There is an argument that Apple have never invented a single product. Innovate – yes, but the inventions have all been the product of other companies. Not convinced? The GUI central to the Macintosh was the invention of the geniuses at Xerox Parc, the iPod? Beaten to it years before in 1998 by a little known South Korean company. The iPhone? Well, we all know that smartphones had been around for years before that appeared – Blackberry ruled the world, remember? Apple Vision? Nah, Google Glass and a hundred other VR headsets had debuted years before. The same is true for smart watches, tablets, laptop and desktop computers.
Apple are a case study in business that will be referred to for centuries to come. Their bursting trophy cabinet of meteoric achievements and successes has been filled due to an incredible ability to observe the market, learn from competitors, benefit from the millions of dollars of research and development they have spent and then strike with a product which removes the defects in existing offerings and perfects a product category. There is a lot to be said for never being first to the market with a product. You benefit from someone else testing the market, proving the viability of a product, creating excitement around an idea and, above all, you benefit from another company making all the mistakes first.
You cannot, however, guarantee that this approach will always work as it seems to for Apple. Sometimes, those who are first to the market steal such a march on their competitors that they are never caught up, create a huge monopoly or it is simply too expensive for competitors to catch up.
What has any of this got to do with photography? Minolta shook the entire global camera market in 1985 by introducing the worlds first TTL auto focus system. Auto focus attempts had been made before by most manufacturers but they were nearly all based on huge bulky growths bolted on to the side of lenses. Practical they weren’t. The Minolta system was all in-body and therefore lenses were cheaper to build and less bulky and the action of the autofocus system quicker. It was literally the future of photography and suddenly Minolta found themselves as firm market leaders.
How did it pan out for them? Well, there’s a story there…
In this post:
- The release of a monster
- Litigation
- Buying a 7000i – A buyers guide and notes
- Expansion Cards
- Using an AF classic
- Conclusions
- Resources and further reading
The release of a monster
In the 1980’s, launching an autofocus camera system was not a straight forward process by any means. Make no mistake, Minolta were taking a massive gamble – every camera company by this time had well established lens mounts and systems, had invested millions in developing the finest manual focus optics and public perception was that auto focus just wasn’t necessary. The resistance to auto focus should not be underestimated, camera magazines were loaded week after week with letters (I genuinely miss a good letters page) from angry readers wondering why anyone would bother with such pointless technology when their perfectly functioning manual focus cameras, in their eyes, did the exact same job. These arguments barrelled on well into the early 2000’s, despite general and widespread adoption of autofocus and only the introduction of digital cameras finally distracted people and gave them something else to be angry about.
One of the key arguments consumers, commentators and magazine readers alike had was that manufacturers were effectively asking people to abandon their entire photography kit and start again with new, shiny and expensive bodies and lenses. Anyone who takes photography past the level of using a smartphone will know the time, research, effort and massive investment which goes into building up a carefully curated set of lenses and accessories to match your chosen camera and style of photography. Cameras and lenses have always been expensive indulgences whether in the 1970’s or right now when you can sink £7000 into a mirrorless body and still have to buy lenses for a brand new mount. Suddenly being faced with a choice of sticking with what you have and having massive “FOMO” (fear of missing out) as the kids would say or trading in at huge losses to upgrade is not exactly a fun decision to make. Times may change, the choices facing photographers do not.
Initially, a certain level of scepticism was well founded. Professionals had perfected their use of manual focus systems and were taking incredible sports, action and reportage pictures without too much of a problem and first generation auto focus systems were slow, awful, cumbersome things. You only need to take one look at Canons first effort in the image below to realise how unattractive an idea autofocus was.
The problem with many early auto focus efforts was that the entire system was based in the lens itself, with the camera being nothing more than a supporting act. This turned lenses into huge, bulbous things which were extremely slow to focus, even the Canons next effort with the T80 was only marginally better and that camera is an exercise in disappointment.
Minolta engineers had realised that the answer was to split the auto focus duties between lens and body. The camera should be responsible for metering and calculating the distance to a subject, the lens should then be wound to the correct focus. There are subtle variations on this idea – Minolta and Nikon effectively used a screwdriver built into the camera body which connected to the lens and physically wound the focus back and forth through a gearing system. Canon completely decoupled their EF lenses and placed the focus motor inside each lens, meaning only electrical contact needed to be made between camera and body. With the benefit of hindsight, history tells us that this motor inside the lens idea was ultimately the best way of doing things.
