The beautiful days of Minolta

MikeInOr wrote:

I am a bit jealous. I remember when both the RD-175 and RD-3000 came out and wanting one knowing that I would never be able to afford one. Being a Minolta collector myself I would love to add a pair of working RD-175 / RD-3000 to my collection. I have been tempted to bid on a couple but I always run into the problem of how to get the images off of the camera.

Would you be up to walking us through the process of actually taking a picture with these two gems? Stuff like which batteries are needed? What storage media (I think they both use non-removable built in memory???). What interface is used to connect the camera to your computer? Didn't one of those two use a SCSI interface? What OS is the computer doing the transfer running? What software do you use to transfer the image? What format is the image after retrieving it from the camera? What software do you use to transform to a image format that is common today?

You have to have a great amount of knowledge to actually take and use an image from these great old cameras. It would be great if you wouldn't mind sharing your knowledge with us?

The RD-3000 is a very useable , if slow , DSLR , you can even review the images on the tiny LCD !

The RD-3000 uses standard AA batteries , I use Sanyo eneloops in mine .

For memory , a standard CF card is used , I can't remember if there's a maximum limit , but I think I have a 1 GB card in mine .

To transfer the images just take the card out and put it in a card reader and process the images in your usual software ( RAW or JPEG) the same as any other camera  . I use Lightroom 5 .

You could use an SCSI cable , but there's no point . Just take the card out .

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The RD-175 takes a bit more work .

It uses 3 batteries for a start !

The camera part uses a ( disposable) 2CR5 battery , easily available .

The digital back part of it uses a Sony battery (NP-F550) that was common in digicams at the time .

These are still readily available ; https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/162614217179

I got some new ones for mine as after 25 years , the originals don't hold their charge well .

Make sure the OEM charger is supplied with the camera .

The third battery is a coin cell type that that is used to retain the memory if you take the main battery out .

All batteries are still readily available .

The original memory storage is a PCMCIA media card , a big lump .

With that in you would most likely need to connect the camera up to a computer running an old O/S using the correct SCSI cable and drivers etc . I have have an old Windows XP desktop for running old cameras and scanners etc .

I do things the easy way having a PCMCIA to Compact flash card adapter .

Small capacity cards have to be used and they have to be correctly set up / formatted .

Easier to do on a dedicated XP machine and the Minolta software , but can be done on modern O/S .

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To transfer the images it's easiest if your using a CF card in the normal way .

With regards to using the images , most editing software won't recognise the files .

The MRAW files can be converted to a usable format on Picajet , which can be downloaded free .

From there the images can be imported and edited as usual .