Wallace Koopmans Artlog

What can one really say about a camera that was a dead end and used a dead end film.  Why even bother with this blip in the history of photographic equipment?  What possible relevance could this have to today?  Nope I can’t come up with a reason either but if I don’t who else is.  The Minolta Vectis S-1 is an SLR with interchangeable lenses that used APS film.  APS film was, yes I’m using past tense despite the fact that you can still buy it at this time, a smaller film than the more common 35mm.  APS film became available in 1996 but never stood a chance as we stood on the verge of the digital photography revolution that would eventually take over from most film formats.  It’s main claim was convenience and not quality as it had a film area that was only about 55% of a 35mm negative.  That smaller size does live on in the form of most consumer DSLR’s and is referred to as APS-C which was also one of the aspect ratio’s available with the film.

What the Minolta Vectis S-1 offered was a small SLR with all the controls you would expect plus weather sealing.  Despite it’s dead end status it does appear that some early DSLRs, such as the Olympus E-300, took design elements from it only a few years later.

You can see from this shot of the rear controls that the camera afforded such things as aperture and shutter priority as well as exposure compensation.  The ergonomics are very good on this camera and it’s size allows for easy carrying something I value today with smaller digital cameras as apposed to some current DSLR’s that seem to equate physical size to capability.  All this is irrelevant of course because it’s not really a camera you would want to use when so much better image quality is available so much cheaper through digital cameras.

All that said here are some images I shot using the Minolta Vectis S-1.