Minolta SRT's -- Gotta Love 'Em.

Nokton48 said:
Minamata by Nokton48, on Flickr

My GrabNGo wide angle camera. I have not used it in quite a while. I have dusted it off and am looking forward to using it again. For when I get Jonesing for a rangefinder like experience.
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I keep coming back to this 21mm f4 lens.

This is obviously not a retrofocus optical design. Do you notice any advantages and disadvantages of this true wide compared to later retrofocus lenses of the same focal length?

- Murray
 
gaheris said:
Your f/8 lens can only be used with mirror lock up right? Love the leather, too. I am sorry for geeking out on you, but what is the string wrapping around the shutter button?
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The leather is red ringneck lizard from Cameraleather. I use TomA softies on all my SRT's. The "string" is a black nylon hair tie from the grocery store. I got tired of photographing the inside of my camera bags!
 
CMur12 said:
I keep coming back to this 21mm f4 lens. This is obviously not a retrofocus optical design. Do you notice any advantages and disadvantages of this true wide compared to later retrofocus lenses of the same focal length? - Murray
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When I used Leicas and RF Canons I had the 19mm F3.5 Canon. This lens is very similar to the Canon 19mm and is very small and sometimes I like using the supplemental viewfinder. It's very sharp and contrasty. I've posted pictures on this thread earlier. The hood is the Minolta 20mm F2.8 MD and works great with or without a filter.

I have the 21mm F2.8 and it's really a very different lens. Glad to have both.
 
My Fave SRT100 with 85mm F1.7MC and 3D Printed Grip XX Film by Nokton48, on Flickr

My favorite SRT100 with 85mm F1.7 MC Rokkor and 3D printed grip. I used this camera for high school journalism and returned to it after using just about everything. Like an old pair of shoes. Shooting Eastman 5222 XX in these cameras 99% of the time. Made some exposures today with Rokkor YG filter. Really like the 85mm MC F1.7 Rokkor. This camera is covered with Green Kangaroo from CameraLeather. TomA Softie and black hairtie, even with it I still make some accidental exposures! 🙂 A&A Voigtlander short cloth strap. And a TomA Exposure Chart for XX on the back of the camera. SRT Diopter Lens and SRT Eyecup also
 
Here is the SRT-303, i have a SRT-100 also and a Rokkor-QF 50mm Macro, I need to take another picture with the lens on. Brilliant cameras, i am baffled as to why these cameras are not enjoying more attention from classic camera aficionados.



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I agree, Pan...They seem to be underrated. I inherited my father's SRT201 and several lenses, which I am still using. It had sat unused in a closet for nearly twenty years. The light seals had decomposed, as expected, but after a quick cleanup and new seals, it is working perfectly. I have shot several rolls so far with no issues.
I was shooting with it in Boulder City, Nevada just a few weeks ago, to test a Rokkor-X 45mm f2 lens. I was approached by a young lady who told me she was looking for a good film camera, and asked if I had any recommendations. There's no short answer there, but I walked away with some hope that film photography will continue to inspire future generations.

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Minolta SRT Copy Stand 2 by Nokton48, on Flickr

I bought the original SRT Copy Stand at a local camera show. It came with the plastic cover in the original box. The Minolta SRT Bellows with the 100mm Bellows MC Rokkor. Set above to just frame the glasses frames tightly with the 100mm F4 which is a superior close up lens. SRT Cable Release also on SRT101 with SRT Diopter. Looks great through the camera. And close by I have the 100mm MC Rokkor and also the old MC 50mm F3.5 Macro Rokkor. And appropriate extension tubes and SRT Slide Copier as well. I'm going to add a good light box to digitize negs up to 8x10. My old Nex 3's will work great for this. And interchanges with all my SRT stuff


The SRT has always been very highly regarded by Professional and all alike in Europe. In the USA you could buy them at JC Penney so they became pretty mainstream and overall underrated.

Minolta SRT Copy Stand 1 by Nokton48, on Flickr

This will be the new copy area.
 
I recently bought an SR-T 101 off the GW site. Originally purchased it for the 58mm 1.4 lens as it looked less used than mine. Got it home the other day and started to clean it up. Thought someone had taken the aperture blades out of it as they were NOT working. I was pretty bummed out about it as the lens really looked nice on the outside compared to mine. On cleaning up the camera more, I found it to be in really nice condition, albeit dirtier than I'd ever let a fine instrument get. After wiping down with IPA it looked very presentable. Inside was clean (which reminds me I need to clean it still) and on checking the battery holder, it looks pristine and held a battery too!
This camera doesn't have the split image focusing my other one does, but it doesn't have the patina of use either.
While trying to decide what to do about the lens, I was working the aperture ring like a mad man.
Guess what?
The aperture cured itself!
It has a little bit of oil on a couple of the blades but it works!
 
I'm not aware of your knowledge of old Minoltas, so I'll offer the following, just in case.

