My first SLR was the first Minolta auto focus SLR, the Maxxum 7000. My second SLR, as it turns out, is the first of Minolta's Digital SLRs, and sadly, appeared at the end of this brand in the marketplace. Now that I had had the Maxxum 7D for a while, I have had a chance to shoot with it in a wide variety of conditions, and, of course, I have tried space photography with it. All in all, this full feature camera is a joy to use with instant access to all-important functions without having to surf menus. It has shown itself to be quick, sensitive in low light, and the anti-vibration feature has allowed me to shoot at down to 1/4 second exposures without vibration blur.

Since Sony has taken over Konica Minolta's SLR unit, the only product has been the Alpha 100, a somewhat uprated version of the Maxxum 5D. While it is a fine camera for its own consumer-quality niche, I sincerely hope they are working on a successor to the mighty Maxxum 7D, which currently has no direct equivalent on the market.

Background

Minolta invented the autofocus/ auto-everything SLR in 1985 when they introduced the Maxxum 7000. This compact camera integrated a new bayonet lens fitting where the camera drove a gear train in the lens to focus it, and so had direct control of focus. The other main feature is Maxxum lenses had chips and data reporting devices in them so the camera knew what was out there and what it would do. As a result, this camera worked very well in predicting focus, a trick most people can't do with a camera. This camera sold well and changed the world of photography, but also introduced the seeds of Minolta's future problems since apparently they had infringed on various Honeywell patents.

The development process at Minolta also took a strange turn around the time they lost the lawsuit to Honeywell when they attempted to move their SLRs to the Advanced Photo System film. When the APS photo system appeared in the mid 1990s, Minolta tried to migrate to an APS SLR called Vectis. The shorter 35mm focal length of this film compared to the 50mm focal length of 35mm film cameras presented an extremely serious problem- Minolta had a very large array of superb 35mm auto-focus lenses already developed. But when mated with an APS format camera, it had the effect of adding a 1.4X teleconverter, so all of the lenses acted like they had longer focal lengths and handy lenses like the excellent 35mm-70mm zoom went from offering a field at 0.7X to 1.4X to 1X to 2X. So, new lenses had to be developed for the new cameras.

By doing a bit of math, the low end of the zoom to be the equivalent of 35mm on a 35mm camera (say that three times fast) was 28mm. However, the lenses which appeared were not as good as the older ones, and as APS fell to the wayside as digital detectors improved, this turned out to be a dead end.

As everyone now knows, then end of the line for APS was digital, though Minolta had already pulled back to 35mm. However, what happened is the difficulties of making CCD detectors in larger sizes meant some size other than 35mm was needed if digital SLRs were to cost less than houses. The compromise was to make detectors in the APS size, which is fairly large for a detector, but would be feasible in the future and could be supported with APS series lenses. And so, Minolta, trailing everyone, finally introduced a 6MP Digital SLR in 2005 using an APS size detector. The Maxxum 7D integrated everything they had learned, and everything one could learn from the shortcomings of other SLR makes. THe Maxxum D7 uses the same Sony CCD sensor used in the Nikon D70 and D70s, but matched with a far higher end control system and a professional level set of features. Unfortunately, the first offering was also paired with APS heritage lenses, including the infamous 28mm-70mm zoom, and it was a year before this error was rectified with the excellent 18mm-70mm zoom. During that time, a little brother, the Maxxum 5D, entered the market, but essentially could not change the course of the ship, and in 2006, Konica Minolta turned its SLR unit over to Sony, who previously had never offered a digital SLR.

And yet, the Maxxum 7D is as feature-packed a camera as the highest end Canon and Nikon offerings. All Maxxum heritage lenses are compatible with it, as well as Sony alpha series lenses. At the same time, the camera offers a huge amount of stand-alone functionality other SLRs simply do not have. The camera is now supported by Sony, though in my experience, the camera is simply trouble-free. So I haven't needed to lean on this support.

Description

If you compare the Maxxum 7D to the older Maxxum 7000, it is a much larger camera, and has a greater number of controls on the outside. However, it is not as large as the high end Canons and Nikons, which are volumous, indeed.

The main thing to understand about this camera is the philosphy behind it- give the photographer instantaneous control. Simply put, anything the photographer is likely to want to use regularly and quickly has its own control on the outside of the camera. So, for example, exposure steps have their own knob, and there is a slider to go between drive modes such as the self timer, single, and continuous photography. The camera is also designed to be completely stand-alone for everything it does. Unlike the Canon series, doing interval photography is an onboard funtion and does not require hooking the camera up to a computer. The anti-shake system is also onboard the camera- any lens attached is anti-shake for exposures up to 1 second.

