Lots of Minolta lenses and stuff

[Tannin]

A mate of mine recently inherited camera gear from a relative. It is all Minolta stuff, pretty good quality by the look of things, and quite old. I took notes but left them at the office, so from memory, it includes:

• Minolta film camera
• 3 different Minolta 50mm f/1.7 prime lenses
• Minolta 200mm f/3.5 prime
• Vivitar 400mm f/5.6 prime
• Brand I forget (not one I've heard of) 70-200 f/4 zoom - quite heavy, very well-built, the quality reminds me of Tokina
• Minolta 110 film point and shoot thing
• A really weird telescope thing with an unreversed Minolta 50/1.7 in it and some other optics and no earthly purpose I could fathom
• A tripod

My mate asked me what he can do with this stuff. He's not really interested in money for it so much as simply not throwing fine old equipment into the landfill.

My guess - and it's just a guess as I'm a Canon user and digital all the way - is that at least one of the 50/1.7s is quite good and worth using today, and a 400mm prime must be something a bit special still, even though it (like all the others) is a full manual lens with aperture ring and manual focus.

I was impressed by the solid feel and ultra-smooth, long-throw focus mechanisms some of these lenses feature. Modern lenses just don't feel like that.

Anyway, I'm not looking for offers or anything, just some advice on what my friend can do with this gear other than throw it away, which would be a shame.

[Ian Brewster]

Hi Tannin,

Sony Alpha mount cameras can take some Minolta lenses directly. Older Minolta mounts need an adapter. Can you find the lens/mount details please?

Ian

[mechawombat]

I guess these would be MD/MC mounts.

[Tannin]

Cheers Lads. I don't have the lenses so it will take a little while to get details (but I've got the camera model written down, they will be matched to it). But armed with Mechawombat's hint I looked up MD/MC mounts here - http://www.rokkorfiles.com/Lens%20History.html - and I reckon they will be MD models, and thus effectively useless. What a shame! (I had thought, incorrectly, that the Minolta lenses went way back, compatibility wise.)

Still, I'll check that camera model to be sure.

[ameerat42]

Tannin. I've got heaps of working Minoltery and which I still (though only sometimes) use.
Could you get a pic of some of this stuff just for interest. Pity this friend lives in Victoria.
I'd like to see it at least, especially that "scope thingy". And tell him landfill is definitely out.
Then you might be able to put it in the For Sale forum.
Am.

[Boo53]

Tanain, there is a Heritage camera group in Victoria who, I'm sure, would be very interested in that gear.

I'm not sure of their exact name & I was hoping to ask the chap in our local camera club that has a lot to do with them exact details last night but he wasn't at the meeting. Hopefully he'll be at the committee meeting tonight & I'll try to get those details then

[mechawombat]

You can get a MD/MC to A mount adapter. Never tried one though.

[Tannin]

Thankyou all! I only see this friend every now and again. I'll pass on the info in this thread and we will see what use he makes of it. As I said, he mostly just doesn't want to see this fine old gear wasted.

Ameerat, that "scope thingy" is a weird one! It's crude-looking barrel in milled aluminium, maybe 6 or 7 inches long and two or three inches in diameter, and curved or tapered (not just a straight tube). It looks like an aftermarket thing, or possibly even hand-made. It has none of that high-quality engineered feel of the other gear. Inside it, at one end, there is a 50mm Minolta prime lens (manual everything), facing out. The front of the lens, in other words, faces the outside of the tube - it is not reversed. There is no apparent facility for adjusting focus or aperture, short of unscrewing a grub screw and disassembling the whole scope thingy. The rest of the barrel is empty except for, right at the other end, a single bit of glass, very frosted with age now, but obviously magnifing from the shape of it. It was glued or rubber-set into the end of the scope but the glue has perished and it is loose now. I didn't try cleaning it. There is no apparent facility to attach the tube to anything else - no bayonet mount, no filter thread, no clip points or screw holes. Beats me what on earth you used it for.

[Boo53]

Tannin

I asked about the local camera club suggested the

AUSTRALIAN PHOTOGRAPHIC COLLECTORS' SOCIETY INC.
Secretary APCS
159 Canterbury Road
Canterbury Victoria 3126 AUSTRALIA