Open Mike: Konica, Minolta, and My All-Time Favorite Digital Camera

My all-time favorite digital camera is still the Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D, c. 2004. (Dynax 7D in Europe.) I bought mine used in 2006 from a guy named Peter Gregg (looks like he's still online, here) and it lasted about three years. At that time it started changing its own settings, deciding it didn't have a lens on it when in fact it did, and generally acting like it was haunted. Sony was replacing Minolta cameras under warranty with new Sony cameras rather than attempting repairs, and mine was out of warranty anyway, so I very reluctantly set it aside. I probably would have used it until it was genuinely antiquated if I could have.

Sidebar: With most things electronic and microprocessor-based, there will be a limited lifecycle you can't really control. The great landscapist and art photographer Joel Meyerowitz shoots with a camera that was built the year he was born, 1938—but that's never going to happen with cameras that run on batteries. If my experience is any guide, I'd say that if there is a camera you really, really think you'd like, buy it early on in its lifecycle so you can enjoy it for longer. And if you truly do like it after owning it for a year or two, buy another one as a spare before it's discontinued! I wouldn't have minded a ten-year tenure with the 7D, and all I got was three.

Konica-Minolta Maxxum 7D, c. 2004, showing the
lens I owned. Archive photo courtesy DPReview.

The engineers at Konica-Minolta did a fantastic job on the Maxxum 7D. I'm 100% convinced that very good people put long experience and hard-won knowledge and judgement into it along with the engineering and design. The color science and image processing were superb. The files had a gentle, rich, subtle look that, to my discerning eye, looked more lifelike and real than most digital image files. They still look good.

The camera's IBIS was magic. I loved it, and it opened up low-light shooting for me like nothing ever had before, not even Kodak T-Max P3200 film, although that had been a heady trip too. It's not like I've tried every camera that exists or anything remotely close to it, but I've never found image stabilization that worked as well as the 7D's. I searched for years trying to find a DSLR I liked as well as I liked that one—and never succeeded, although I've used and/or owned many digital cameras that are excellent in their own way. My current Sigma FP(m) is the first camera I've liked as well as the 7D.

It was an unlikely favorite for me. I wasn't a fan of big cameras bristling with controls, and I had been mildly antagonistic to Minolta for some time at that point—although I had history from boyhood with Konica, and retained a sentimental attachment to that noble marque. On paper the 7D didn't appeal. Also—ironically, for me—I never used anything but the Tamron-built, Minolta-branded zoom Peter Gregg sold me with the camera. Its look suited the sensor, I thought. The focal length on APS-C was ~42–112mm. Awkward, but I made it work.

I bought the camera because I was doing portraits for pay at the time, and needed a camera that was imposing and looked impressive but was not likely to be owned by many clients.

'Chips' evolved
Of course, the sensor was time-bound. It was a mid-2000s APS-C "chip" as they were referred to back then: a 6.1-megapixel CCD, 2000 x 3000 pixels more or less. By today's standards, dynamic range (what used to be called exposure range) was poorish, auto white balance was not yet a solved problem, and high ISOs were impressive only when you compared them to film. Which I did, of course—so my conservative, self-enforced upper limit of ISO 1600 was fine by me. Kodak T-Max P3200 was a 1000-speed film (not ISO because, alone among Kodak B&W emulsions, it was never ISO certified), so the 7D beat that. Kodak said that T-Max P3200 black-and-white film (invented by the virtuoso team of Sylvia Zawadzki and Dick Dickerson) could be pushed to E.I. 3200—hence the name—an exotically extreme high speed for any film at the time. I shot it at E.I. 800. (I rated Plus-X at E.I. 80.) The 7D's "ISO" 1600 and IBIS were another leap forward, and another head rush for low-light maven Mike.

If the sensor was the worst thing about the camera because of its mid-2000s limitations, it was also the best thing about the camera because of the way the files looked. Others have sung the praises of CCD sensors. With "uprezzing" apps, all the rage at that time but not talked about much today, 6-MP files actually printed well.

