The XD-s was unsurprisingly introduced specifically for the Japanese market, although it seems to be widely available on the second-hand market here in Europe. It is functionally the same as the XD-7 / XD-11, but it replaces the eyepiece shutter with a diopter correction which makes focusing and framing easier for those with less than perfect eyesight. The XD-s is also good if you wear glasses. I obviously need to practise more to improve focus accuracy, but even for a first attempt this was much more successful than trying to manually focus the Canon camera. Manual focussing is helped by the use of a split-screen surrounded by a ring of micro-prisms that shimmer if the focus is not quite correct. The viewfinder is excellent, with LEDs to indicate the metered shutter speed and a small window that shows the selected aperture on the lens. It was the first SLR to support both manual, aperture-priority and shutter-priority shooting modes, with everything controlled from dials on the camera and aperture and focus rings on the lens. Whatever the reason, the metering seems fine at the moment.Īside from some exposure problems, the camera is surprisingly easy to use. It is possible that the contacts in the Minolta ISO dial are suffering a little from age. But after some experimentation with the ISO dial and exposure compensation the two cameras seem to agree again. As a result the scans are significantly noisier and grainer than they might otherwise be.Ĭomparing the Minolta’s against the meter in a DSLR indicated an over-exposure of about 1-stop. Unfortunately, the camera also consistently metered too slow a shutter speed. Also amazingly, the shutter control still seems to be working just fine, with consistent exposures at every shutter speed. This is despite some slightly tacky foam seals and a little movement in the back of the camera. These images were shot in about an hour on a Saturday morning, all using a 50mm lens. To see of the effect of the smaller camera on subjects… To see if I can still figure out how to focus manually to check if the camera light seals are still good enough (the camera is more than 30 years old…).All the images here were taken using the Minolta MD 50mm f1.4 lens. Our leather camera neck straps and wrist straps are compatible with a wide range of camera bodies including film and digital DSLRs, Rangefinders, EVIL cameras, Micro 4/3 and Compact Mirrorless cameras featuring round lug strap mounts.In sudden burst of enthusiasm to try something slightly different, I have dusted-off the old Minolta XD-s and shot a roll of Ilford HP5.
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