The
Minolta
was a Japanese manufacturer of cameras, camera accessories, photocopiers, fax machines, and laser printers. Minolta Co., Ltd., which is also known simply as Minolta, was founded in Osaka, Japan, in 1928 as . It made the first integrated autofocu ...
X-1 (XK in North America, XM in Europe and elsewhere) was the professional model in the Minolta line-up. It took about ten years to develop and started a new era in the Minolta SR system. It was the first Minolta
SLR with interchangeable lenses to have an electronically controlled shutter, a
horizontically traveling shutter with titanium foil curtains and capable of a shortest speed of 1/2000s (longest selectable was 16 s). It had interchangeable finders:
* AE-Finder: The standard finder with a refined CLC metering system (introduced by the
SR-T 101) and
aperture priority
Aperture priority, often abbreviated ''A'' or ''Av'' (for aperture value) on a camera mode dial, is a mode on some cameras that allows the user to set a specific aperture value (f-number) while the camera selects a shutter speed to match it tha ...
auto exposure mode.
* M-Finder: A simpler and cheaper version of the AE-finder, the match-needle finder. It did not show metered shutter times but had only a needle to align. It lacked the automatic mode.
* P-finder: The plain finder, an unmetered
pentaprism
A pentaprism is a five-sided reflecting prism used to deviate a beam of light by a constant 90°, even if the entry beam is not at 90° to the prism.
The beam reflects inside the prism ''twice'', allowing the transmission of an image through a r ...
finder, which gave the X-1 a much more compact silhouette than the bulky finders above.
* High-Magnification-Finder: Unmetered finder with 6.2 magnification ratio and diopter adjustment.
* Waist-Level-Finder: Unmetered with magnifier.
* AE-S-Finder: Introduced with the
X-1 Motor and equipped with a silicon cell instead of the slower
CdS-cell of the AE-Finder. This was necessary for the auto exposure mode with motorized action.
And the photographer had the choice among nine (later eleven) interchangeable focussing screens. It further had a socket for a synchronised flash shoe, mirror lock up feature, stop down lever, multi-exposure capability.
The X-1 was the first of the X-series and so a completely new designed lens line was introduced and labelled with 'MC Rokkor-X' in the North American market (the rest of the world kept the plain 'MC Rokkor' designation). The most striking attribute was the new waffled rubber coating of the focus grip. The X-1 and its export descendants were available in black finish only.
External links
The Rokkor Files
{{Minolta
135 film cameras
X-1