New to Minolta with gifted camera.

Hi, new here. Most of my equipment is Pentax. though I have a Yashica somewere.

I love my Pentax but my daughter bought me a SRT 201 I bought a Vivitar 35 to 100 Zoom as it was at the camera store. And I was Meh about it. Good camera but the aperture turns backwards from my Pentax, not a big problem as I'm not into sport photography. But it was big and heavy compared to my Pentax's, That lens is not very sharp. My Pentax's are sharp as a tack, except my 1.4 50mm at F2 or F1.4. Also my 28 to 200 Pentax is not quite as sharp as my other zooms. I decided it was not fair to compare it with a non Minolta lens so I bought a 1,4 58mm and it is very sharp even wide open. Is this typical of Minolta's?

Also have a non-working Konica that used to by my wife's. Will ask about repairing it later but can't remember the model number.

I have a 58mm 1.4 and mine is very good even on my Sony A7RIV. I have several other Minolta SR lenses that are similarly excellent. A good many of them are sharp with good contrast and nice rendering. Most of the issues I have with older lenses (of good quality) are with flare, ghosting and distortion. Fixing lens distortion on film isn't a quick click of the mouse like it is in digital.

I have a SRT 101 and SRT 201, they are both very nice cameras. That vintage body was a little heavier and bulkier due to being all mechanical which isn't necessary a bad thing. The X700 body and many other newer Minolta bodies are lighter and more compact. Probably a bit closer to what you are used to with your Pentax bodies.

I have several Minolta SR mount zooms that have come with bodies I have collected over the years.  I rarely use them and usually stick to primes when shooting film.  Modern computer modeling techniques have REALLY upped the optical quality of zoom lenses.  Older zooms are generally a series of compromises in one area or another.

HughP wrote:

They didn't actually leave the business, they became part of Sony. Wish they had left the brand name.

I remember when Sony bought out the Minolta camera business, I was quite angry about it! I was positive that Sony was going to drive the business into the ground and ruin A-Mount. I am happy to admit that Sony did very well by A-Mount owners. I would say that they did better by Minolta users than Monolta would have ever been able to. I would have never imagined in a Million years that Sony would EVER be the top ILC dog with even Canon and Nikon trying to keep up. I had a Sony camcorder at the time that was quite expensive and a complete piece of junk, I really figured their ILC line would be the same.

P.S. Sony never did me right on that camcorder though, it spent more time being repaired than I ever got any use out of it.  As soon as it was out of warranty I was just screwed!