Pimp my ride - more on bw conversion

Here's a simple snapshot of a car parked by my house. Did it with Minolta XD7 and 35-70 lens.

The reason why it's converted to bw is, that the car on the right (background) was actually YELLOW - and was distracting the viewer from the main photo subject. There isn't much color in winter landscapes at all - that's why black & white winter pics looks so good.

Winter IS colourful! Minolta 35-70 f3.5 lens thoughts.

Sometimes... eh... mostly not...

Minolta XD7 + 35-70 f3.5
Kodak Elite Chrome

The 35-70 is a great universal lens. My version is the one with macro mode (used on this pic). There is a rumor, that this lens was made in cooperation with Leica (vide leicas 35-70 f3.5) - not that I really care. Its just simple, versatile - my favorite beater-take-everywhere-with lens.
Focusing is silk smooth and precise, starts from 80cm or about 20 in macro mode. I had been shooting with expensive 24-50 f4 lens for a while and didn't noticed much difference in sharpness.

WU vienna by night...

Minolta XD + Minolta 24-50 f4
Kodak elite chrome

This photo turned to be very boring in color - i simply added a bit contrast, turned to bw, and lightened a bit the wall on the right side using lr. Et voila!

Nikon F3 vs Minolta X-700 - comparision!

The F3 is a top of the Nikon's line manual focus camera - it's the last manual focus nikon from professional F-series. There is plenty of informations about it in Internet already. Definetely the best F3 review / description is to be found HERE and HERE.

I will purely concentrate on comparision between F3 and state of art Minolta X-700 (introduced 2 years after Nikon's F3, X-700 was the last high specification MF Minolta, in-depth review are HERE and HERE)

AREN'T THEY SIMILAR?

The similarities doesn't end on the outside, they both have:
- nearly identical handling and operation
- similar horizontal-travel shutter
- similar technical specification (of course, F3 a bit forward here)



Technical specification of F3 was, of course top-notch at the time, the clear advantages over X-700 are:
- wider shutter speeds range 8 seconds to 1/2000
- interchangeable finders and focus screens
- mirror lock up
- T time for extra long exposures
- mechanical shutter release

Minolta X-700 was of course MUCH cheaper than Nikon, but still have some advantages over F3:
- NORMAL HOT SHOE
- fully automatic P mode
- no need to remove a cap to connect the Motor Drive (which really is pida in F3)
- build-in vertical shutter release in MD1

As for today, each of them have one additional advantage over the contestor:

You can use virtually every ever produced Nikkor lens with F3, what makes it a nice companion to modern DSLR. You can't do it with X-700. Minolta dropped the MD mount with introduction of AF Dynax/Maxxum series.

The PRICE of the lenses, otoh, speaks clearly pro Minolta - you can buy this wonderful 50mm 1.7 Rokkor for next to nothing, whereas a similar Nikkor is like $100.

Why shoot diapositive film? Why shoot color?

Diapositive films have two major advantages over negatives:

- you can make dia-show (obviously)
- easier to get good colors when scanned

Color films have two major advantages over bw films:

- if you shoot bw you can never have this photo in color
- if you shoot color, you can easily convert it to bw AND get better results!! (see my next post!)


Photo made with Minolta XD7 + Minolta 35-70 f3.5 lens on Kodak Elite Chrome 100 film (10 years expired), scanned with cheap Plustek scanner.