The Prize

In the mid-eighties Minolta* was a pioneer in the development of auto-focus technology. The Maxxum 7000, released in 1985, was arguably the first viable auto-focus camera. With AF sensors and focusing motor inside the camera body, lenses could be smaller and less expensive than equivalents from Nikon and Pentax.

Happy with my Nikon bodies and manual-focus lenses, I’d paid little attention to these developments, other than to doubt technology could possibly anticipate where I wished to place focus. How could I have anticipated the Fujifilm X-Pro2’s 325 focus points, face recognition, and tracking?

In 1991, I participated in Vancouver’s Vancouver, a group show produced by Urban Photographic Projects. The juried exhibition turned out to be a great experience.

Several of my photographs were accepted into the competition, including The Bible Society, 1981 ; South Moresby Caravan, 1986; and Wooden Roller Coaster, 1986.

The first two of those photos assumed unusual lives of their own, as I’ve described before. But it was the latter image that won second prize in the black and white category.

In addition to a generous cash award, the prize included a couple of thousand dollars worth of camera gear from sponsor Minolta (Air Canada, Accura, The Vancouver Sun, Hotel Vancouver, radio station KISS FM, (defunct) U.TV, and a slew of other  companies also backed the event).

I took home a newly-minted Minolta Maxxum 7xi camera, zoom lens, flash, and accessories.

Learning the Ropes

Rifling through my filing cabinets, researching for this post, I discovered a packing slip for a half-dozen Program Cards, delivered after the presentation, in October, 1991. These data cards fitted into a slot in the side door of the camera, something like today’s digital media, and could be enabled with a button on the top panel. I received cards for “Customized functions,” “Multi-Spot (metering?),” “Fantasy Effect,” “Flash Bracketing,” “Background,” and “Multi Exposure.” The retail on these things wasn’t cheap, at $55 a pop, so, with an extra $25 lithium battery, that made another $355 worth of swag.

As you can see from the snapshot at right, the 7xi was a beast, rivalling the size of a modern-day DSLR. The camera incorporated another innovation: an LCD data screen, also mounted on the top panel — something that soon became standard on most cameras.

I guess I didn’t prize my prize that highly, since I only kept it for a short time, selling it off to buy more lenses for my manual Nikons … or perhaps a used Hasselblad 500 CM.

For whatever reason, I sacrificed Program, Aperture Priority, and Shutter Priority modes, 14 segment matrix metering, automatic film loading, shutter speed up to 1/8000 sec, and, of course, auto-focussing  — all advanced for the time — to return to manual photography.

It would be several more years before I embraced auto-focus, which had become commonplace, though not always faster than manual focussing. I bought a Nikon F90X, but kept my manual bodies.

The gallery below represents a day testing out the novel auto-focus system with its “fuzzy logic” programmed sensors — all four of them!  The TTL flash was another wonder I didn’t trust to replace traditional fill-flash calculations stored between my ears. Now, its another case of How did I live without it?

I’d owned the 7xi for just a couple of weeks when I made this trip to Victoria, on September 29. I guess, according to the aforementioned shipping list, I didn’t yet have the data cards to play with. Certainly the auto-focus proved itself — there’s not a single poorly-focussed shot on the contact sheet. The TTL flash, where used, filled without looking obvious, exposure is spot on, and the whole experiment seems to have focussed my eye on the street.

The negatives from the “test” have resided in my archive for 26-years. Looking at the results now, I wonder why I didn’t give the camera its due. Perhaps because of the shortcomings mentioned in the review linked below — hard-to-access controls, the unfocussed mix of prosumer and amateur features, its unwieldy size (compared to my relatively compact Nikons).

If you’re interested in more technical details on the Minolta 7xi, this page provides more info, including the writer’s personal impressions (“Dynax” was the European name).

And here’s the original 7xi users manual (pdf).