In 1985 Minolta launched the Dynax/Maxxum 7000 and completely changed the autofocus landscape. This was a camera which not only contained a full range of modern, up to date features but had a sleek, modern design, lenses which were small and compact and above all – an auto focus system that worked well enough to convince people this was the future. Three years later, the 7000i took all that was good from this camera, placed it in a completely redesigned body and improved in nearly every area.
Minolta had stole a march on their competitors and were seemingly striding off into the distance.
Litigation
Sometimes you can be on top of the world one day and the next day the rug is well and truly pulled from under your feet. About five years after the launch of the Maxxum / Dynax 7000 (not 7000i), Minolta lost a patent infringement case brought against them by Honeywell.
Honeywell are a company which started out making components for heating systems but then rapidly branched out into electronics and automation, notably making one of the first ever examples of autopilot for aeroplanes. These days they have their fingers in every single pie imaginable, but how they ended up embroiled in photography litigation isn’t at first glance very clear.
Indeed, the history of Honeywell’s involvement in photography is fairly vague from sources that I could find. They began by becoming the American importer and distributer of Pentax cameras. These Pentaxes were subtly rebranded and sold as “Honeywell Pentax” for the early part of the 1970’s but at some point Pentax sorted out their own distributors and Honeywell appear to have then lost interest in photography.
During this time, their engineers had been working on two breakthroughs in auto focus technology. Instead of spending the huge sums of money to produce a camera to go with it, they instead packaged up their AF system as a module and sold it to most major camera brands. Their second AF system was shown to Minolta and talks took place to work together on producing a product lineup, but Minolta decided they would be better going alone and broke off the relationship before the release of the 7000.
The case ended with the jury deciding that Minolta hadn’t stolen intellectual property from Honeywell and therefore you have to conclude that their system was sufficiently different to the one which Honeywell had demonstrated to them. However, they still lost the case on the grounds that they had infringed multiple patents held by Honeywell for AF technologies. It didn’t stop there for Honeywell who went on to bring cases against all the major players in the photography market.
Ultimately, this rolling litigation process would be the first pillar to fall in an empire that Minolta had built on seemingly unbreakable foundations. They’d got so far ahead of the initial competition, made some incredible products but then began to falter with some almost inexplicable mis-steps. The cost to Minolta of losing their legal battle was a whopping $126 million which significantly knocked them back. By later “betting the house” on the futuristic Advanced Photo System (APS), they eventually fell apart and sold their photography business and assets to Sony who continue the Maxxum/Dynax lineage to this day, just under the name “Alpha” – the name given to Minolta’s new AF lens mount system.
Anyway, back in 1985 and the launch of the 7000i, things were still looking good for Minolta.
Buying a 7000i – A buyers guide and notes
Buying a 7000i isn’t difficult, they sold in their thousands (especially in the US) and eBay is full of them for next to nothing. They all, without exception, suffer from hideous degradation of the rubber on the hand grip. Unlike old Canon’s which turn to goo, these have gone hard and brittle to the point where they just crumble in your hands. The grip is not a straight forward reconstruction job either, although some sellers do just glue textured grip material on them which works, but doesn’t look fantastic.
A browse of internet forums and Reddit show that many people have tried reconstructing the grip with Sugaru or similar with varying amounts of success – a lot of patience and careful sanding will be required with this route. However mint your copy of the 7000i is, it will have brittle rubber and will most likely need some work in the future.
There are other relatively common issues to look out for. I bought my first copy back in March and got something of a bargain from a charity auction. For £25 I received a camera, two lenses, a couple of expansion cards, a bunch of Cokin filters and other bits and pieces all in a big camera bag. As always with a new film camera, I ran a test roll through it twice and there seemed to be no issues. However, after loading up a roll of black and white film and heading out with the camera it got seven frames in before prematurely rewinding the film.
