Minolta XK Motor

Minolta built the XK Motor around a motor you cannot take off. A version of it sat beside the X-1 at Photokina in 1972, yet nobody could buy one until June 1976, and when it reached shops the drive had grown into the body for good. You never get a lighter version of this camera for a quiet afternoon. If you own it, you carry the motor everywhere it goes.

The drive selector runs from single frame through 1, 2 and 3 frames per second up to H, which gives 3.5 fps. At the end of the roll the motor will also rewind the film, and it stops by itself once the film is back in the cassette, so you aren't standing there guessing when to let go. Behind the mount is a titanium focal-plane shutter stepped from 16 seconds to 1/2000, with flash sync at 1/100. The mount is Minolta SR, so MC and MD Rokkors meter at full aperture; older pre-MC lenses still mount, but they need stop-down metering.

The change that mattered most is in the AE-S finder. The X-1 metered with a CdS cell, and CdS lags when the light shifts, which is tolerable at one frame every few seconds and useless at three a second. Minolta put a silicon cell in its place. Silicon responds almost instantly, so automatic exposure keeps up with the motor rather than trailing a frame behind. In auto the shutter goes stepless from 8 seconds to 1/2000 and picks whatever in-between speed the scene needs. X at 1/100 and B are mechanical. With the motor in use, B works as T: press once to open, press again to close, which makes long tripod exposures at night easy without a locking cable.

Then there is the weight. Minolta's German manual for the European XM Motor puts it at about 1,450 g with the AE-S finder and the standard battery pack, and that is before you fit a lens or load any batteries. Add a 50mm and a full set of cells and an afternoon of walking with it is real work for your neck and shoulder. The shutter also depends on its batteries. Only X and B are mechanical, so dead batteries leave you with 1/100 and bulb and nothing else. Carry spares.

It sold poorly, yet Minolta kept it in the line-up as the flagship until the alpha system arrived. Against the SR-M, Minolta's earlier meterless integral-motor body, it is quicker, reaches twice the top speed and actually has a meter. Nikon and Canon pro bodies of the era took detachable motors instead, and that flexibility is the obvious reason to pick one of them over this. People who want the XK Motor usually want this exact machine, the fixed motor included. Because it sold poorly, examples are not common, so before you talk price, ask about service history and whether the drive and AE still work across the full range.

Any in-camera meter can be fooled by a backlit runner or a singer under one spotlight, and the AE-S finder is no exception. For scenes like that, take a spot reading of the shadows with the Zone Light Meter app, place them on the zone you want, set that speed by hand, and leave the motor to do what it was built for.