Minolta Maxxum 400si / Dynax 500si / Maxxum 450si
There's an old saying that the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese. For the Minolta camera company, this saying is especially appropriate. Minolta's Maxxum 7000, introduced in 1985, was the world's first auto-focus SLR. That camera was also the first to use integrated computer chips in the camera's body, lenses, and accessories. The Maxxum 7000 was also the first SLR to have an automatic, motorized film advance. Yet even as their technology and cameras redefined what was cutting edge, Minolta always seemed to struggle to find market share that was equal to their technological dominance.
Despite the advancements in their lineup of "pro-sumer" level cameras and constant striving for improvements, Minolta kept an eye out for the advanced amateurs who appreciated the quality and features Minolta had to offer. In that spirit, Minolta rolled out the 400si in 1994. The 400si (also known as the Dynax 500si) took much of the best of Minolta's achievements and rolled them into an easy-to-use package. In some prior versions of Minolta's auto-focus cameras, Minolta used small, interchangeable memory cards that contained programs designed to help photographers with portrait shooting, sports photography, making landscape images, and more. With the 400si, Minolta brought all of these inside the camera so that the shooting modes became easy to select through the menu options.
Given Minolta's success at being the first to market what are now considered normal pieces of technology, you might expect them to still be at the forefront of today's camera makers - but alas - in this case, they were the first mouse to the cheese. You can (and should) find these gems today and feel the best cameras that technology had to offer in the 1990s. These cameras were an essential transition from the fully manual cameras of the 1970s to the fully automatic marvels of the 21st century.
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