Minolta XG-A

Point an XG-A at a sunlit beach with the lens wide open and press the release. Nothing happens. The over-range LED is lit, and the camera has locked its own shutter rather than overexpose. Keep pressing while you stop down and it fires on its own the instant the reading drops into range. Minolta's manual warns about it: the result is a frame you never meant to take.

There is no manual mode to retreat to, either. The dial offers AUTO with plus or minus 2 EV of compensation in half-stop clicks, B, and X at 1/60 for a non-dedicated flash. Not one manual speed. You set the aperture on an SR-mount MD or MC lens and the camera picks a stepless time between a full second and 1/1000; the shutter is never yours to choose. Minolta launched it in 1981 for snapshot shooters and never sold it in Japan. Rokkorfiles explains the market: most compacts then lacked a wide zoom, so more than one focal length usually meant an SLR, and this was an affordable one.

Despite the budget, it got the Acute Matte screen of the later XGs, with a horizontal split-image spot inside a microprism collar, brighter than the screen in the first XG-7 and the original XG-1. Seven LEDs at the right of the frame show the chosen speed, except that everything from 1/15 to half a second shares one light, as on the XG-1. In a dim kitchen you learn only that it is slow. A bare fingertip on the touch-switch release wakes the meter; gloved hands need a light press. It weighs 485 grams without lens or cells, and the Auto Winder G adds up to two frames a second.

Go looking for a PC socket and you will not find one. Flash goes through the hot shoe or not at all, and the back door does not come off. Dedicated X-series flashes still set 1/60 on their own and blink the 60 LED when ready. What worries me more is power. The XG-A is electronic all the way down: two LR44-size cells run everything, the electromagnetic release included, and when the voltage sags the shutter simply refuses to fire. No mechanical speed waits in reserve. B hides a trap too: if the metal of a standard cable release touches metal on the body mid-exposure, the shutter closes.

The center-weighted meter uses two CdS cells, and the manual itself prescribes plus compensation for strong backlight, snow or pale sand. With AUTO the only metered mode, the compensation dial is your entire toolkit. For a backlit face, spot-read the skin with the Zone Light Meter app, place it on the zone you want, compare that with the LED the XG-A lights at the same aperture, and dial in the difference. Past two stops the dial simply runs out.

Rokkorfiles notes it sold new for under US$100 in 1982 and was the last XG still available new. The same site says it has little appeal today, yet concedes that even the lowliest XG-A can produce stunning photographs. I side with the concession. People cross-shop it against the similarly auto-only Pentax ME, which at least keeps a mechanical 1/100 when the cells die, though the lenses you already own should settle it. Want to set a speed yourself? Step up to the XG-M, which keeps its meter alive in manual. As a sand-and-salt second body, or a first SLR for someone who thinks only in f-stops, a working one costs very little. Check that the LEDs light and the release fires before you pay.