Minolta Maxxum 700si

Midday, a subject backlit under a tree, and you want f/2 so the leaves behind them melt. A body that stops flash at 1/200 makes you choose: give up the fill, or stop down until the background turns sharp and busy. Put a 5400HS on the Maxxum 700si and the choice mostly goes away. At 1/200 and faster the camera switches the flash to high-speed sync without being asked, so you open the lens, let the shutter climb toward 1/8000, and at portrait distances the faces still get their lift. HSS costs the flash much of its reach, so this works at a few meters, not across a lawn. Inside that range it is the best reason to own this camera.

Minolta launched it in 1993 as the enthusiast model of the si line, well above the 400si and 500si with their 1/2000 ceilings. The shutter covers 30 seconds to 1/8000 in half stops, plus bulb. Compensation goes three stops either way, also in halves. Metering comes in three flavors: a 14-segment evaluative mode for ordinary scenes, center-weighted when you want a predictable bias you can read, and a spot under 3% of the frame, tight enough to read one side of a face at portrait distance. Against the 9xi it gives up the 1/12000 top speed and gains a pop-up flash. If you shoot fill outdoors, that trade favors the 700si.

That flash is modest. Guide number 12 in meters at ISO 100 is fill for a few meters, not light for a room, though it covers a 24mm lens without dark corners. The body weighs 595 g before you mount a lens or drop in the single 2CR5 lithium cell that runs everything. Screw-drive A-mount autofocus lenses back to the 1985 originals work fully, and that keeps the glass cheap. Later SSM and SAM lenses, with motors in the lens, will mount but won't autofocus here, and DT lenses were cut for a smaller digital sensor and vignette on 35mm.

The optional VC-700 vertical grip is where the body earns a place in a studio bag. It adds a second set of controls for shooting in portrait orientation and lets you run on AA cells instead of hunting for a 2CR5. It also carries the PC terminal. Without the grip there is no PC socket at all, so studio strobes mean a Minolta-shoe PC adapter, since a generic ISO-shoe part won't seat on Minolta's foot. Plenty of used bodies turn up without one. The deeper problem is electronic. When the cell dies, the camera dies with it, and there is no mechanical speed to fall back on.

The spot meter is good, but a backlit portrait is where any in-camera pattern starts arguing with the bright sky. Spot-read the shadow side of the face with the Zone Light Meter app, place it on Zone III or IV depending on how much detail you want there, and set that exposure in M. Then frame and shoot, and the evaluative pattern never gets a vote.

Today the 700si sells for small money, partly because buyers hunting Minolta autofocus go straight to the Maxxum 7, a later, more refined body that usually costs more. Outside Minolta, people cross-shop a Nikon N90s or a Canon EOS Elan. In Europe it wears the Dynax 700si badge, and in Japan it was the Alpha 707si, which widens the used search. Buy one if you want daylight flash at wide apertures with a 5400HS. Hunt down the grip only if studio strobes are part of the work.