Henk Tammes Photography
  • Home
  • Portfolio
    • Countries >
      • Algeria
      • Belgium
      • Norway
      • Portugal
    • Landscapes
    • Portraits >
      • Black & White
      • Colour
    • Sports >
      • Athletics
      • BMX
      • Boxing
      • Motorsports
    • All the rest >
      • Jewish cemetary
      • Milkpowder factory
  • Hardware
    • Minolta >
      • Manual Focus >
        • Minolta SR-7
        • Minolta XM
        • Minolta srT303b
        • Minolta XE-1
        • Minolta XG 9
        • Minolta XD 7
        • Minolta X-700
        • Minolta X-500
      • Autofocus >
        • Minolta 7000
        • Minolta 9000
        • Minolta Dynax 7000i
        • Minolta Dynax 8000i
        • Minolta Dynax 7xi
        • Minolta Dynax 9xi
        • Minolta Dynax 600si
        • Minolta Dynax 700si
        • Minolta Dynax 800si
        • Minolta Dynax 7
        • Minolta Dynax 9
      • Vectis APS system >
        • Minolta Vectis S1
        • Minolta Vectis S100
        • Minolta Vectis lenses
        • Minolta Vectis accessories
      • Digital >
        • Minolta RD 3000
        • Konica Minolta Dimage A2
        • Konica Minolta Dynax 7D
  • Blog
  • About me
  • Contact

Minolta XM.

Introduced on 1972´s Photokina the XM went on sale in 1973. This was Minolta´s first attempt to break into the professional SLR market which was dominated by Nikon in those days. This is quite some camera. A heavy (and heavy it is) duty working horse. Even today it´s very usable. With full manual exposure control or aperture priority automatic exposure.

Funny enough it does have interchangeable finders but no possibility to attach a motordrive. it was not until the introduction of the XM motor in 1976 that one could buy a motordriven XM. But still one had to choose: XM without motor or XM motor with motor. The motordrive wasn´t detachable

Though my sample is quite used (isn´t she beautiful?), it still works properly. The ´senseswitch´ on the front, which starts the lightmeter, isn´t very reliable. But you can also start the lightmeter with the knob left of the viewfinder. This works fine. I used to take the XM to places were I expected more or less rough photography. I bought it allready with a very worn appearance, but I didn´t spare it when I used it myself. No problemo at all.

The XM was, en is, a very good and solid camera. However this wasn´t enough to beat Nikon (and later Canon). One can only guess for the reason: was it the lack of a motordrive, didn´t the pro´s want to change brands because they allready bought into a fortune of Nikon lenses or was the XM just not that much better than Nikon that it was worthwhile to change brands? I don´t know, but Minolta didn´t succeed in entering the promarket. In fact they never succeeded in entering the promarket. Also the later promodels ´9000´, ´9xi´ and ´dynax 9´ all failed.
xm_brochure_engels.pdf
File Size: 2129 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Powered by
✕