Other controls include direct access to all of the main computer controls, such as ISO setting, image review, magnification, and so on, direct control of the auto-exposure system, direct control of white balance (instantly switch between one you set and auto, or a temperature), depth of field preview (the iris contracts to where it will be for the photo), autofocus location, manual focus, and auto exposure. Now, if this gives the impression the camera is sort of like a photographic version of sitting in the Space Shuttle's cockpit, with knobs and switches everywhere, you have the right mental image. However, the locations are divided up based on a conventional grip of the camera, and the most used features are literally at your fingertips. Most of all, the camera is designed so it is self explanitory for the basic functions. So, for example, the auto exposure control has a button for exposure lock, where by feel you can just press and you meter on a spot, then move to where you want to center the photo, and shoot the picture. The control for reviewing a photo on the screen is well out of the way, so it is handy if you want to look at images, but not being hit by accident. At the same time, the camera will override its controls depending on what is going on- a half-press on the shutter to activate autofocus cancels whatever you were playing with, and off is always OFF NOW, and will pull the camera into a safe configuration, whether you have gotten stuck in an interval photo series you didn't mean to start, or you have been cleaning the CCD.

The camera has an all-metal interface for lenses, and a very satisfying solid feel. In a nod towards rationality the other digital SLR makers have yet to fully implement, this camera has a nice bigh 2.5" screen combined with a high efficiency illuminator, so it doesn't exhaust the battery the way other makes do. What difference does this make? So far I have shot over 350 frames in one outing with every one displayed on the screen for 2 seconds, on one battery, with plentiful reserve power.

Usage

This Maxxum has a lot of features, and rather than summarize the manual, I am going to go from direct experience. First and foremost, the camera will act as a fully-automatic camera. It has a setting on the function dial with a green P, which when selected, is full auto with a basic image format selected. So, if you see a hummingbird out the window and have no idea what the camera was set for last, set it here. When turned on, it boots up very quickly- faster than the small Canon Digital Elph cameras I have, and faster than I can bring it into action after turning it on. In this mode, all unusual settings are canceled. So, for example, the continuous mode is switched back to single, or self timer is set to single- despite the switch being set to one of these modes- you must move the selector through its range to select one of these special modes. Otherwise, this is the foolproof and predictable camera mode. There are two roller controls for aperture and shutter speed- by moving these in this mode, you can shift the camera to any of these modes, it is just in the most automatic mode. So, if you know nothing about cameras, this will get you started.

So far I have used this setting while photographing a flock of swallows in Agrigento, Sicily. In this case I was actually shooting pictures of an ancient Greek temple at sunset when an enormous fluctuating body of birds flew across the sun from the south. http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/view_photo.asp?pid=11462&c=35913 The only modifications from the original shot are cropping and increasing Jpeg compression for size- the gamma, color, sharpness, and other features have not been touched from the file as written by the camera. A more typical daylight result is this photo of the Chiricahua National Monument: http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/view_photo.asp?pid=9106&c=35913

An especially difficult subject for this camera was the USS Texas, in Houston. http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/view_photo.asp?pid=9641&c=35913 Notice the dark blue-gray color, which as a camouflage, was designed to cause just the sort of problems I had photographing it (low brightness and contrast, difficulty resolving features). Something I find interesting is how the final photo has very good resolution and the color is great- the problems were dealing with exposure for the dynamic range. The solution was to pick the right spot on the ship for a brightness sampling, though I have no idea how you would do this without being able to see the result. The other mystery with this photo is how I avoided getting West Nile after being swarmed with mosquitoes to get this photo.

The camera has the potential for getting into Maxxum autofocus shuffle, where if there are many good hard edges to focus on, or none at all, either case can make it dance back and forth. This is the only real shutter lag the camera has, and so if you are shooting a known focus, it can make things a lot faster to switch it to manual, focus it, and just shoot. The camera is a little slow on a follow-up shot if it is in single shot mode, where if you move it to continuous, it will focus on the fly and let you shoot at 3 frames per second. If you have a 4GB card, you can have 300-700 frames available depending on what format you want them in, so I am definitely in the shoot pix now and sort later camp.

