Minolta X-300

I own two Minolta X300`s with prime lenses, and still like to put slide film thru them occasionally,with good fuji velvia film and those "MD" lenses i still find the projected results FAR better than modern digital cameras, i like to create a 3D image by exploiting depth of field, the Minolta lenses were definately the best of the manual focus 35mm SLRs!

I agree!!

I bought my Minolta in the mid 80's with a beautiful 35-70mm F3.5MD lens with macro. Although I knew very little about SLR's at that point it became my buddy. It was strong, simple, reliable and always gave beautiful pics. I lost it in Sweden on a bus in '96. I still lament our parting. I have replaced with others, but so far I haven't had the same bond with a camera as I did with it.

Yesturday I bought a dig Nikon with a 18-70 lens. I wonder if this one will move my heart.

Minolta manual focus lenses make the system so good - in my opinion, they're not far short of Nikon lenses at a fraction of the price (I own both). The X300 is a fine entry-level camera, offering aperture priority AE (like the over-rated Olympus OM10) and also fully manual control. No-one needs shutter speeds faster than 1/1000 (ask the pros..). Only possible downside is lack of TTL flash, though my Nikon FE doesn't have that either. When the time comes to upgrade, you can keep the wonderful lenses and move to a better spec/more rugged body - forget the X700, but consider the XD and XE series (and even the X500), they're serious kit!

Actually I have had this Minolta X-300 camera for at least scince I was 18 years and I am 43 years old and I don't use it much now as I cannot get good quality film for it especally the Ilford ASA1000 and the batteries are now very hard to come by but I find if I can get a battery I do manage to get a lot of good pictures with it, a real good camera

Beautiful body (built, tough, look), and ease of use. Very good choice for amateurs and pro, especially those who engaged in outdoor activities. Well recommend Minolta X-300.

I've had a Minolta X-300 since about 1987 and although I'm now almost exclusively Nikon digital, I still carry the X-300 if I'm going somewhere rough.Why? Because I know that when I really need a versatile but simple camera that will give me excellent quality 35mm prints the X-300 simply won't let me down.It's manual focus, so no drive motors or gears to go wrong; produces excellent quality in its Auto setting; and is built like a proverbial brick-out-house.The small down-side: although battery life is good (after all, it's only metering and showing you the results in the viewfinder) it isn't using AAAs or anything similar, so you'll need to make sure that you pack a few spares. Not too difficult as they're button-type batteries and (on mine at least) there's a holder on the strap that's as robust as the camera!!You'll be able to get newer and more complicated 35mm SLRs, but you'll be hard pressed to find better.

Someone mentioned the OM-10 - the Minolta X-300 is much better laid out - like the OM-2 - the advantage with an OM-2 or OM-10 would be lenses available but the controls on the OM-10 are a nightmare - you turn a knob and you accidentally turn another at the same time.

The X-300 is well engineered with everything having a good positive feel.

My dad has a Minolta X-300 I have a Panasonic Lunmix TZ3 at the moment best compact camera in the world but I would love to have a manual slr zoom like the Minolta X300

My best camera ever! After that I had Minolta 8000i now I use D80 - still miss performance of my good old X-300!

A very good camera. Quite large for an SLR compared to say, the Olympus OM10, which is in greater supply.

the Minolta lenses are great. I have bought a 70-210mm Minolta MD lens (fantastic quality for a zoom lens), a sigma 28mm wide angle, which has half stops on it and is very good quality for build and photo quality, and a rubber eye cup.

That lot cost me about £250 about 7-8 years ago. The Minolta lenses are hard to get hold of now, they have been looked after anyway. It has full manual controls which gives it great versatility. The light meter that is built in is very accurate (tested against an Olympus OM10 and a Weston Master 2 Light Meter), when used with the Olympus lenses. My camera is around 23 years old and I am not exaggerating when I say it still looks like brand new, which is a show of its build quality. Highly recommended.