I presumed this was a one off, loaded it up again and got two further frames before it wound the film back in again. Not to be beaten, I fished the leader out of the can and loaded it once more. It was at this point that it made the worst grinding noise I’ve ever heard come from a camera and, rather extraordinarily, the back cover of the camera physically bulged outwards before giving up entirely and displaying a rather pitiful “help” message. According to various forum posts, this premature rewinding is not uncommon and you should test the camera thoroughly before buying in person (run a test roll at least twice through the camera) or before you leave positive feedback on an internet purchase.
Some months passed and the motivation to find another returned. I spent all of £10 on eBay for another and then weeks went by, no camera showed up. Eventually, the slowest seller in the world came through and finally posted the camera out. It was worth the wait because this copy is in extremely good condition, even the grip is having trouble finding the motivation to fall apart although there are early signs underneath the camera. It came with a Sigma zoom lens which has suffered from the dreaded plastic coating to sticky, black goo transformation. An alcohol bath sorted that out but it has taken some of the markings with it which was unavoidable given the state it was in.
In the current market, do not pay more than £20 for a 7000i unless it comes with a raft of accessories. The 7000i has not reached cult or collector status yet and, as such, is truly excellent value for money. Buy now and probably buy a couple of bodies in case anything goes wrong. Minolta may not be the first name in your head when thinking of buying a film camera but it absolutely should be on your list.
Expansion Cards
The Dynax/Maxxum 7000 and 9000i models bought with them an expansion system using cards that look almost identical to modern day SD memory cards. These cards would change the way in which the standard functions worked on the camera or, in some cases, add features that didn’t exist in the case of the exposure bracketing card. Minolta made a huge deal out of this system in their marketing.
As usual for a 1980’s product, the idea of “computer cards” was largely misunderstood by the press and public alike, meaning companies could get away with murder when mentioning anything to do with computing or electronics. There was a trend in the late 80’s and 90’s for slapping the word “digital” on products to make them sound advanced when all it really meant was “this is an electronic device.” These creative expansion cards had a wow factor in their day, but today you’re probably confused about why these options weren’t just built in to the camera – and your confusion is well founded. Can anyone feel a healthy dose of cynicism coming on?
Available cards were as follows:
| Card Name | Function |
|---|---|
| Custom function | Allowed you to customise the camera such as leaving the film leader out when rewinding (useful) and changing whether the frame counter went up or down (useless). Changes were permanent meaning you could borrow a card, set the camera and then never need it again. Should’ve been built in to the camera. |
| Close up | Changed the aperture according to the lens used and focusing distance. Nothing that couldn’t be achieved in aperture priority mode. |
| Sports / action | Changed the program mode to prefer higher shutter speeds. The same as just using shutter priority mode. |
| Highlight / shadow control | Allowed easier use of spot metering |
| Data memory | Recorded the shooting data for each frame on a roll of film. I’m not entirely sure how you get this data off the card? |
| Program shift control | Almost entirely pointless – the camera allowed you to shift the program function already. |
| Auto Depth control | Tries to achieve maximum depth of field. Simply use aperture priority… |
| Portrait | Limits the exposure settings to provide wide open apertures. Again, totally pointless when you can use aperture priority and set this yourself. |
| Fantasy | Changes the focus during exposure. This is one effect that you’d have a hard time replicating without the card. |
| Bracketing | As it says on the tin – and probably the most useful of all cards as this cannot be easily implemented in camera without it. |
Nearly all of these cards are totally pointless and the cynic in me sees this as a method of extracting extra revenue from customers after the camera had been sold and the effort seems rushed. In some cases this is almost undeniable – the custom function card is fairly disgraceful. The custom function card didn’t offer a great deal in the way of settings you could change and those changes persist regardless of whether the card is in the camera or not. This tells you quite categorically that the capabilities exist in the camera software and all this card did was allow you to access those functions – they could’ve built this into a menu/button on the camera. There were some tough decisions made during the development of the 7000i about what functionality made it in to the body, and what would be enabled through a card.
This kind of behaviour isn’t new. Car manufacturers are notorious for building cars with all the options such as cruise control and so forth built in, they then just disable these features in software and put blanking plates where buttons would be. This is a much cheaper method of construction than customising each car individually. These days it’s even worse, the dreaded and awful subscription model has come to cars in a big way and now you can “subscribe” to features like heated seats in your car. Something feels very wrong about that, but the groundwork for paying multiple times for a product you have already purchased was laid long ago.
