Minolta 7000

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The Minolta 7000 (Maxxum 7000 in North America and Alpha 7000 in Japan) was the first commercially successful, autofocus SLR camera.

Before the Minolta 7000, Nikon, Canon, Pentax and Olympus had experimented with self-contained auto-focusing lenses that worked with their existing cameras and used their existing lens mounts. Second rung Minolta burst onto the scene in 1986 with their new in-body auto-focus camera system and changed the modern SLR camera forever. Without timidity they released 3 cameras (5000, 7000 and 9000) almost simultaneously and several lenses to make a complete new fully featured system. For the next couple of years they dominated the market while Canikon played catch-up. Unfortunately Minolta could not hold onto this technical and market domination and a lot of professional and enthusiast photographers preferred to wait for Canon and Nikon's auto-focus offering rather than jump to the Minolta camera.

The 7000 was revolutionary in many ways other than its auto-focus system and all following 35mm SLR cameras seem to have followed its lead. It had manual, aperture, shutter and program modes in the days when you still more usually chose a camera that was EITHER aperture or shutter priority. It replaced old school knobs and dials with push button switches and fully featured LCD displays both external and within the viewfinder. The structure utilized a lot of plastic but also contained an integral power winding system and natural ergonomics (a new word for the 80's).

Links

• Review at Modern Classics
• Maxxum (Dynax) 7000i