{"id":4649,"date":"2011-11-18T08:00:20","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=4649"},"modified":"2011-11-17T20:47:37","modified_gmt":"2011-11-18T04:47:37","slug":"minolta-vectis-s-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wkoopmans.ca\/notebook\/?p=4649","title":{"rendered":"Minolta Vectis S-1"},"content":{"rendered":"

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What can one really say about a camera that was a dead end and used a dead end film.\u00a0 Why even bother with this blip in the history of photographic equipment?\u00a0 What possible relevance could this have to today?\u00a0 Nope I can’t come up with a reason either but if I don’t who else is.\u00a0 The Minolta Vectis S-1 is an SLR with interchangeable lenses that used APS film.\u00a0 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.\u00a0\u00a0APS 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\u00a0from most\u00a0film formats.\u00a0 It’s main claim was convenience and not quality as it had a film area that was only about 55% of a 35mm negative.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

What the Minolta Vectis S-1 offered was a small SLR with all the controls you would expect\u00a0plus weather sealing.\u00a0 Despite it’s dead end status it does appear that some early DSLRs, such as the Olympus E-300, took design elements from\u00a0it only a few years later.<\/p>\n

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You can see from this shot of the rear controls that the camera afforded such things as\u00a0aperture and shutter priority as well as exposure compensation.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

All that said here are some images I shot using the Minolta Vectis S-1.<\/p>\n\n\t\t