I’ve spent some time thinking about how the card system could’ve been made a success but in all honesty, I can’t come up with a sensible answer. I’m convinced that the Minolta engineers genuinely thought the idea had some potential but ultimately it was something which seemed good but no one ever thought of a decent way to make it work. Other manufacturers quickly made the whole expansion card system look rather pointless. Canon and Nikon both had cameras out at the same time that included almost every single function from these cards built straight in to the body – and all without a further payment after buying the camera itself.
Minolta held on to the concept for five years or so, but it went nowhere and with the release of the 700si in 1994 they had abandoned cards and integrated all custom features or new exposure modes directly into the body. By 1994, Canon and Nikon had firmly established their AF lineups and had acquired huge chunks of the SLR market – Minolta had lost their way.
Using an AF classic
Minolta paid a great deal of attention to simplicity, ergonomics and ease of use with the 7000i and it really shows. The camera is a joy to hold in the hand and is very comfortable during prolonged use. The lack of physical buttons could be seen as a hindrance but they’ve been so carefully thought out that each one is well placed and only there if it has a common and specific purpose. Accessing what few options and settings there are is an easy and straightforward task.
Little design touches make the 7000i what it is, just like the LCD being large, easy to read and tilted slightly back towards you to make it easier to read. It is obvious to a modern camera user what each of the symbols on the display mean without having to resort to the manual – however back in 1989 I’m sure people had to familiarise themselves with some light reading before diving in.
My favourite feature of all has to be the P button – all cameras need a P button. No matter what settings you’ve dialled in, or perhaps you’ve changed an option but can’t for the life of you remember how you did it, one press of the P button and the camera resets to a totally default state. That default is program mode, single shot, with evaluative metering – making the 7000i instantly ready to take a picture in almost any circumstance.
The number of times I’ve left cameras with exposure compensation dialled in from a previous shot and carried on blissfully unaware that all subsequent frames are incorrectly exposed, having a P button and being in the routine of giving it a press by default would’ve saved so many lost images. Minolta knew that many people were intimidated by the complexity of SLR’s, they’d already solved part of the issue with their excellent auto focus system and with the P button they went a long way to help users feel that no matter what, they could be confident the camera could be “rescued” and put back in a usable state instantly. I love it.
The 7000i uses Minolta’s second generation autofocus system and it is as quick, capable and accurate as any other that I’ve used. I never felt as if focus took longer than necessary but there were occasions where it would be confused about which part of the scene to focus on if there were a number of choices or elements in close proximity at different distances. Compared to the competition from 1989 like the recently reviewed Canon EOS 600 and Nikon F401S, it more than holds its own. I didn’t notice the Minolta particularly hunting for focus as some early AF cameras do and certainly not as often as the Canon EOS 600 did when I used that. You can see why Minolta were seen to be ahead of the competition.
Finally there is the ever useful spot metering button on the rear of the camera, perfectly placed for your thumb to fall on it without taking the camera away from your face. I like this idea of a dedicated button for spot metering – I use spot metering a lot, especially when trying to take street portraits in really varied or back lit situations, but it isn’t the right metering mode for all situations. In many cameras, spot metering is a distinct mode that the camera is put in and it stays there until you switch to another. Having the option to just engage this as and when you need it, before returning to the matrix metering that is normally used, is intuitive and user friendly whilst never leaving you in a situation where you forgot to change back metering modes for subsequent shots.
In an entire roll of Kodak Gold 200, I had very few misses. Those shots I did lose were down to motion blur and as far as I can tell I didn’t get a single out of focus image, that’s really not bad at all for such an old camera. One thing that you can’t select is the focussing mode used by the camera. This is a little disconcerting because I had difficulty noticing the camera adjusting focus on moving subjects. On more modern cameras you can select single shot focus (still subjects) or AF tracking (moving subjects) and then you’ve some confidence that the camera is doing what you want it to. With the Dynax, it monitors the scene and will then switch to AF tracking when it detects movement. This is placing a great deal of faith in an AF system.
