A shot to nothing

[JamesT]

At the end of a trip to Aston Rowant on Sunday, I realized there was probably a shot left on the film so I wandered back to the outlook near the car park, and got this which was probably my best mono image of the day. (number 40 on the film).

Minolta X500, Minolta 35-70 F3.5, linear polarizer, Fomapan 200, Rodinal 11 mins 20⁰C.

[ChrisLumix]

Nice, but rather soft - where was your focus point?

I still have my trusty Minolta XD7 but it's been more than a year or two since it thad a run out with a roll of film. What a shame such a pioneering company retreated from photography.

[JamesT]

Focus was on the end of the trees on the ridge. I think it may be as much the scanner as the shot -- though the 9000F seemed like the best option, it often seems a bit soft to me, trouble is there's not that much around with medium format capability as well.

I think the XD-7 is the only other 35mm SLR  I'd seriously consider.  I think the X500 is a significantly better camera than it's "big brother" the X700, but it was poorly marketed and as a result they are actually quite rare on the market these days. I must confess when I bought it I really didn't know much about cameras, I just preferred that one over the other secondhand SLR in Grut's -- can't remember what it was.

[ChrisLumix]

Really, the X500 is better than the X700? Explain...

I too never went much for the X700 - the only real advantage it had over the XD7 was (I think) TTL flash, and it lost shutter priority IIRC. The XD7 was an advanced camera for around 15 years, until the Dynax range came along. Even the X7000 - with its super bulky autofocus wasn't really a step up, most of us could live quite happily without autofocus on an SLR back then. After all we'd been focusing with a twirl of the ring for years, we didn't miss many shots! 

[JamesT]

So far as I can see, there is one thing in the X700 that's not in the X500 - a very basic program mode (true point & shoot nothing more), but the X500 has 3 things not in the X700:

1) A proper guided manual mode that shows both the selected exposure and the camera's suggestion (in the X700 you have to look at the dial to see what you selected).

2) Can use flash at slower than the sync speed -- though with a 1/60 sync speed it's not so useful.

3) Correct metering even when the DoF preview is engaged.

For me #1 is the key one.

[ChrisLumix]

On 5 October 2016 at 22:07, JamesT said:

So far as I can see, there is one thing in the X700 that's not in the X500 - a very basic program mode (true point & shoot nothing more), but the X500 has 3 things not in the X700:

1) A proper guided manual mode that shows both the selected exposure and the camera's suggestion (in the X700 you have to look at the dial to see what you selected).

2) Can use flash at slower than the sync speed -- though with a 1/60 sync speed it's not so useful.

3) Correct metering even when the DoF preview is engaged.

For me #1 is the key one.

Yes, the XD-7 has a kind of program mode (the first ever). Sadly it only works in Shutter Priority, but whatever speed you choose, the camera will try to find an aperture to give correct exposure, but if it can't, it will vary your selected shutter speed until it can find an aperture. So you could, say, choose 1/125 (or whatever) knowing you could then point and shoot.