I dug the camera out of the camera closet this morning and reviewed the controls. They look formidable, but they're actually extremely handy, easy to reach and easy to distinguish by feel. It was descended from the film Maxxum 7 and doubtless had a long heritage of customer research, experimentation, and thoughtfulness in its design—Minolta sure knew cameras. In fact, in terms of layout, the 7D could serve as a model for a modern camera, but for the fixed viewing screen, which is too small by today's standards.

The internet is bad at history
Konica and Minolta merged in 2004, in time to bring the product under discussion to market as a "Konica-Minolta." But my 7D was already an orphan by the time I bought it. "Konica Minolta Photo Imaging Inc. ceased its Camera Business Operations as of 31 March 2006," read the Death Notice...er, I mean the press release. The digital SLR department was transferred to Sony, but I didn't find a Sony SLR I liked as well. Not for lack of trying. The 7D wasn't Konica-Minolta's exact last gasp, but it was close. Canon later even appropriated the 7D nomenclature!

The Honeywell lawsuit (Honeywell had sued Minolta for autofocusing patent infringements and won a huge judgement in 1987) had been the body-blow that was probably responsible for the eventual demise of once-mighty Minolta. At one point Minolta was the best-selling camera brand of all, dominating the then-huge mid-market now owned by smartphones, although it catered to consumers and casual hobbyists and struggled to gain a foothold among pros and dedicated advanced amateurs. Of course, companies come, and companies go. Not only Konica and Minolta but Yashica/Contax, Bronica, Mamiya, Olympus qua Olympus, and Rollei are all gone now. (Do any others stand out in your mind, from before the digital era, but within living memory? The Internet is bad with quotes, and it's bad at history.)

Olympus still survives, for the time being, though in greatly diminished form, as OM Digital Solutions, but it no longer has a huge diversified multinational standing behind it and it might have trouble innovating into the future. (It's a $266 million company as compared to Olympus at $6.46 billion, so what remains of Olympus without its imaging division is 24 times as as big as the old imaging division standing alone.) Konica Minolta is still kicking, and still makes lenses—but behind the scenes, as an OEM for other brands.

But as a cameramaker, R.I.P.

Pity.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

richardp_london: "For years I thought I wanted a reincarnation of the Pentax MX. Eventually I worked it out: what I was really pining for was the life of the 20-year-old art student, who so enjoyed using that camera way back then! That camera's long gone, as is that stage of life (for good and for ill)—though a couple of the lenses are still doing quite well."

Tom Burke: "Here in the UK one of the main 'missing' brands would be Praktica. They were made by Pentacon of Leipzig, which during the era that I recall was in East Germany, of course. They made a long-running range of SLRs that used the M42 screw mount. One of the UK's main photo dealers—Dixons, who had a shop in every town in the land—did a long-standing deal with Pentacon and they sold Praktica SLRs for 25 years or more. I had one—an MTL3 of one version or another—and it did me well. They weren't badly made, to be honest. They were solid (they weighed a ton) and very largely mechanical (so they could be adjusted and repaired). I'd wager that during the 1960s, '70s, and into the '80s a lot of UK amateur/enthusiast photographers cut their teeth on a Praktica. The lenses were a mixed bag—the Pentacon lenses weren't bad (by the standards of the time) but of course you could mount other manufacturers' lenses, from Pentax down to no-name Japanese knock-offs, and the quality of these varied enormously. During the mid and late 1980s they seemed to vanish. First, the leading Japanese companies starting producing AF SLRs—Minolta Dynax (in the UK), Canon EOS, etc.—and the enthusiast market went for these in a big way. Secondly there was the collapse and disappearance of East Germany itself. But for some decades, Praktica cameras were everywhere in the UK."

Comments

[John McMillin]

I also enjoyed my KM7D a lot, but I don't really miss it. The size, feel and controls haven't been bettered, but it would seem impossibly slow and limited now. Live View has its uses, and it's become indispensable for me.

