Unexpected Gift - Minolta X-700

 I have always been blessed with my choice of friends being good ones over the years. There has been some terrible ones who are no longer on the christmas card list, but for the most part I have a great circle of friends whom never cease to amaze me. At the Bikers Charity event I attended at the beginning of May, once such friend offered me a "box of cameras" and the price was a donation to the National Association for Bikers with a Disability, the charity we were helping to raise money for that weekend. I was intrigued and made arrangements to pick the "box of cameras" up a few days later.

When we met up in Manchester to do the deal he opened the flight case and revealed a Minolta X-700 and a Minolta X-300 together with several lenses and a couple of accessories. He hadn't used them for over a year, he was happy using his OM-10 and figured I would enjoy using them. He's not wrong! I was amazed as I had never shot a Minolta manual focus camera before and, like buses, two had just showed up at once! I immediately said they were coming home with me and, as requested by my awesome chum, a suitable donation was paid to our favourite Bikers Charity later that evening.

I had been thinking about buying a Minolta camera for a while and regular readers will know I bought a Minolta Dynax 500si recently that I really enjoy using. A manual focus Minolta was on my bucket list and I got to work giving them a clean at home. Both cameras required batteries, which I would have replaced anyway for peace of mind, I always have a few LR44's in my kit. Once fitted I was happy to find both cameras are in good working order. I gave the lenses a good clean too and they are also in good working order. I just had to film test them and decided to concentrate on one at a time as I familiarised myself with the well set out controls.

I loaded a roll of Fomapan 200 in the X-700 and headed off to Mesnes Park in Wigan, my favourite testing location. The lens I chose for the first part of this test was a Minolta MD 50mm f/1.7 which is ideal for testing the auto features of the X-700. I also used an orange filter. Half way through the film I swapped over to a Hoya HMC zoom & macro 35-105mm f/3.5 and just used the camera manually.

Using the X-700 in program mode was done by setting the shutter speed dial to P and locking the aprture ring at f/22 on the 50mm lens. The camera chose the shutter speed and aperture for each shot which made life incredibly easy. All I needed to do was point, focus, shoot! I seem to be doing a lot of that lately as the Pentax P30t I reviewed recently has a similar set up. When I switched to manual I guessed it was a 1/250th at f/11 kind of day and the built in light meter on the X-700 agreed with me. Happy days!

My first impression of the Minolta X-700 is this is a very nice camera. It has an excellent build quality with enough features to keep professional and amateur photographers happy. I'm still very much an amateur photographer and it didn't take me long to get acquainted with the X-700. I used it manually and in it's fully automatic mode. It also has Aperture Priority which I will get round to using next time I take it out. What I really wanted to know was how was the quailty of my negatives? I finished the film and headed home to develop it and find out.

I developed my roll of Fomapan 200 in Rodinal 1+50 for 9 minutes at 20 celcius and hung it to dry in my bathroom overnight. I scanned it with my Ion Slides2PC 35mm scanner and removed any dust spots and scratches with Affinity Photo. I have to say I'm very pleased with my first ever roll of film through a Minolta X-700, particularly the first half I shot with the 50mm lens and orange filter.

Here's a few of my photos from this day out with my Minolta X-700. It seems my regular rotation is getting larger with every camera I use and I am certainly feeling more confident in my ability to produce decent photos with all my toys. I have placed my photos in an album on Flicker you can visit using the link below and also please consider making a donation to help me continue my journey using the Ko-Fi buttons on this page. I hope you enjoy them.

Minolta X-700 - Fomapan 200