Minolta X-600

Turn the focus ring on an X-600 and, at the right moment, the camera beeps. Minolta offered it from 1983 to 1984 and never sold it outside Japan, which makes the whole run look like a field trial with a price tag. Under the skin it is the X-500's sibling, with the same SR bayonet and the same aperture-priority logic, but Minolta added a Honeywell TCL focus-detection module and called the result Speed Focus. Collection-appareils argues the company sold it partly to test the market, and the sensor, before the Minolta 7000. When the 7000 arrived, a motor turned the focus ring. On the X-600 the camera could already tell when you had it right, but the turning was still up to you.

Look along the bottom edge of the finder. Two red arrows and a green dot sit there, and when you reach focus the green dot lights and the beeper confirms it. The beeper is the X-600's most unusual touch for a manual-focus SR body. Speed Focus works best with MD lenses that carry the extra selector pin, and the manual lists usable lenses from f/1.2 to f/4.5, so a slow tele zoom whose widest aperture is darker than f/4.5 is outside what the sensor was built for. A fast standard lens in good light gives the sensor the most to work with. For anyone whose eyes no longer trust a manual focusing screen, that confirmation is a genuine help.

The rest of the camera is familiar Minolta. Aperture priority runs stepless from 4 seconds to 1/1000, so long dusk exposures are handled without counting. Manual covers a full second to 1/1000 plus B. Flash syncs at 1/60, and dedicated Minolta flashes get off-the-film metering, so the flash reading comes from light actually landing on the emulsion. What the finder does not show is the aperture. You get the speed the meter picked and nothing about the f-stop you set, so you end up glancing at the lens barrel, which gets old on a long walk.

The focus aid had a cost. It runs on its own pair of AAA cells in the grip, and that grip blocks the Motor Drive 1, leaving the Auto Winder G as the only drive that fits. The price was higher too: 65,000 yen against 55,000 for the X-500, about 20 percent more for a light and a beep. Age is the real worry now. The Honeywell module and its circuitry are forty years old, and if they fail you own an X-500 with a fatter grip and a bigger price.

Buyers today are mostly collectors tracing how Minolta got from manual focus to the 7000, plus people who enjoy owning a Japan-only body. Since it was never exported officially, it is harder to find outside Japan than an X-700 or an X-570, and either of those is the sensible pick if you just want a Minolta to shoot. Choose the X-600 only if that focus confirmation matters to you, and budget for a second set of batteries to keep it running.

Its built-in meter, like most of its era, gets fooled by backlight and dark subjects. For those scenes, take a spot reading with Zone Light Meter, put the shadows on the zone you want, and set that pair in manual. The focus aid still confirms focus on whatever sits in the centre of the frame, and the exposure comes from the app.