I shot a very expensive five frame burst of my daughter riding along on her scooter and every single frame has come out in focus so I can only conclude that the automatic tracking of moving subjects does indeed work as you’d expect!
One final thing to note about the Dynax is the metering. Lots was made by Minolta about their advanced honeycomb metering system and rightly so. I tested the 7000i out in various lighting conditions and in some very strongly back lit scenes and it got the exposure absolutely spot on each and every time. In an entire roll of film I didn’t get a single shot which was badly metered. This must’ve seemed like an absolute miracle machine to the consumers who bought one in 1989. I honestly take my hat off to the Minolta engineers, they did a superb job.
Conclusions
Once I got hold of a working copy, I don’t feel like the Dynax 7000i missed a beat. This is a camera which looks good, feels good and sounds good. It’s full of futuristic 80’s styling, right from the disappearing squares design on the back to the all round jet black plastic which was de rigueur for electronics in the 80’s and early 90’s. The only disappointment here is the apparent reliability concerns with the winding mechanism, as I found out first time round. That aside, there is nothing cheap or fragile about the way this camera feels in your hand or sounds in use.
This is a camera that would’ve made you feel like you were surfing the crest of the modern technology wave in 1989. There’s no doubt that Minolta had managed to make a camera system that was bang on the money – but it didn’t just look the part, it performs as well.
I am a stickler for design and appreciate when thought and effort have been put into the ergonomics and controls. The Canon T90 set the standard that all other modern, plastic shell cameras had to follow, it set a new benchmark for comfort, ease of use and overall design. The Dynax isn’t perfect but it gets very close to achieving design excellence. I’d prefer a control wheel than a slider that has to be repeatedly pushed or pulled for the main selection control, but this is a minor niggle and Minolta should be credited for having the conviction to take their own direction when designing the Dynax rather than simply copy and pasting a successful formula from another manufacturer.
The 7000i is full of subtle touches that you really appreciate when the camera is in your hand, I’ve discussed them in detail earlier on so won’t repeat myself now, but it all adds up to a camera that achieves that magical level that can be so hard to achieve – it gets out of your way so you forget about the camera and focus solely on what you’re doing. For me personally, I value this above nearly all else when evaluating a camera. Of course, features matter, image quality and optics matter, but what I really want is a camera that is so sorted I can just forget about it and click away confident that even if I’ve done something stupid, I’ll probably get decent results regardless.
Anyone who reads this site regularly will know I’m an absolute Canon obsessive. They set so many benchmarks in modern photographic history, came out with such a sorted design language so early on that they’re the level to which all others must rise. The Dynax really gave me a lot to think about – what if I’d used one of these first? What if this was my entry into the world of 35mm auto focus film photography?
Honestly, if the Dynax was my only film camera I’d be happy for quite some time. I just wish they’d not gone down the expansion card route, which is very easy to say in hindsight and the young version of me who grew up in the 1980’s would have been properly excited by the idea, but in 2024 I can’t get away from it being nothing more than a post sales cash grab. There was no reason to limit what was effectively a “not quite but almost top of the range” camera and leave out features like exposure bracketing. I’m also a control freak and I like to know that a camera is doing exactly what I expect it to and for that reason I’d want a body which gives me control over when single shot focus turns into focus tracking.
Let’s face it, these are fairly minor niggles. For most people and most use cases, this camera is more than you will ever need. It gives you pretty much all the manual control you may require, has an almost foolproof program mode, excellent (for the age) auto focus and quite astounding ability to meter a scene accurately every time. I have loved using the Dynax 7000i, I wouldn’t perhaps recommend it for quick fire street photography, but for everything else it’s a lovely camera. Better still, they’re cheap as chips, abundantly available, apparently undesirable and consequently prices are rock bottom and you can build quite the lens collection for next to nothing.
If you were thinking about getting into film photography, I’d highly recommend giving one of these a go.
Resources and further reading
For context about where the 7000i fits into the Minolta lineup, see Wikipedia here.
There is an excellent and extremely in depth review of the 7000i as published in the October 1989 edition of Americas Popular Photography magazine here.
As usual, manuals are widely available online, here’s a link to one possible source.
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