That lens is a 6-element/5-group design, which is unusual for an f/1.4 normal lens (typically 7 elements). By going with a 58mm focal length (rather than 50mm), Minolta was able to avoid a retrofocus optical formulation.

A lot of people like this lens. I hope you enjoy it, along with the camera.

- Murray

PS. By the way, that lens will work on any Minolta manual-focus camera in metered manual and aperture priority modes. It will not function reliably in shutter priority or program modes.
 
Thanks Murray. I first used this type lens back in the mid-80's when I bought my first SR-T 101. Got it well used from a person at work who'd bought it new. It was well used and needed a going thru so it was priced appropriately. I took a photo of my son that Mom liked so much she offered to pay for the CLA which I had done at Minolta. The lens is still a little loose in the focus mechanism, but I enjoyed using it on my Sony's so much I decided I needed to find one in better shape. Hence this purchase. I have a number of manual focus lenses that I've adapted, but I think I'll enjoy using this one just a tad more than the others for some reason. I really like the images it produces.
 
AlwaysOnAuto said:
I recently bought an SR-T 101 off the GW site. Originally purchased it for the 58mm 1.4 lens as it looked less used than mine. Got it home the other day and started to clean it up. Thought someone had taken the aperture blades out of it as they were NOT working. I was pretty bummed out about it as the lens really looked nice on the outside compared to mine. On cleaning up the camera more, I found it to be in really nice condition, albeit dirtier than I'd ever let a fine instrument get. After wiping down with IPA it looked very presentable. Inside was clean (which reminds me I need to clean it still) and on checking the battery holder, it looks pristine and held a battery too!
This camera doesn't have the split image focusing my other one does, but it doesn't have the patina of use either.
While trying to decide what to do about the lens, I was working the aperture ring like a mad man.
Guess what?
The aperture cured itself!
It has a little bit of oil on a couple of the blades but it works!
Click to expand...
I have never seen an early or late 101 with split RF focusing screen, all I have ever read suggests these first appeared on later models.

The MC 58mm f/1.4 is one of my favourite lenses. Be aware however that, atypically for a Japanese lens of its vintage, some internal lens coatings are unusually fragile. I've been informed of this by a couple of experienced Minolta repairers. Should you be inclined to disassemble the lens to clean the aperture blades try to avoid touching internal surfaces and use non contact cleaning methods if cleaning is appropriate.

The 101 remains my favourite Minolta. I find the lockable depth of field preview useful for slower, more contemplative landscape or architectural imaging, and for long exposure work, setting it before release yields a small but noticeable decrease in mechanical vibration from the stop down linkage. Together with the MLU most 101s have it makes for lower levels of pre-exposure vibration than some focal plane shutter SLRs.
 
As far as I know, the SR-T 101 always had a micro-prism center with a fine-focusing collar. The SR-T 201 had the same focusing screen until right at the end, when it lost the CLC metering and gained the split-image focusing screen.

The split-image center with micro-prism collar was introduced in 1973 with the new flagship model, the SR-T 102. The 202 also had it.

- Murray
 
OK, I just looked at both my 101's. My old one that I bought some 40+ years ago has the split image screen and the new used one does not. It has a micro-prism center screen.
I wonder if Minolta updated the screen on the first one when I had it gone thru way back in the late '80's shortly after getting it?
It sure makes it easier to focus, IMO, as I never could get the micro-prism thing to be sharp. My first SLR, a Mamiya Secor 1000DTL had it and I never got a good picture from that camera, ever. I think I was a little far sighted at the time.
 
AlwaysOnAuto, it would make more sense to me that Minolta upgraded the focusing screen on your older 101 when they serviced it, as I have never otherwise been aware of that focusing screen in a 101. Minolta even carried the central micro-prism screen over into the 201.

The later focusing screens, with the split-image center and the micro-prism collar had a coarser micro-prism, which provided more contrast and made focusing snappier. They tended to black out with slower lenses, however. (This can be remedied by repositioning the eye in the finder to the precise spot where light comes to the micro-prism and split-image functions.)

In my opinion, the finer micro-prism of older SLRs, such as the 101, are more resistant to blacking out with slower lenses.

- Murray
 
Thinking back on this some more...I think the original owner of my first 101 may have updated the screen. I seem to recall it always having that screen as I found it sooooo much easier to focus than my old M-S camera.
I only have the one, now two, 58mm lenses so no slower lenses for me to compare them to re: the black out. The owner of my first one was savvy enough to price the camera such that with the cost of a CLA factored in, it was market value at the time. I remember telling my supervisor at the time that I'd picked it up from a fellow worker in another building. He was pissed that I got it as he was collecting SR-T's at that time. I paid all of $30 for it.
 
Scan-150212-0004 by Nokton48, on Flickr
A Blue Heron takes off at Pickerington Ponds.

Minolta SRT-101, 400mm f5.6 MD Apo Rokkor-X lens wide-open, Eastman 5222 Double-X movie film, developed in straight Microdol-X. Scanned on a Minolta DiImage II scanner.
 
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