote some details,
> facts and opinions of it so that I could add it to my close-up page. A pic were
> also fine, if you cannot scan I can do it from a normal 10x15cm print or
> any negative or slide.
>
> MikkoThe lens goes to 1:2 without help it will reach 1:1 ok using MC extension rings with lens-subject distance of 320 and approx 1.2:1 @280 using closest focus On autobellows + full ext it goes to approx 2:1 @250 with full extension. Lens is approx 120 long and has 52 filter ring which I have changed with 52-55 step ring to keep in line with most of my MD lenses (and minolta cap) Front element is non -rotating and lens is IF. Apertures from 5.6 - 22 It also comes with a reversible bayonet fit hood
<snipped some other text>
Mike Nobbs King's Lynn, England
Alan Cheong from Singapore is a R3 user with experience of the XE - here is what he writes about differencies between the two models:
Vastaanottaja: Mikko.Niskanen@turkuamk.fi
Kopio:Aihe: Re: Minolta XE & Leica R3
As a student, I have used an XE which belonged to the school's photographic society in the mid-1980s. I like the user experience which the XE had given me so much during those days that I have purchased a used "clone" Leica R3 Electronic MOT for personal use recently. I have chosen the R3 because the XE is rarity in the used camera market here in Singapore.
I am of the view that both the XE and its sister Leica R3 are in every way attractive manual focus 35mm cameras for use and pleasure to own.
However, the only thing lacking in the XE/R3 in comparison to the later Nikons FE and contemporary Olympus OM-2s is the lack of an owner
interchangeable focusing screen feature. This weakness is especially so on the XE finder because its finder is not as bright its Leica variant, the R3. Leica has extensively resigned the prism and mirror mechanism which resulted to a brighter and more contrasty viewfinder image. I reckon that it is at least 1-2 stops brighter than the XE's finder with a 50 F2 lens. Having a fixed focusing screen means that it is impossible for an easy upgrade with brighter third-party focusing screens. This may be a handicap when XE and R3 users perform close-up macrophotography and reproduction work with their cameras, particularly with the lens reversed and aperture stopped down.Nevertheless, the XE is still a very robust and high quality example of a manual focus 35mm SLR camera, I am sure that most of its existing owners or even sex-owners would testify to this.
I believe that this is also the main reason why there are relatively few units of the XE available in the used market today. If only Minolta had made
a mechanical version in the XE chasis (is there one ?), it would certainly be another modern classic!Given the opportunity, I would certainly to own a Minolta XE some day.
Thanks and Best Regards
Alan Cheong
Singapore
More about Minolta XE
My Minolta XE main page Main features The main features of XE-1 How to use an XE-1 A short user's manual of XE-1 - not a copy of the original! Technical details The XE-1 technical data My other pages
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