Minolta A1 a users dream

Author's Rating:

Pros: Vast aray of creative control that gives great versatility

Cons: None that I've experienced

The Bottom Line: 
A great camera for the advanced amateur or professional. Overkill for a snapshooter.

Author's Review
I've owned my Minolta A1 for three months now, and feel that I've had enough experience with it to give a fair evaluation. I shoot almost exclusively outdoors with the camera on a tripod and using a cable release. For landscapes this camera is a great tool.

The fact that it's wide angle equivalent is 28mm is a huge plus for me, as the bulk of my pictures are wider than a standard 50 mm "normal" lens. The camera produces bright crisp shots from the center of the frame to the edges. At 28 mm I had some vignetting with filters that screw into the lens, so I went to a step up ring and an oversize rectangular filter system which has eliminated the problem all together.

Another big advantage for me is the creative control that this camera has. First let me say that I almost never set any of the camera modes on automatic. I have a regimen that I go through on each shot that includes setting all adjustments - white balance, contrast, color saturation, filter levels. so this camera offers all of the adjustments that I need in my work.

One area that I do let the camera make a decision on is focus, as my eyes are not that great on fine focus issues. For the most part the camera does very well, and because I use smaller apertures depth of field usually takes care of focus. Oh, and by the way, I absolutely love the movable focus point which I use all of the time. Macro pictures can be a focus problem for the auto focus system, so I often click off of auto focus and manually focus in macro mode. This is a challenge for my focus challenged eyes, but if I take my time I can get it done. The thing to remember is that all auto focus cameras that I've seen or heard of have this problem, so I don't look at this a camera specific problem, but as an industry problem.

One area I would like to compliment Minolta on is the software it includes with the camera. I shoot in raw, and after making any adjustments with the packaged software, I save the image in tiff. I than import the image into photoshop for any fine tuning that the packaged software can't handle. For most pictures I don't have any tweaking to do except resizing in photoshop. The Minolta software is sufficient for most pictures, and is so similar to the basic photoshop features that you almost think your already in PS.

Lastly, I've read in some reviews that this camera has a problem with resolution. I really disagree. I enlarge all of my keepers from 8 X 10 to 20 X 24 inches for sale at art fairs, and while at 20 X 24 some pictures can sometimes look a little "grainy" (notice I said grainy and not pixilated), so do some shots from 35 mm film. If you view a 20 X 24 photograph from 18 or 20 inches away, you are going to grow cross eyed, so step back and enjoy the view.

In conclusion, for landscape work as well as my general photographic needs, I've found this camera to be an exceptionally good choice.