My current Pentax cameras are the spiritual successor of the KM7D. Big pentaprism OVF? Check. Complete set of controls? Check. In-body stabilization, usable with a high variety of lenses, old and new? Check. Rare and obscure ("Do they still make cameras?")? Check. I can be as nostalgic as the next boomer, but not in this case.

[JoeB]

My first "good" camera was the Taron Eyemax purchased new in 1964. Used it to take photos for my high school yearbook. That was a long time ago- and Taron is just a footnote. I would still like to have one if only as a paperweight.
So far as CCD sensors I still like the files my Nikon D2H produce (4 Mp) especially when converted to B&W. Very film like- call it grain or noise your choice.

[Tomas]

I got untested Konica Minolta 5D last year, with probably similar Tamron zoom lens. With a completely dead battery. Bought a new battery and charger, tried the camera, and fell in love with it. Files do look pleasing, and aged sensor and other technology seemed good enough for a "hobby" camera.
Too bad that it started misbehaving just after a few weeks of use. More I used it, more often the first frame of the day was blank. After two months the sensor died completely. After reading in forums it seems that most of these 5D, 7D and first Sony models with similar sensors ended their days like that :(

[Adam Isler]

This was my favorite camera for a long time, too. I had been a Minolta shooter since age 13. When the 7D finally started getting wonky the new generation of 12 MP CMOS cameras was just coming out and I expected to buy Sony's entry which I hoped would advance the 7D. Instead, I found it was a totally different camera, so I looked at the new Canon, which felt surprisingly alien to me and settled on the Nikon 300D which was quite good for a number of years, though extremely heavy and I never quite bonded with it like I did with the 7D. I later flirted with Sony again (the ⍺ Nex 7?) but it didn't last long.

[Stephen S.]

The Maxxum 7 film camera was the stuff of dreams for me, so the 7D always appealed to me. I didn't need one, so I held out waiting for used prices to drop... but waited too long, as reliability plummeted even faster than prices!
The 7D often suffers from IBIS failure, which unfortunately also prevents the shutter from firing, even if IBIS is switched off. It seems like an artificial limitation due to a poor engineering decision to me, as I have plenty of other camera with failed IBIS mechanisms that still take photos just fine without it.
A few years ago, used prices of the 7D dropped enough that I felt it was worth taking a risk to try to find a working one. I went through four that didn't work - all IBIS failures - before finally finding a fifth that did work. I hope it hangs on for a little while, because it's a fun camera to play with, and far cheaper and less hassle than shooting film with a 7!

On a separate note, portrait photographers have recently "discovered" that a 35-135mm zoom on a full-frame camera is a very useful range of focal lengths for that task, and it makes me chuckle, because I think photographers using 24-85mm lenses on APS-C cameras figured that out many years ago!

[Tom Passin]

I'm with Mike about the Minolta 7D. It was the first digital camera I owned and still my favorite. I went through much the same glitch problems as Mike as the camera aged. I often wish that it could be updated with a newer sensor and viewing screen - otherwise the body and controls should stay the same.

Later I got a Minolta A2 on EBay. It was a smaller, lighter camera with a small sensor and an integrated 200mm zoom lens. The low light performance was dreadful in today's terms but it was a delight to shoot with and produced some wonderful photos for me, even a few low light ones.

Now I use a Sony RX10-II, which is nice enough and takes technically fine pictures. But I still miss my Minoltas.

[Greg]

Olympus naming history is confusing.

"OM Digital Solutions" seems to be the company name: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OM_Digital_Solutions and https://www.om-digitalsolutions.com/en/

Cameras are now marked "OM System," (System is in small caps) which is a throw back to "The Olympus OM System was a line of 35mm single-lens reflex cameras, lenses and accessories sold by Olympus between 1972 and 2002. The system was introduced by Olympus in 1972. The range was designed by Yoshihisa Maitani, chief designer for Olympus, and his staff; OM stands for Olympus Maitani." per https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympus_OM_system. Who knew?

