Minolta XG-1

Fast shutter speeds get their own LEDs in the XG-1's finder. Slow ones share a single light, which covers everything from 1/15 down to half a second. That one shared light, and a back with no memo holder, are the cuts you notice first on this budget take on the XG-7. Minolta kept the part that matters: the same aperture-priority shutter, stepless from a full second to 1/1000. The readout was trimmed to seven LEDs, and the camera went out as an export model; Minolta never sold it in Japan.

Set the aperture on any MC or MD lens and rest a fingertip on the release; it is a touch switch, so skin contact alone wakes the center-weighted CdS meter. In daylight the ladder tells 1/125 from 1/500. Walk into a dim room and the shared LED below 30 comes on, and now you are guessing at the speed, so lean on a doorframe. A separate under-range LED sits beneath it and lights when the scene needs more than a second. At the other end, if 1/1000 can't hold the exposure at your aperture, an over-range LED comes on and the shutter locks. Keep pressing while you stop down and it fires the instant the exposure comes into range. Compensation lives on the speed dial, where the A moves two stops either way in half-stop clicks. The cloth shutter syncs flash at 1/60, so daylight fill means stopping well down.

Manual is the weak spot, inherited from the XG-7, and the XG-1 makes it worse. Click the dial off A onto a marked speed and the speed LEDs stop metering; only the 60 LED stays live, as a flash-ready signal with an X-series Auto Electroflash. Minolta's instruction book suggests metering in auto, noting the lit LED, then setting that speed by hand. From 1/30 up that works. Lower down it falls apart, because the LED you copied could mean any of the four marked speeds from 1/15 to 1/2. Power is the other catch. Two LR44-size cells run everything electronic, and here that includes the shutter; with flat cells the XG-1 will not fire at all.

The back door is the second cut. Where a memo holder would sit, the original carries only an ASA-DIN conversion table, so there is nowhere to clip the end of the film box. The 1982 XG-1(n) restyle added the holder, an XG-M style front grip and the Acute Matte screen, but the body is still engraved XG-1. A listing title won't tell you which one you're buying; a photo of the front will. The (n) was cheap new: 47th Street Photo listed it at $139.90 in a 1982 Modern Photography, against $189.90 for an XG-M and $223.90 for an X-700.

Used, it remains one of the cheaper ways into Minolta's manual-focus system, and every MC or MD lens you collect later will meter on it at full aperture. The usual rival is a Pentax K1000. The Pentax needle works in manual because there is nothing else; the Minolta meters only when it is choosing the speed. If you mostly pick an aperture and shoot, I'd take the Minolta. Seven LEDs do fine in daylight.

The camera goes blind in manual, and that is where Zone Light Meter earns its place in the bag. Take an incident reading, or spot the shadows and put them on the zone you want, then set speed and aperture yourself; the XG-1 will give you any marked speed from a full second to 1/1000. Carry a spare pair of cells, because without them there is no shutter at all.