Few questions about Minolta A2

Hi,

sold my A2 in 2012 after almost 8 years of use. But even the long time of usage didn't prevent from forgetting details of its operation.

Just got this in good condition today. Working fine but a few questions. What must be a lens hood is "in reverse". How do I get it off? Remove the lens ring? Would not damage the zoom.

The hood is held in place in the bayonet by plastic dents. It's a known that the firmness varies over different copies of the cam from pretty loose to stiff. Removing by twisting clockwise - if I remember correctly. Tehn it should move until a slot where it can be removed / mounted in working orientation. It's important to twist it until it's final position (clic) to avoid vignetting in the WA position of the zoom

Focusing I only get a red mark, not green, is that normal?

I don't remember that.

Images rather sharp.

The 2,8/28-200 lens was pretty sharp indeed. But some reviews stated that it showed some ageing and hitting its optical limits at 8MP (same lens was previously used already on less MP cams like the A1 and earlier)

The card a bit hard to get in and out but working.

Bought it because it was cheap and of course the EVF. Seems to be very good, but a bit grainy.

That's the way it is. No comparison with today's EVF. But ahead of its time back in 2004. The EVF can be tilted so you can look from above. But the flat cable the links to the EVF is sort of Achilles Heel of the cam. If the EVF still works fine you might consider fixing it to its normal working position to avoid stress to the cable.

Don't know how much I will use the camera, but heard so much about this it, had to get one.

It's a nice cam with great manual zoom action - which many would love to see for example on today's RX10 from Sony.

Pretty nice results in RAW. The cam's JPG engine is really bad. In any case you may prefer to stay at lowest possible ISO settings like 64 and 100. Above that severe noise gets noticeable.

The cam features the ASS - AntiShakeSystem. It may need some testing if it still works. But at least there's a manual switch to deactivate it (btw a good idea for longer battery life). I owned also the specific VG which holds two of the default batteries, but came also with a holder for common AA batteries / rechargeables which gave a lot of choice for power supply.