[James]

I think the internet can be very good at history. Here are a few examples:

1. When Kodak Went to War with Polaroid.

2. How the Death of Konica-Minolta Led to the Rise of Sony Cameras.

3. Slightly older history, someone restores a PDP 11. Also, why one might care what a PDP 11 might be.

4. Some very ancient history.

I think that if one thinks that the internet is bad at something, it is because one hasn't looked hard and deep enough. The internet is Protean.

Also, along the lines of K-M cameras being the lineage of Sony cameras (something I learned from you originally), one shouldn't be too attached to names. If there is one thing to be learned from Proust's ALRdTP, it is that ancient, noble names are neither as ancient nor as noble as they may appear. All the real nobility is what is done today.

[David Dyer-Bennet]

Don't tell the people at Topaz Labs that uprezzing is out of fashion! They're making a bundle on products that include it (for both still and video input).

[Okay, maybe "not talked about as much" is a better way to put it...? --Mike]

[David Brown]

Starting in the late 60s, I was a dedicated screw-mount user. Ended up with multiple Spotmatics (of which there are still 2 in the closet). Married in the early 80s, my new wife brought a Minolta SRT into the marriage, and after a bit, I switched. (Still 3 or 4 of those in the closet) At some point I acquired a Minolta Maxxum 650si and never looked back at manual focus (except for medium format). I eventually upgraded to a Maxxum 7, Minolta’s most technologically advanced camera according to some sources. The Max 7 is the best 35mm camera I have ever used! (I have briefly owned Nikon and Canon)

Owning and using a Maxxum 7, I commented on a TOP thread long ago that all I wanted was a Minolta body with a digital sensor. You suggested the Sony a900, and I ended up with an a850. Still a beast, although high ISO limited.

Alas. Time and old age marches on, and I am deep into Lumix micro 4/3.

[j]

I got a 7D as a gift from my sister in law once she decided she had better things to do that waste time on photography. I still have it in storage but don't think I took more than 100 photos with it. Didn't like the ergonomics, hated the image quality. Terrible colors and ugly noise (compared to my 20D). It's certainly not the first time we completely dissagree Mike.

[Kirk]

Re: Up-rezzing. It's not out of fashion anymore. In fact, Adobe included a very nice, A.I. enabled uprezzing in the Neural Filters in PhotoShop. It's called Super Zoom. Many people think it only works with cropping but that's not the case. If you set your output menu to "new document" it will do a 200% uprez with no crop. The A.I. does a wonderful job with this feature. As it does with the new beta of "Lens Blur" in Lightroom Classic. And, of course, DeNoise A.I. in Lightroom classic. The first and last mentioned are great tools for use with older digital cameras that have lower resolution sensors and noisier sensors. The only caveat is that you have to start with a raw file. We use these tools on nearly every job's post production phase. They really work and are included in the subscription price. No need to splash out for 3rd party stuff like Topaz.

[PDLanum]

My first SLR was an Exa Ihagee, that lasted for a decade or so. I bought Three Fujica ST series bodies which I still have and when I last checked, they still work.
Fujifilm killed off their 35mm cameras then they resurrected cameras with their digital ASP-C cameras. I have not found any reference to there being an adaptor for the old M-42 Fujica EBC lenses. Bummer.
I shoot Pentax today. Started with a SF-1 (stolen in a burglary) and transitioned to a *ist D, K10, K20D and now a K-3II. They all work and there are batteries available.

[Kye Wood]

Staying sane here can be made easier if you postpone change while you can. After which point, you embrace it, even if at first it feels difficult.

That's being kind to future you.

[SteveW]

I still have my old Nikon D40 and a 35mm 1.8G DX lens attached to it. It also has a 6mp CCD sensor, and I always thought the pictures looked nice. What's astonishing to me now is that I've had that camera for 15 years, but I've also not used it for a long time - it's the only previous camera of mine that I've saved. Time really flies.

[Greg]

for me the Nikon D700. Being a NPS member, got one of the first ones out there. Has never failed me once...

[Jacques R.]

