Minolta

The Minolta SR-T 101 is a 35mm SLR camera made by Minolta Camera Co. Ltd, Japan, premiering in the March 1966 Japan Camera Show ^[2]. Sales began in April 1966 and it stayed in production with only minor changes for ten years, the result of the thorough development effort that was put into the camera. The body is a direct continuation of the Minolta SR-7 model V of 1962, itself an innovative camera, with the addition of through-the-lens (TTL) metering and additional features.

Minolta combined significant innovations into the SR-T 101 TTL metering system including:

weighted two cell CLC metering reading the upper and lower fields, which compensated for lighting contrasts between these fields;
automatic full-aperture metering with compensation for shooting aperture;
metering for combined aperture, shutter speed and film sensitivity settings, with exposure indicator needle, follower needle and shutter speed scale visible in finder;
automatic aperture-range indexing when mounting a lens;
meter power-off interlock, to prevent inaccurate metering in depth of field preview aperture stop-down mode.

While the 1963 Topcon RE Super pioneered full aperture metering and the 1964 Pentax Spotmatic used two cells for averaging metering, no other Japanese SLRs available in 1966 combined all of the above innovations.

Minolta SR-T 101B

Several changes were made to the SR-T 101 during the long production period, both functional improvements and rationalisation of production. Some are easily detected while others are inside the body and not apparent without dismantling, these latter ones are not covered here. New features may have been retrofitted to older cameras due to repair or just being swapped between cameras, including the original lens. Camera body serial numbers has been observed from about 1.000.000, while the 58mm standard lens has been observed from about 5.000.000.

Minolta XG 1

The XG 1 was the second to appear in the XG series in 1979. It was basically a XG-E with a less informative finder display and a non-detachable back door. It was available in two versions in chrome finishing only and was an export model, not sold in Japan.

Besides the fixed back door, the XG 1 had a simplified viewfinder read out: The range between 1/15s and 1/2s was now represented by one LED. Further it lacked the memo holder and had just a DIN/ASA conversion scale instead

Minolta XG-SE

The XG-SE is a rebadged XG 1 in black finish and equipped with the new 'Acute Matte' focusing screen. It was put on sale shortly after the XG 1. It is said that the "SE" stands for "Special Edition". Like the XG-1 it was an export model

The Minolta Hi-Matic F was first developed in 1971. It is a typical rangefinder camera from seventies with an exposure meter derived from the Yashica Electro 35. I got it from an old man about 1.5 years back and right away was told that it’s ideal for street photography. In fact, beacause of that camera, I loved this genre so much. So what’s so special about this camera? Let’s see:

Wide Rokkor 38mm f/2.7 lens with electronic shutter
Fast automatic exsposure metereing
Small dimensions including 360g weight
It’s looking good(people don’t fear it)
Fast and accurate rangefinder focusing