Minolta Maxxum 35mm

[BakerStencil]

What does everyone think about this camera? I don't do a lot of photography but I'm heading out west and I need a new Camera I liked this Camera for 3 Reasons the lense is decent, fast shudder rate, and its not that expensive, so anyway I just want to know what you think.

[sugar muppet]

uhmm... which model is it? that would kinda help...

wrong forum too...

[mikejl29]

Fixed the wrong forum bit... which Minolta... minolta's can be quite capable as you will see from Ingo Schlaeders work on skateboardphotography.com

[sugar muppet]

Minolta are damn good, avaliability of lenses is a bit weak, but there's always sigma MAF mount, Tamron make good lenses too. so really, the choice of glass is there, it's just getting a good body. (i.e. Dynax/Maxxum 7 or 9, or a 9000AF, or even a 9xi or 7xi)

[BakerStencil]

Its the 7 sorry for not mentioning.

[mikejl29]

Tamron does NOT make good lenses.

[sugar muppet]

the Maxxum 7 will do you good, get a VC-7 (vertical grip) and you'll be well away!


Mike, have you used one of the Tamron lenses that are f/2.8 all the way through? they are sharp, my dad has one, 28-80 i think. but they are pretty damn good.

[mikejl29]

I used a Tamron 28-200 and a Tamron wide angle zoom (17-35 f2.8 I believe) on a D100 body in the camera shop. I took some test shots and transfered them to a laptop and I could see the differences straight away. The Tamron lenses lack a lot of the quality glass elements that the manufacturer use and result in a lot of lens flare, lack of saturation, and overall sharpness aswell. If you are shooting it for a 4x6 print I suppose that might do alright, but once you start submitting pictures to a magazine.. they can tell right away. You also loose AF speed in my opinion. Nikon's AF-S and Canons USM are far superior to Tamron.

[sugar muppet]

well they will be better, but i mean Tamron is good for a 3rd party lens maker... i guess i shoulda said that in the first place... but then again, Ingo swears by his Tamron 90mm f/2.8, he says it's sharp as hell, easily as good as canon/nikon/minolta/pentax glass... so i dunno.

thinking about it, the glass on a zoom lens is always a little softer than on a prime.

[mikejl29]

Ahh that is quite true. Fair enough.

[Ramp]