Minolta MD W.Rokkor 24mm f/2.8

Set the aperture ring to f/22 on an XD-7, turn the dial to S, and the camera picks the working stop for you. That trick depends on a small tab at the back of this lens, and the tab is most of the reason the MD W.Rokkor 24mm exists. Minolta released it in July 1977 with the nine-element, seven-group optics of the 1973 MC W.Rokkor-SI carried straight over, floating element and all, so it stays corrected as you rack toward the closest marking on the scale. The changes are at the mount and on the aperture ring.

That ring now closes to f/22. The MC lens stops at f/16, and Vintage Camera Digest lists the MC W.Rokkor-X 24mm the same way, f/2.8 to f/16. One extra stop sounds trivial until you are on a tripod at dusk wanting a two-second exposure on moving water. Minolta's data puts the first version at 275 g. An MD II followed in November 1978 at 215 g, and Minolta listed both at 39,000 yen, so the lighter barrel came at the same price.

Rokkor Files, reviewing the MD W.Rokkor-X (the North American name), calls it one of the sharpest lenses its author has ever encountered and rates the distortion negligible. The proof offered is a 30-second exposure on a very windy night through a Cokin tobacco grad, enlarged to 16 by 24 inches and still clean. On a 24, straight lines matter more than people expect. Put a horizon near the top edge, or work a tight room with door frames at both sides, and nothing bows.

For landscape it wants something close to anchor the 84-degree view: a rock, a fence post, a clump of heather. Leave that out and the mountains shrink to a strip across the middle of the frame. At f/22, focused by the depth-of-field scale, it can hold the rock and the horizon together, though diffraction softens fine detail; use the last stop for depth, not for bite. Small apertures in fading light mean long exposures, and an ND pushes them past a second and into reciprocity failure. Zone Light Meter can fold the filter factor and the stock's reciprocity correction into the reading before you open the shutter.

Rokkor Files names one drawback, and it is real: the front filter thread rotates when you focus. Refocus and the polariser has to be turned back into place, every time. The 55mm thread is a lesser annoyance in an MD bag, because the MD 28mm f/2.8 and the MD W.Rokkor 35mm f/1.8 both take 49mm filters. Carry step-up rings, or two sets of glass.

Which Minolta 24 to buy comes down to the body. The plain MD 24mm that came later uses an eight-element design and a 49mm thread. The MC W.Rokkor-SI has this lens's optics but stops at f/16, and its missing tab costs nothing on an SRT or a mirrorless adapter. Rokkor Files describes the MD W.Rokkor-X as pricey when new and easy to find at a reasonable price now. On an XD in shutter priority, or for anyone who wants that f/22, this is the one.