To King Arthur of Ambermile

excalibur2

excalibur2

My F4's Broken...
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Brian
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I think you are the expert of Minolta AF cameras? Is the Minolta Dynax 700si with a Tamron 28-200 lens worth £15, owner says it's working but what do I look out for if the zoom is AF, I'm not a collector and if this camera is in anyway a mickey mouse, then even for £15 I'm not interested.

TA
 
the highest bid I put for 700si in ebay is 15quid delivered for the body, that's the usual price. as for tamron 28-200mm - you could probably make some money out of it if it works :)
you don't have batteries to check it out ?


yours truly,
pretend to be Ambermile,
D. :lol:
 
To King Arthur of Ambermile


Ha ha ha ha :D:D:D

Incidentally, I agree with the pretend king Arthur regarding the price. I would have taken it....
 
Starastin said:
the highest bid I put for 700si in ebay is 15quid delivered for the body, that's the usual price. as for tamron 28-200mm - you could probably make some money out of it if it works :)
you don't have batteries to check it out ?


yours truly,
pretend to be Ambermile,
D. :lol:
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Well the person says it's working so I assume it has batteries, but I have 35mm cameras from Mtl3 to T90 and just wondering if the Minolta has something extra worth using, but if the AF is so slow and is useless there would no advantage over my Minolta X-700.
 
oh ! no ! I think the AF is fast. well at least my 7000 and 7000i is and the 700si is next gen. so must be faster than my 7000i which is super fast.
 
I bought three Minolta AF bodies in perfect nick for £17. Minolta bodies go for less than other makes, lenses for more because of the sony connection. I'm not sure the AF is much slower than other consumer SLRs of the era.

15 squid with a lens seems very fair.
 
Starastin said:
oh ! no ! I think the AF is fast. well at least my 7000 and 7000i is and the 700si is next gen. so must be faster than my 7000i which is super fast.
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So all I have to do is point at near and far objects and see if the AF works also with the back open to see if the exposure is about right?...erm it's a woman selling it (nothing wrong with that) but she might be selling it for her husband who is at work and it would be the blind leading the blind for a demo.
 
My 505si has spot metering, its good feature to have.

The AF works fast enough - but of course I have not used it to shoot sports etc.
 
excalibur2 said:
So all I have to do is point at near and far objects and see if the AF works also with the back open to see if the exposure is about right?...erm it's a woman selling it (nothing wrong with that) but she might be selling it for her husband who is at work and it would be the blind leading the blind for a demo.
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For focus, the lens movement will make a sound + there will be a focus confirm as well.

Opening the back and checking for the exposure - Yes.
 
excalibur2 said:
So all I have to do is point at near and far objects and see if the AF works also with the back open to see if the exposure is about right?...erm it's a woman selling it (nothing wrong with that) but she might be selling it for her husband who is at work and it would be the blind leading the blind for a demo.
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yup !
sounds right.
 
Well thanks all, I've emailed her to see the camera today or Sunday morning......but I'm just wondering after a two day advert why it's still for sale.
 
I wouldn't be worried about the non-sale Brian; very few will buy a Minolta AF these days. Even the top ends struggle to sell.

There was a Nikon F4 on ebay a few days back for 125 quids that got no bid.
 
No sign of the king yet :suspect:

Has someone overturned the thrown?
 
Well I'm easy put off, after sending emails back and forth her last one was "I'm in for your time to see the camera"...... but with no address or telephone number LOL

If anyone is in the London area (Hampstead) the camera is on Gumtree.com
 
Just a thought, but he could be out taking some pictures? He's got plenty of cameras, but he may have bidded for some film this time round? :shrug: ;)
 
Starastin said:
to be honest, I don't remember any pics from him posted here ! :)
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Arthur's posted some interesting pics, including experimental cross processed stuff. OTOH my tally has been minimal due to scanner problems, which will be resolved in the next few days hopefully.
 
I dunno - you step out for a Star Party a few days and lookee what happens :lol:

I paid £25 for my Sigma 28-200 - the Tamron would be a wee bit slopwer AF-wise but to be honest, on sports-mode both would be crap since the film camera AF is not so good at reacting. Having said that, at £15 I would not have even thought about it... Minolta bodies are dead cheap only because they are bought by digital users for the lenses, no other reason.


And anyway, I posted loads of piccies here - it's that bloody Ujwal that's slacking on the image front I reckon :D
 
What, Jujwal? :D
 
Will have a look - but I *have* been away for a while!
 
ujjwaldey8165 said:
If there is only one way to do something wrong, Lord Arthur will find it :D

BTW : what about feedback on my pano shots. There seemed to be a radio silence from certain quarters
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Only reason I didn't comment Ujjwal was that you were asking for info. originally about metering on the Xpan... and as I've never actually used one, anything I'd have said would have been rehashing other peoples stuff. After a quick look at the shots you posted, my advice would be...

1) if you're going to shoot E6 at wider apertures on the xpan at 45mm, then you're gonna have to bite the bullet and get the ND spot filter, and quite possibly a 2 stop ND Grad as well.

