Soundly outperforming the professional camera offerings from Canon and Nikon (which offered no auto-exposure shooting modes), and completely trumping competitors Pentax and Olympus in the areas of modularity and professional-level interchangeability, Minolta again demonstrated an uncommon understanding of how to create amazing and unexpected machines.
Unveiled at Photokina in 1972, the XK was an unlikely showstopper. But let’s break this thing down properly. To be fair, it’s only major misstep is its exceptional heft. It’s strong and reliable, technically proficient, customizable, and grants access to one of the best ranges of vintage glass in the world. What does the XK get right? A lot of things. While the XK is one of the best 35mm SLRs I’ve ever shot, in the end it’s simply far too big and much too heavy to call it a perfect camera. But that was before it had well and truly demonstrated its most egregious failing, a failing that’s impossible to remedy. The XK had made amazing images for me in Boston the week before, and throughout the first day of our retreat I was loving it. With a forecast in which temps were predicted to reach the high nineties, I knew it was a bad idea, but the ambitious part of my brain anticipated scenic views, interesting backdrops for product shots, and ample opportunities for further testing the pro-spec Minolta SLR that had thus far impressed me to a greater degree than any Minolta SLR I’d ever shot. Things were going great- and then someone suggested climbing a mountain. I’d brought rare, Japanese whiskey, a novelty flying disc, and a bag full of classic film cameras. Mere hours before I’d been peacefully relaxing in a humble but well-appointed cabin on the shores of Lake Sunapee, smack in the middle of the second day of a weekend away to celebrate the last gasps of my pal’s prenuptial existence.
It was there that I decided to hate them, too. I wiped the sweat out of my eyes with the back of an equally moist hand, squinted against the sun, and managed to catch a fleeting glimpse of my friends as they disappeared behind a bend in the trail ahead. I stood hunched and panting over a tangle of evergreen roots attempting to relieve for the hundredth time the throttling grip of the camera strap that clawed the back of my sunburnt neck. It was after climbing 2,000 feet above sea level, with several hundred more to hike, that I decided to hate Minolta’s XK.
0 kommentar(er)
