Minolta AF 24-105mm f/3.5-4.5 (D)

No bag, one body, 36 frames and a full day on foot in somebody else's city. Inside the church you want 24mm. The fisherman mending nets out on the quay is a 105mm picture, and nobody wants to crouch on wet cobbles swapping glass in between. Minolta's earlier standard zooms each gave up one end of that walk: the 24-85 runs out of reach, and the 28-105 never gets wide enough for a cramped nave. This zoom covers both ends, and that range is most of its case.

It arrived in 2000, the same year as the Maxxum 7, and it carries the distance encoder behind the (D) in its name. The lens reports where it is focused, and ADI flash metering on that body, paired with an HS(D) flash, folds the distance into the calculation. A white wall or a mirror behind your subject is then less likely to drag the flash exposure off.

The optical formula is 12 elements in 11 groups, and the front is where you notice the engineering. According to dyxum, the 62mm filter thread turns neither when you focus nor when you zoom, so a polarizer stays where you set it and a graduated ND keeps its line on the horizon through every recomposition. Close focus is half a meter. At 0.18x the frame takes in roughly 20 by 13 centimeters of subject, enough for a handwritten menu or the brass plate beside a doorway. Real macro work needs a different lens.

Dyxum's 110 owner reviews averaged 4.25 out of 5 when checked in November 2026. Color earned the top score, 4.51, while sharpness landed right on the overall average. Distortion trailed at 4.15, one of the weaker marks on the sheet. I would read that as a reason to keep a sea horizon away from the frame edge at 24mm when the roll is slide film, since a transparency has no correction slider waiting for it later.

Then there is the sliding aperture: f/3.5 at 24mm, f/4.5 at 105mm, about two thirds of a stop. A Maxxum's TTL meter tracks the change on its own. A handheld reading does not. Take a Zone Light Meter reading for f/3.5, zoom out to 105mm, leave the shutter speed alone, and the frame comes out two thirds of a stop under, which chrome will show plainly. At the long end, meter for f/4.5. The small end drifts the same way, from f/22 at 24mm to f/27 at 105mm, so a stopped-down landscape at full zoom also needs the extra light.

Sony carried the design on as the SAL-24105 from 2006, after Konica Minolta left the camera business, and used copies turn up under both badges. Mount one on an APS-C Alpha and it frames like a 36-157mm; the church interior goes with that crop. Only on film or a full-frame sensor does 24mm mean 24mm. People cross-shop it against the Konica Minolta 28-75 f/2.8, which is faster at every focal length the two share and holds its aperture as you zoom, but weighs more and comes up short at both ends. Pick the 24-105 for walking light, the 28-75 for dim rooms. Whichever badge you find, rack the zoom end to end before paying and feel for even tension, then shine a torch through the glass to check for haze.