The first camera I used was a Minolta SRT 101 with a 55mm f1.7. After it got stolen, I got a Canon AT-1 with a FD50 f1.4 and later acquired a FD28 f2.8 and FD135 f2.8. A used Canon FTb eventually became my favourite.

I wish Canon would reissue a digital version of the Canonet.

[Ilkka]

I bought the 7D as soon as it came out. It was basically a 1:1 conversion of the film 7, with ibis and minor changes in controls as needed for digital. Even the rear screen was similar. Yes, the film 7 had a big rear LCD screen. Mine lasted for more than 15 years and I still enjoyed to use it once in a while even when it was way past its natural expiry date. Eventually the sensor gave up and I had to retire it on the shelf for permanent display.

[William Lewis]

Regarding a digital's lifespan, I dread when my Leica M 240 goes south as it, sooner or later, will. I expect to get a Nikon Z5 later this year and start buying adapters for my lenses for it as a hedge towards that day. The Z has a tiny flange distance and that allows me to easily adapt everything I own.

The idea of using my 1937 Zeiss Sonnar 50/2 that has been adjusted to Nikon RF standard on an Amedeo adapter on a Leica M adapter on a M mount to Z mount adapter to capture images (perhaps even in 1:1 aspect ration as mentioned the other day) seems deliciously absurd and enjoyable.

[Peter Dewar]

I too loved the KM D7D. I have two of them, but the oldest one is now completely disabled due to the FFB problem. I bought the second from David Kilpatrick, who had used it as a studio camera. It too now suffers from FFB, but after a few restarts, it will continue to shoot for the rest of the day.

After 7 years I moved on to the Sony A77 (original) which was another great camera. That lasted 8 years before dying by seawater. For the last 5 years I've used a Sony A7 Mk2. That suffers a bit from noise, and a poor 24-240 lens.
regards - Peter

[David Aiken]

So far my favourite digital camera is my Fujifilm X-Pro3 but until we reach the point where we give up trying out new digital cameras. I don't think anyone can name an "all time favourite". Until then we're all still in the process of auditioning new candidates.

[Dogman]

I have several favorite digital cameras. Honestly I wouldn't use a camera that wasn't a favorite. Those favorites are Nikon D3 and Nikon D700, Fuji X-Pro1 and X-Pro2 and X100S. And, true to the opinion Mike expressed, I have multiple bodies of each. I can't really see myself ever buying another digital camera. But....

[Robert]

I bought a Canon 5DII in 2008, my first digital camera, making me set aside my long used Leica M6s. The Canon is still going strong, taking great images, with nothing going wrong. I love it in the hand with the 24-105 f4 or the 35mm f2 IS, but have always resented its bulk. I now use a Leica Monochrom M 246, Fuji X100V, and a Sony A7rIV as well, which are all a fair bit smaller and a little lighter, but no better ergonomically.

[Sid]

Of all the digital cameras that I've owned, my favorite is the Ricoh GXR because of its compactness, electronic viewfinder, and superb 28mm and 50mm (FFE) lenses. By today's standards the GXR's 12-megapixel sensor is obsolescent. A weather-resistant GXR II with a modern APS-C sensor, superior autofocus, and an improved EVF would quickly be favorite camera. In a way the GXR II would be a modular Ricoh GR III.

[Paul C]

I wish I hadn’t sold my 7D - I even got the shutter repair done in the last month or two of the recall. It (as well as the 7 and the 9 - both of which I have) has such a nice control layout. I could just use it, almost effortlessly.

I’ve run some of the old RAW files through the new Lightroom Classic denoise feature - and wow, they clean up nice. A few “optimistic” photos I took above ISO 800 are clean with great detail for the sensor resolution when run through newer tools.

[almostinfamous]

oh i did not know that mamiya was completely out of business. last i heard of their modern cameras they were selling phase one compatible 645 cameras. definitely above my pay grade, so i didnt keep up with them much. feeling a bit (irrationally) sad as i have just started to shoot again with the C220 after it spent a decade in the closet.