2) I know I keep banging on about it, and I know it doesn't really fit with your way of shooting, but if you're going to do landscapes, get a tripod, and use it. I know the wife/kids will moan and complain, but you'll be able to shoot at F10 and forget the ND Spot :shrug:

3) As I said last time, you're composition is really coming along well, and i'd really have loved to see this one

sept8.jpg

with just a bit more detail into the shadows... I know it's a bit heavy on film, especially with the xpan, but stick it on a tripod, and bracket your shots, you'll get one. If the picture's worth a frame of film, it's worth three. Remember, it costs a lot more money to go back up and re-shoot, than buying an extra roll of Portra :)

4) I've been over Honister pass lots of times (along with Hardnott and Wrynose) and they're amazing places to stand and stare and breathe in the scenery. However, I've never taken a single photo that actually communicates what I've seen with my eyes. There's one of the passes where the road hairpins around itself, and I did a Pano shot where the road seemed to be in the foreground all the way around... Unfortunately, the (digital) camera got so wet later in the holiday (I had a spectacular failure to cross a river in spate!) that It never saw the light of day. I will go back there someday with my current kit and re-take the shot.

5) Those scottish Midgies are amazing things aren't they - 2mm long - all wings or teeth! Best thing for them is a preparation made by Avon Cosmetics... yep - those people who sell makeup door to door - its called Avon Skin So Soft Woodland Fresh iirc. - sounds strange, but it works - even the guys who work for the Forestry Commision up there swear by it!
 
Ah, those... then I did not miss them but like BY I thought they were to illustrate a point about exposure. Had I said something it would have been "Moody, nice compositions but the lack of detail in the darker areas detracts too much from what should be very nice images. To me your focus looks a wee bit soft also but at the size you posted (and you can go to 1024 with pano's - it's official) that is hard to tell really."
 
Ambermile said:
Ah, those... then I did not miss them but like BY I thought they were to illustrate a point about exposure. Had I said something it would have been "Moody, nice compositions but the lack of detail in the darker areas detracts too much from what should be very nice images. To me your focus looks a wee bit soft also but at the size you posted (and you can go to 1024 with pano's - it's official) that is hard to tell really."
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Hey - we can go to 1024 wide and up to 800 high now - hence those couple of big K64 landscape shots of mine in the Show us... thread :thumbs:
 
Cool - so what size for pano shots then?
 
Anything within the 1024 wide max is cool. I think they've binned the "pano rule"

It's just a little awkward for me (bear of little brain and all that) to remember to use lightroom to export my Landscapes to flickr in 1024 longest side and portraits / square format in 800 longest :shrug:
 
Thanks guys. I would have been a bit more harsh with myself, if I was commenting. Most of the shots were rubbish really - but I just cant point my finger as to why, except the very dark shot - which has the problem of being very dark. It will be great if you could give some more ideas how I can improve the composition on the other shots.

Re, the dark shot, I should have / could have taken a bit more details on that one, but the camera under exposed because I didn't read up properly how it exposes ( its really a spot meter with a wider angle of view, while I assumed it was centre weighted. Why Fuji/Hassy build such a outstanding camera and not provide it with a better featured meter will beat me.) That said, I looked into the negative, and it has a bit more details. The print quality, and the scanning both turned it darker. When you get the negatives Mark, it wil be great if you can see if it can be somewhat improved.

Mark I think you are talking of Hardknott pass there - going down to the western side. There are some amazing hair pins there; but I was driving, and with my vertigo and all - asked my wife to take some shots ( for memories sake more than anything else). Hopefully they'll atleast be in focus :D
 
I've had some hairy moments on the Hardknott myself - worst of which being driving up and over it in the snow, in a friends car. She'd scared herself so badly coming down the Wrynose that she didn't dare drive over the Hardknott. Problem was, it was an automatic BMW 320i, and I honestly don't think that the back wheels were on the tarmac more than half the distance up the hill - I just went for it, and hoped :cuckoo:

Send me the neg's when you get a chance - i'll see what I can do with them... I've just upgraded my scanner software, so it'll be good to have a bit of a challenge to set myself, force me to do a bit of accelerated learning on the new version. :thumbs:
 
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TheBigYin said:
I've had some hairy moments on the Hardknott myself - worst of which being driving up and over it in the snow, in a friends car. She'd scared herself so badly coming down the Wrynose that she didn't dare drive over the Hardknott. Problem was, it was an automatic BMW 320i, and I honestly don't think that the back wheels were on the tarmac more than half the distance up the hill - I just went for it, and hoped :cuckoo:

Send me the neg's when you get a chance - i'll see what I can do with them... I've just upgraded my scanner software, so it'll be good to have a bit of a challenge to set myself, force me to do a bit of accelerated learning on the new version. :thumbs:
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Snow? you must be mad. I thought I saw a sign saying that the pass is closed in winter months. And BMW is particularly averse to going in a straight line is a snow.

I will do it this week.

Ujjwal
 
The pass is closed occasionally due to excessive snow falls, yes, but this was just the first flurries - maybe a couple of inches on the ground. I actually quite enjoyed it, I was used to a rear wheel drive car, mine at the time was a 2wd Cosworth Sapphire, it was just that the automatic transmission was horrible. With mine I'd just have kept it in 3rd and my foot to the carpet all the way up...:)
 
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