There is a second white P on the dial which remembers what you were last up to, and this is a potent mode for a lot of photography. It also has shutter and aperture priority modes. One quirk about myself, is I tend to put the camera in manual mode and move around settings to see what I get. The camera has three saved modes, which you can enter from any of the other modes with special settings, so this is where I stash programs for astrophotography (ignore what the lens and the light meter say and shoot a 30 second exposure at max sensitivity), which would be a mess if I selected them in daylight.

Minolta made a big deal over how the camera will display exposure data on the LCD, but had the ability to detect when your eye is approaching the eyepiece and turn this off so it didn't distract you. This feature does work, though I generally would leave the LCD off completely to conserve power. In any case, the night time brightness of the display is bright enough to be very distracting, even if it turns off when you approach, so I tend to leave it off for this reason as well.

One very interesting item on this camera is the image stabilization system, which works by shifting the sensor around to keep it under the image. On the right side in the viewfinder is a set of bars which start with one lit at the bottom indicating very little work is being done by the camera to stabilize the image. Note, since the camera is going to move the sensor, the image through the eyepiece is going to directly reflect what the non-stabilized image is doing. As more bars are lit, it means there is more vibration. So, the trick I have been using is to steady myself and look into the viewfinder and look at the vibration count for feedback on how well I am doing at settling down. Using this technique, I have been able to get photos from 1/6 second to 1/4 second to come through clearly. However, longer times, such as 1/2 second all have some blurring. With the camera braced against a wall or other support, longer exposures will come out crisp. Another pitfall with this technique is the cases where you absolutely have to push like this come with the widest iris openings, so the depth of field is shallow, so look at your composition carefully for depth. In any case, I suggest the image stabilization system should be left on- if you have set an exposure so long the system can't be effective, the camera doesn't use it, anyway.

Although some may see the 6 megapixel size as limiting, in fact, if you keep track of how fast hard disk space is getting used if you are active in photography, it is clear drives will be quickly filled at higher megapixel sizes, while the actual usable image is only slightly larger in width and height. The main limitation to resolution, in practice, appears to be quality of focus or selecting more sensor sensitivity than the situation calls for. So, for example, when I did a series of still photos of a painting by my sister, my only objective was to produce as sharp and faithful a color reproduction as possible. The recipe for doing this was to set the camera at a low ISO, 100, so it would have very low sensor noise, then set a reasonably fast shutter stop and take a lot of care focusing. The camera has a histogram available in playback, so it was possible to tell if the full dynamic range was being used without saturating.

Now, the camera does have a few quirks in how it writes image files- it can write Jpegs in various resolutions, then it can write a raw image with all of the image data and it can write both a Raw image and a jpeg, and it can do this in any of the resolution sizes. What you have to remember is the camera will play back photos from any format, but it will not let you zoom in for a closer look unless it has a jpeg version of that image recorded.

I have also been using this camera for space photography (all who are surprised must be reading one of my reviews for the first time). Long story short, this camera has been a good thing for my astrophotography. All I have to do is hook it up to the scope, focus (trick: look for dim stars popping in and out of visibility as you go in and out of focus), and then set the camera for interval mode. If you trigger it with the remote cord (it uses the same one as the old Maxxums), it will be vibration free for the first frame. This lets it shoot a long series of images with the same parameters on a schedule. So, for example, it can be set to shoot another 30 second photo every 1 minute. So, it can quietly track the sky with a telescope and shoot photos while I am inside keeping my hands off of it. And, unlike the Canons, it does this with onboard functions, so it is completely self contained. A result of a few series of these can be seen here: http://www.buytelescopes.com/gallery/view_photo.asp?pid=10915&c=35913.

Conclusion

The Minolta Maxxum 7D has become a heavy-lifter for getting high quality images done. If you were to pick one camera to have, I can say there is a lot right with this one. The 18mm-70mm lens does quite well for general purpose use, and in most conditions, the 2X magnification at the high end is about all I find I ever really want, so the 300mm lens I got at the same time just isn't getting as much use. The camera holds out for long photo sessions with a single battery, so I recommend getting a 4GB compact flash card to go with it, then shoot those "Maybe" photos, and you'll be surprised how often they come out. And if not, well at least it wasn't for a lack of trying. Hopefully, Sony has something along these lines coming in a future camera. In the meantime, the Air Force should be starting their air show practice over Tucson in a couple weeks. I'm hoping to get some good photos.

Recommended: Yes

Amount Paid (US$): $680
This Camera is a Good Choice if You Want Something... Flexible Enough for Enthusiasts